2.5/5 ★ – sirvalkyerie's review of Library Of Ruina.

There's a good game deep inside of here. But I'll be damned if it doesn't feel taxing to find. Library of Ruina is a pretty indepth deckbuilder with a lot of elements borrowed from turn-based mobile games. Even down to the anime storytelling being batshit over the top and incredibly confusing. The gimmick is that the main character somehow stumble into a phantasmal library that is designed for tricking ne'erdowells into it via cosmic invitation and then murdering them and capturing them into books. The books are then burned to make skills? Idk. It's all quite bizarre. And believe me, the game is absolutely story heavy. There's tons of fully voice acted cutscenes interpolated between missions which were never interesting and always confusing. This isn't entirely out of place for some random Japanese/Korean game. But it would square better if the gameplay itself wasn't also pretty complex. The game is a deckbuilder but it felt difficult to genuinely hunt down specific builds you wanted. Instead to do so was pretty significantly grindy (repeating levels to get books which are burned for mats and the mats are random). Later in the game there are easier ways to farm some particular things but the game never does break out of its grindyness. It's very committed to this gacha-esque design that harkens *strongly* to titles like Arknights, RAID and Granblue. I wouldn't call the game 'hard.' Not by skill nor by content. But it is complex and there are a ton of symbols and stats and effects to remember. It's all presented in a very maximalist package that rarely actually uses its real estate well enough to give you access to digestible tooltips or anything. Instead its just a constant whirlwind of information that you inevitably begin to memorize. But man does it feel sort of exhausting juxtaposed with the bananas story. The gameplay is interesting. The impressive complexity in card mechanics for this little game is noteworthy but the frenetic pace doesn't ever let you feel like you can get your feet under you. Not because of the mechanics but because of the general game design. You have to not only be a glutton for complex card games (I aim!) but also very into this specific aesthetic and story to stomach the poor design choices (I am not!). The real positives are in the art and the music. The music is fantastic in a very Persona meets Jojo's sort of way. And the kind of chibi art for the actual battles is outstanding (the cinematic art is generic anime stuff). There's a fun production quality and the battles are very visually appealing. but given the repetitive nature of the game you'll begin to gloss over them entirely. There's a genuinely good game in here somewhere. And there's a great game that could be made from a more curated take on this. But you'll be lucky to make it through this thing without feeling a general sense of aggravation.