Spirit Mancer

Spirit Mancer offers a nice variety of cards to build your deck with, both beforehand and on the fly. And the hub has enough to keep you busy for a short while before you jump into the next mission. And though combat does become repetitive not too long into the game’s runtime, Spirit Mancer’s beautiful presentation, co-op mode, and unique take on deckbuilding combat makes it a fun romp within the genre. ∎

Spirit Mancer is a co-op hack-and-slash action game with a monster-summoning twist. The game gets a decent amount of mileage from its unique mechanics, buoyed by some varied enemy designs and an interesting fusion of action game and Pokémon-style monster-collection gameplay. Unfortunately, the fairly solid combat system is marred by some very hit-or-miss boss fights which impact the overall experience.

Spirit Mancer offers a creative mashup of hack-and-slash and deckbuilder gameplay, but the experience is held back by various technical issues. Despite these flaws, this whimsical world was clearly crafted with love.

Spirit Mancer has its issues, but it also its charms. It's the kind of game that's tailor-made to the tastes of a specific and narrow group of players - if you happen to be the kind of person for whom it ‘works’, you’ll be thrilled at the experience here and probably won’t be able to put it down. If you’re not a part of that group, its uneven execution and repetition may be too hard to overlook. Interesting combat, gorgeous visuals, and a wealth of gameplay systems all work in its favour, but it doesn’t quite put all these things together in a worthwhile way.

Fighting hordes of monsters, saving allies, and eventually confronting the Demon Queen herself: all of this and more awaits in Spirit Mancer. With a charming art style and cool mechanic of sealing away demons, you would think the game would be a winner. However, its flaws hold the game back from being anything special.