Phrasemaker

Reviewed on PC

Roguelike Deckbuilders are a dime a dozen right now. Pressing the tag on Steam brings me to a page with 1119 matches. So why did South Korean developer I M GAME take the risk of betting on such an overcrowded genre with their first PC game?

Likely because Master of Piece is genuinely unique. It is, at its core, a Roguelike Deckbuilder, but it is wrapped with enough novelty to give players a fresh experience. Here is how the first PC game from an experienced mobile game developer succeeds where a lot of others fail.

What Is Master Of Piece, Exactly?

According to Steam tags, it is a:

• Roguelike Deckbuilder
• Auto Battler
• Turn-Based Strategy

If I had to describe it via comparison, I would call it a mix between Darkest Dungeon and Into the Breach. Describing it as an Auto Battler feels wrong because you are making decisions every turn, and if you don’t, you won’t succeed.

The comparisons to Darkest Dungeon are the most obvious. Master of Piece kicks off in a sort of town area called “Departure Ground”. This is where you prepare for your Journey. In the Hall of Fame, you can check your achievements and, in a lovely touch, they manifest as actual objects inside the building.

On the opposite side of the Grounds, you’ll find the Archive. Here’s where you can learn more about Master of Piece’s lore and how the Black Fog took over the world. Additionally, you can evaluate your previous journeys and check your overall stats.

The left side of the Grounds hides the Garrison, the game’s main form of meta-progression. You can construct four buildings out of the five possible ones here. Your options are:

• Barracks: The piece your receive as reward after battles will be upgraded for 1/2/3 encounters.
• Command Center: Obtain the Pioneer’s Compass relic, which can be used 1/2 times during the journey.
• Warehouse: Obtain +1/2 additional item slots. Obtain 1 random item upon entering a different region when fully upgraded.
• Windmill: Obtain 2/4/6/8/ additional dice at the start of the journey.
• Workshop: Your will recover your flag durability by +3/4/5/6 upon defeating the boss.

All buildings can be constructed and upgraded using the same currency, Resources, which you get at the end of the journey. The farther you go, the more Resources you get.

With all those explanations out of the way (we’ll explain the Garrison system bonuses later), let’s get into a journey and brave the black fog.

The Journey

You start your first journey as Sigmund, the knight. Master of Piece kicks you off with a tutorial battle, which brings us to the Into the Breach comparisons.

This is an Auto-Battler in the most general sense. All pieces do the same actions, with very few exceptions: they attack what is directly in front of them.

Similar to a classic Auto-Battler, they have differing stats and passives. But unlike most games in the genre, the battles don’t play out automatically after initial positioning. You get to place new pieces or move the ones already placed every turn. Additionally, you also get Relics, powerful passives for your character, and a main ability that can turn the tide of a battle.

Your objective is the same in every single battle: destroy the enemy’s flag before they destroy yours. In boss fights, which take place at the end of each region, the enemy flag is the boss. Losing your flag means that your journey comes to an end, and you need to start from the beginning.

You’ll also lose if you run out of pieces, aka Mercenaries, before you destroy the enemy. After winning a battle, you’ll get to choose your next destination, and there are a ton of options:

• Bookstore: Obtain items.
• Bootcamp: Randomly change a mercenary’s base stats and grants and Upgrade or Rumor.
• Boss Battle: Obligatory challenge at the end of each region. Defeating them rewards you with an upgrade to a Trait of one Mercenary.
• Card Event: Random events which allow you to trade Flag durability for higher rewards, or recover Flag Durability for no rewards.
• Elite Battle: Tougher fight which reward you with a Relic.
• Enemy Battle: Normal encounters which reward you with one Mercenary.
• Gallows: Execute a Mercenary to pass their Trait to another.
• Relic Shop: Choose one out of two Relics.
• Shaman’s Hut: Upgrade a Mercenary’s stats out of two options.
• Trait Shop: Choose one trait from two options.

More options show up in later regions, but I’m not going to spoil the surprises. Your strategy is as important in the actual battles as it is in planning your journey. Making the wrong choices will often lead to impossible battles, no matter how well you play in the battle itself.

Like any good roguelike, Master Of Piece excels in its variety. There are 28 Mercenaries to find for each Commander. For now, you unlock Livius after playing with Sigmund. They have very different playstyles and Mercenary pools to choose from.

