I don't really know what I was thinking. I'm no card battler pro, and even though I've played Pokémon pretty much my whole life, the only similarity with Serial World is the cute magical creatures. I think it was the slight ego boost given to me by the developers' shocked reaction when I hovered over the hard mode that made me lock it in, but either way, I was soon thrown into the depths of a cute but testing dungeon for my demo time with Serial World.
If you're not aware, Serial World is part card-battler, part dungeon-explorer, in which you play as a young hero setting out to discover the mystery of the dungeons that popped up in your home town. You're not alone in this endeavour, and are joined by three Anima, creatures that have their own special abilities and evolutions.
That's right, if you saw magical creatures and thought of Pokémon, you thought wrong, as we're taking more of a Digimon influence up in here with your Anima getting power boosts just for a singular fight through evolution. You'll build your way up to these evolutions by using cards in the game's battle system. If you've played a card battler before, you'll know what you're in for, and even if you haven't Serial World is brilliantly simple to understand, and gives you explanations of every key word so that onboarding new players is a breeze.
Effects are simple, and you can build winning strategies rather easily with the combinations available to you. The porcupine-looking Anima is your main damage dealer, while the blue shell is a tank, and the bird acts as more of a support. I ended up focusing mostly on the bird, as his ability meant each time you used certain cards you could grow your damage each round. It probably wasn't the best tactic, as I couldn't beat the boss at the end, but that's probably for the best. You need synergy between your three Anima here, and if I'd just have been able to rely on one for everything, there wouldn't really be much of a point in the other two being there.
The loop of Serial World largely consists of you dropping into a dungeon and following one of a few paths laid out before you. A red arrow pointing down a path means there's a fight ahead. A blue arrow means there's some loot to grab, and a yellow arrow indicates progression. It's very simple in terms of layout and design. There are additional mini boss fights and encounters to level up, places to heal, and items to grab that can boost your Anima's power, but the complexity remains low to allow you to focus on the battles ahead. Considering we only got two floors of a dungeon before facing the boss fight, it's difficult to say whether we'll see additional levels of complexity later on, but for anyone hoping for more of a dungeon-delving experience, it seems like Serial World is much more focused on card battling.
You can't really call Serial World a creature collector either. The creatures that you do get are cute and have a lot of cool abilities, but if you're expecting a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon experience where you grab more friends along the way, again you should shift your expectations slightly. This is a card battler with creatures and dungeons, not a creature collector with cards. It would have been difficult to focus on giving each Anima a unique move set and feel if there were loads of them you could grab and add to a party.
Serial World is not my typical game. I'm usually not one for card battlers, and while I'll still pick up the odd Pokémon title, I usually don't have games with cute critters on my radar either. But, I did find my time with Serial World to be a brilliant dose of fun. Combat is quick and doesn't require too much tactical thinking if you want to feel strong, but there's still a level of challenge especially on hard. The designs are cute and I am at least slightly intrigued to see what the mystery at the centre of the story is.
