Nowhere Prophet

 PC
Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Edge Magazine
    Aug 15, 2019
    50
    Defeat in Nowhere Prophet can be creeping, as your resources drain away, or sudden, as you fall victim to an unexpected combination of cards. Either way, it feels like playing against an opponent who overturns the table when they win, leaving you to gather up the spilled cards. It'll be another couple of hours before you have a deck that feels unique, before you escape the mire of enemies and text events you've seen a dozen times. It's enough to make you a sore loser. [Issue#336, p.118]
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  1. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    Jul 19, 2019
    Nowhere Prophet’s ideas fill the game like a balloon, rising towards greatness – a balloon that gets punctured by lacklustre writing and wonky AI. It reaches for The Banner Saga‘s intimacy and Duelyst‘s intricacy, but winds up falling shy of both. Like most prophets, Nowhere is a false one.

User Reviews

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User Score
6.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 36 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 36
  3. Negative: 11 out of 36
  1. serialmind
    Aug 9, 2019
    10
    Other reviewer has an issue with ONE ability in a complicated strategy game, that's the only reason he's leaving a bad review. It's not gameOther reviewer has an issue with ONE ability in a complicated strategy game, that's the only reason he's leaving a bad review. It's not game breaking in any ways, you get robust units too. There are lots of ways of dealing with them.

    Moving along, this is a fantastic game, on par with Slay the Spire. It's wasteland style rogue like. You get a colony of 50-70 cards together over the course of a few hours. There are lots of variable card stats to keep it interesting, for example cards become wounded when killed. This reduces their cost and HP by 1, so you avoid the problem of knowing exactly the stats for every card. The abilities are varied and fun. There are tons of rare/exotic/ultra exotic cards everywhere.. I love the game system, it's extremely fun to play.

    Perfect game to play this summer if you like strategy deck building rogue like card games.    … Full Review »
  2. Mercent
    Jul 22, 2019
    5
    There are units with a Robust tag: everytime you kill them, they move backwards 1 space instead of being killed; and then there is a skillThere are units with a Robust tag: everytime you kill them, they move backwards 1 space instead of being killed; and then there is a skill called Taunt: you have no choice but to attack units with Taunt. Now imagine this: an emey with Robust units & Taunt skill. What do you think will happen? You deal a killing blow at this Robut+Taunt unit, killing your own unit (enemy units retaliates), and what do you achieve? Nothing, because that enemy unit is only pushed back; and next turn, it promptly moves itself back to the front. To make matters worse, enemy leaders will always Bolster this unit to give more attack power, so you have to sacrifice your own units to push it back by killing it (remember, since it has taunt, you can ONLY attack this unit!) and achieve nothing.

    Ok, so do you see the issue now? But no matter, i should be able to cheese the AI by using the same tactics right? Possibly, but you need to get lucky, REAL lucky to come across Robust units and to learn the Taunt-applying skills, and even so, you have to be lucky to draw this Robust units during your turn. You need luck luck luck but the enemy only need to get lucky once and you are in trouble.

    The dev needs to implement a new mechanism (how about ability to select 1 unit that will always be drawn) to reduce the element of luck: what use of careful construction deck but at the end of the day, luck is what wins out?

    Edit: I editted my rage review to be more fair, also btw, the art is gorgeous, simply amazing.
    Edit2: Nope. Nope. This game is still BS. Save yourself some frustration until the dev fix this pile of garbage.    … Full Review »
  3. The_Unrest_Cure
    Sep 23, 2020
    4
    Nowhere Prophet sounds like a great game on paper: roguelike card-battling strategy game in an interesting setting filled with tough choicesNowhere Prophet sounds like a great game on paper: roguelike card-battling strategy game in an interesting setting filled with tough choices ... but it falls so flat for so much promise. It attempts to channel some parts of games like Slay the Spire but badly misfires: like Slay the Spire you are saddled with cards that cost an increasing amount to remove from your deck. But unlike Slay the Spire, the amount of cards that you start your deck with is too large to be wieldy and you find the use of some cards so counter-productive that using them is suicide. Why? Because your actual combat cards - your followers - can only die twice in combat before their card is REMOVED from your deck. So you find that the AI opponent specializes in attacking your cards rather than your character ... which is a hideously bad mechanic as the only way to acquire new followers is to spend the SAME CURRENCY you need to hoard to remove leader cards. Want to buy that Legendary card with great stats and wonderful combat buffs? Well, don't play him unless you are certain he won't die. Yes, you can heal your cards, but that mechanic is so rarely encountered in rest camps compared to the number of battles you fight (we did say this was a roguelike, right? So pretty much there are battles and bad things happening everywhere ... even after you beat the boss at the end of each chapter) that you pretty much have an endless churn of combat followers, which dilutes any strategic deck-building you may want to do. The price of combat is so high, so affecting, that it overwhelms the permadeath mechanic and instead just leaves you frustrated at how whimsical and brittle the system is. And that is on the easy difficulty. I'll freely admit I didn't even bother on harder difficulties. I couldn't glean much fun on the easy one, and that after several "lives" and new game starts after dying.
    The gist here is to "level" up and unlock new perks that increase your character's chance of survival, while simultaneously opening up new starting decks ("convoys") and higher powered buffs/de-buffs. And that I can appreciate. But unlike Slay the Spire, where you can learn to beat the bosses with minor modifications to your deck and even starting cards have some use, you will find enemies (particularly bosses) have a depth of cards that you would drool over. Buffs which you cannot acquire are played by your enemies 3 or 4 times ... sometimes in 1 turn. After many hours playing I realized the reason the enemies go after your followers rather than generally attacking you is that there decks are so much better they would wipe the floor with you if they actually played like a human. That level of gimping is simply ridiculous. You aren't meant to win. You are meant to grind. Slay the Spire allows you to craft a deck that is focused. Nowhere Prophet throws random cards at you and then kills a good portion of what you choose under the guise of being a roguelike. In a roguelike you are meant to learn the way to win by struggle. In Nowhere Prophet you only learn to delete the game.    … Full Review »
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