There are four regions with 15 enemy types per region, so a total of 60 enemy units to find. On top of all this, there 32 relics, 9 items, and 22 card events. If that isn’t enough variety for you, the possibilities become nearly endless when you take into account the possible trait combinations alongside the Rumor and Upgrade systems.

The Mercenaries

Your units in Master of Piece are your Mercenaries. They all have three main stats:

• Attack Power: How much damage they deal.
• Health: How much damage they can take.
• Speed: Faster units attack before slower ones. If two units with the same speed clash, a dice is rolled to decide who attacks first.

These base stats can be upgraded twice, in any combination. You can invest in two Attack Power upgrades, or a mix between Health and Speed, for example. After two upgrades, a Mercenary’s stats can only be changed by gambling in the Bootcamp.

Furthermore, Mercenaries can have up to two Traits and one Rumor. Traits are powerful passives and are your most important system to keep in mind. Rumors are weaker passives that can nonetheless improve a Mercenary.

While there is a lot of randomness in the kind of composition you end up with on a journey, you have some control. As you progress with each Commander, you’ll be able to use the Guild at the Departure Grounds to change the pair of Mercenaries you start with, your starting Relic, and your Ability.

In most scenarios, your strongest Mercenaries at the end of a journey will be the two you choose in your Guild, or at least they’ll be based on the Traits those initial Mercenaries brought.

But the key in Master of Piece is striking a balance between a bloated deck with a ton of weak Mercenaries and one that has a few powerful units but can be whittled down, especially in boss fights.

Your most successful runs will be the ones in which you manage to create powerful Mercenaries with strong Trait synergies that are improved by both your Relics and Abilities. You’ll likely make great use of Shaman Huts, Trait Shops, and the occasional execution at the Gallows.

Taking down the final boss at the fourth region ends a Journey, but that is where the real game begins.

Replayability And Issues

Master of Piece is an enthralling experience. You’ll be spamming journey after journey and, once you bump the battle speed to 3x (which I recommend you do as soon as you feel comfortable), you’ll be in a trance just experimenting with different combinations.

Taking down the final boss for the first time will unlock Ordeals with the Commander who cleared the journey. These are extra difficulty modifiers that improve how many Resources and how much XP you get at the end of a journey. There are seven Ordeals in total, and, so you can have an idea, here are the first three:

• Enemy pieces are upgraded.
• Enemy flag durability and boss HP are increased.
• The number of pieces in a battle is increased.

These stack, so starting Journeys on higher Ordeals raises difficulty considerably. This is where the real challenge and replayability of Master Of Piece comes out, but also when the problems creep in.
The biggest issue I had with Master of Piece comes down to balancing. First of all, clearing a Journey with Sigmund is considerably easier than with Livius. This is mostly due to Sigmund being able to create extremely tank compositions, which allow you to whittle down opponents.

Livius, on the other hand, benefits from aggressive compositions that excel at demolishing enemies quickly. While this can be fun and give you journeys in which you blast through your opposition, it can also lead you to frustrating defeats in which you run out of units.

This is especially frustrating because you lose when you run out of Mercenaries, but your enemies don’t. So you can run into a situation, one which happened to me a few times, in which you make the boss run out of pieces to play, but they destroy the couple of units you have left before you can defeat them.

I enjoy challenges, so the problem I have with the balancing isn’t that it makes the game too hard, but that it doesn’t play into Master of Pieces’ strength. This game excels when you are swimming in options and basting in its variety.

A successful run with Livius, at least in my case, is one in which I am engaging with as few choices as possible and am instead focusing on turning my two starting Mercenaries into absolute raid bosses.

With all that being said, the issues I have with Master Of Pieces are not only minor but easily fixed. The more people play the game and the more feedback I receive, the faster they’ll nail the balancing, especially in higher Ordeals.

In my view, the developers have nailed the hardest part already: crafting an addictive loop that didn’t get old for me, even after 12h in. They’re promising a third Commander named Serila in the full version, which will bring even more variety to an already sprawling experience.
As it stands, Master of Piece is a bargain at its 15$ asking price, and will only get better from here on out.

Review code provided for free by the developer.