Ascension - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, was the first officially licensed deck building card game for iOS, and is now available for your PC as Ascension: Deckbuilding Game, complete with 5 full expansion decks! Play alone or with friends to battle against the Fallen One for honor and victory. Conceived and designed by three Magic: the Gathering tournament champions, Ascension will provide hours of engaging and strategic game play for enthusiast and experienced gamers alike.

Previous Playtime

0 hours

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This

This may be a record for shortest time between buying a game and writing its "what was I thinking when I bought this" post in the history of the blog (generally, games I play on the release date are preordered at least a week in advance). I literally just bought this five minutes ago.

My road to buying the Ascension video game version is a short, but winding one. There is a local game store that I frequent that had it on the shelf. It always looked interesting to me, but I was leery of taking a risk on something I knew nothing about. Then, I saw an episode of Wil Wheaton's Tabletop where they played the Marvel Deckbuilding Game and I thought it looked really cool. So I went into the game shop to check it out, but it was 60 bucks and I couldn't really justify it to myself. But as I'm talking to the owner, she mentions that Ascension has a similar concept. I'm intrigued. However, having backed off a slightly bigger purchase, I wasn't ready to take the 40 dollar plunge that day either (honestly, I don't even know why I went in that day). But the owner offered to demo the game for me sometime. A few weeks later, I got my summer bonus from work and I had some spare cash to spend, so I went into the shop, played the demo, and had so much fun that I wound up getting a ticket for an expired parking meter (damned downtown parking, I hate it). So the game wound up costing me an extra 15 bucks, but it was worth it because every time I've played it, I've had a blast.

Fast forward to now, and I bought the video game version because it's rare that my friends actually want to play card games, and I'm a sad enough person that I like to buy AI simulations to take the place of friends when the need arises.

Also, it was only five bucks and I've done so well keeping my New Year's Resolution this year that I thought I deserved an award.

Expectations and Prior Experience

I've yet to buy a digital version of a card game I enjoy in real life and wind up regretting it. I don't expect Ascension to break my streak. My biggest worry is that a lot of the reviews for this version of the game cite it as a sub-par port of the cell-phone version. I'm not sure what that entails, exactly, but I'm willing to endure the occasional crash if the game at least proves even a fraction as engaging as the tabletop game.