Shattered Heaven

My first instinct when I see 'deck-builder RPG' these days is to reach for the skeptic's checklist: does each character have a genuinely distinct mechanical identity, or are we just recoloring the same cards? Shattered Heaven actually passes that test. You manage three separate decks simultaneously, one per hero. Andora the Vestal cycles through ruby, sapphire, and emerald cards with a color-balance mechanic that punishes thoughtless drafting. Magni is a pure armor-stacker whose whole value is protecting the party and strengthening weaker cards. Ishana specializes in debuffs and status pressure. These are not interchangeable archetypes - they pull in genuinely different directions, and the post-dungeon card-drafting moment, where you pick one neutral card for each hero and permanently alter their deck composition, is the sharpest decision point in the game. The tactical bones are solid. Boss encounters run through multiple health-bar phases, escalate their ability pools as they take damage, and demand that you respect the party's AP economy rather than simply going all-in every turn. A per-dungeon modifier system, where each run starts with a chosen difficulty plus a random special effect, adds meaningful variance without leaning on pure randomness as a crutch. The dark forge, fed by black bones earned from those modifiers, provides persistent character upgrades that carry forward between runs and soften the roguelite friction considerably. If anything, reviewers who called this a 'roguelite' are being generous - the emphasis on story continuity and permanent progression means most players will experience it closer to a dungeon-crawl RPG with procedural spice than a true run-reset experience. Where Shattered Heaven loses ground is presentation and UX. Font choices are genuinely puzzling for a text-heavy game - small, poorly contrasted against colorful art backgrounds, and there is a lot of text. The UI commits to putting the player's party on the right side of the screen, a deliberate inversion of genre convention that reads as thematically intentional but feels physically uncomfortable during long sessions. The crafting system, used to build potions, weapons, and amulets from dungeon loot and recipes, is advertised with more confidence than it delivers - it works, but lacks the depth the marketing implies. The skill tree, meanwhile, locks significant branches behind story progress, which limits your ability to plan multi-dungeon builds in advance. And the game can tip into information overload, especially in its second half, where lore density outpaces the pacing of its branching visual-novel narrative sequences. That narrative, however, is the strongest argument for giving this one a fair run. The world - humanity cursed after killing its god, four factions condemned to die at 40, a Vestal offered up in a ritual called the War of Ascension - is genuinely original dark-fantasy writing. Story beats arrive at a reasonable pace, player choices influence faction outcomes and character fates, and an opera-led soundtrack does real atmospheric work in boss fights. The dev team came out of Dry Drowning, an Italian investigative visual novel, and that narrative pedigree shows. Steam user sentiment sits in the 'Mostly Positive' range, which feels accurate: this is not a game without flaws, but the people it clicks with tend to stick with it. For a strategy-minded player who wants card decisions to matter and does not mind working through a clunky first hour of information density, Shattered Heaven offers more genuine tactical texture than most of its mid-budget peers. Go in knowing the roguelite label undersells how story-driven this actually is, and manage your expectations on the crafting system. Diego, Scout Team

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