Ridiculous in the right way: Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Ars Technica

Unlike its peers, this feels more like a fighting game. While other designs try to create a stripped-down version of a larger miniatures battle,

(Unmatchedwants to give you the feel of (Street Fighter) ************************ or ************************** Marvel vs. Capcom. You pick a “main” and perfect your timing. All of those twists and tricks you hope to find in your deck actually materialize because you’re not tearing down your creation and rebuilding a new one after nearly every game.

This fighting-game format, however, is also responsible for Unmatched’s weakest spots. There’s a strong focus on timing and counter-play here. Instead of deck creation, controlling the tempo and drawing out your opponent’s strongest moves at their least advantageous time is at the very heart of this design. This is captured succinctly with the “feint” card, which is quite the mixture of brilliant and awful. It works because it’s an elegant weapon to clash over tempo but it also stumbles because it can nullify some of the strongest moments in the game.

Imagine this: you just spent the past 39 minutes carefully nurturing your hand, building up a set of power moves that includes the shining Excalibur. You’ve baited your opponent into playing one of their own feints earlier; now is the time to strike. You place Excalibur face down on the table alongside a second card from your hand to boost the damage. Then you and your opponent both flip your cards — and the corners of your mouth drop.

The problem is that every deck has three feints. Their power to undo the most dramatic of plays is frustrating, and it feels like a net negative to the game’s momentum. It works, and the game still ultimately succeeds, but a more judicious use of feint cards might have injected more vigor into the experience.

The pre-constructed nature of the decks also provides an occasional feeling that the game is actually playing you. Card draw is incredibly important, and the lack of a proper mulligan rule is a bit shocking. The abbreviated play time obscures this weakness somewhat, though.

Some players will also take issue with the sidekicks, which are presented as round plastic discs instead of full-blown miniatures. I threw side-eye at this concept initially, but it didn’t take me long at all to embrace the idea. The hero is mechanically divided from the sidekick, and this difference in presentation focuses the spotlight appropriately.

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