Tainted Grail: Conquest

Tainted Grail: Conquest asks for patience in the way good deckbuilders often do: you build a run, lose it, and come back with a clearer plan. By our assessment, its strongest feature is the mix of roguelike progression and card-driven combat, which gives each attempt a little shape even when the run ends badly. That also means there is a lot of reading, planning, and deck tinkering between fights, so it is not a casual click-and-forget game. It sits between a narrative board-game world and a tactical card battler, which makes it feel more structured than many pure roguelikes. The downside is the familiar one for this kind of system: if someone does not enjoy building decks and learning enemy patterns, the appeal dries up fast. Tainted Grail: Conquest is at its best when the player likes strategy with a bit of punishment attached.