Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden

 Switch
User Score
6.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 14 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 14
  3. Negative: 4 out of 14

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  1. Nintendopost24
    Mar 15, 2022
    9
    What a strange license that Voice of Cards… Releasing a second episode so quickly should have already given us a hint but we have to face the facts, Square Enix now has a UFO in its catalog, and that's great ! Allowing Yoko Taro to express his creative genius, and benefiting from the same talent for narration as the first opus, The Forsaken Maiden is a great success. If you liked the firstWhat a strange license that Voice of Cards… Releasing a second episode so quickly should have already given us a hint but we have to face the facts, Square Enix now has a UFO in its catalog, and that's great ! Allowing Yoko Taro to express his creative genius, and benefiting from the same talent for narration as the first opus, The Forsaken Maiden is a great success. If you liked the first proposal, you can continue your odyssey in this atypical fairy tale….

    Full review on my french blog and you can follow me on my Twitter @NintendoLegacy1    … Expand
  2. Awanka
    Jun 13, 2023
    6
    The third entry in the Voice of Cards series is the longest and most difficult by far. It's also the most narratively complex, as you explore the side-stories of 4 other maidens other than your own. If you've played a Yoko Taro game, then you know how these stories go.

    Perhaps because of these things, it's also often quite frustrating. Your party composition changes quite often,    The third entry in the Voice of Cards series is the longest and most difficult by far. It's also the most narratively complex, as you explore the side-stories of 4 other maidens other than your own. If you've played a Yoko Taro game, then you know how these stories go.

    Perhaps because of these things, it's also often quite frustrating. Your party composition changes quite often, sometimes only allowing you 2 or 3 party members. You have no control over your guest player companions, and you can't change their equipment. In addition to some tough enemies, this all makes for some harrowing encounters where you feel underpowered.

    I had fun enough with Forsaken Maiden, but am glad that this is the last one. The formula has been taken as far as it can go.    … Expand
  3. 2random
    Jun 24, 2022
    2
    The game is not what I've expected. It's boring! It was supposed to be fun to play, but there's no fun at all. Can you imagine walking around the map and being attacked by monsters at random? "Wild pokemon appears" type of attack every time you move with a 30% probability. You spend more time fighting same boring type of monsters getting nothing in return. Unbelievable! And the plot... itThe game is not what I've expected. It's boring! It was supposed to be fun to play, but there's no fun at all. Can you imagine walking around the map and being attacked by monsters at random? "Wild pokemon appears" type of attack every time you move with a 30% probability. You spend more time fighting same boring type of monsters getting nothing in return. Unbelievable! And the plot... it is just bad. MC has no memory and your companion is mute. These 2 facts can give you an idea of how little interaction there is at all.
    But that NIER DLCs sure are there. And minigames? Don't even get me started. Those are purely random, impossible to win.
    The game is really short and feels cheap. They didn't even hire a voice actor for girls, so every character speeks the same male voice.    … Expand
  4. JyeaJyea
    Feb 23, 2022
    10
    It's a regular turn based jrpg that is elevated with a great artstyle and that Yoko Taro direction, it's a must play for any rpg or Yoko Taro fan
  5. AkivaNugent
    Feb 27, 2022
    6
    While I quite like this game, I don't personally feel like I could give it any more than a 6 because I genuinely don't think most people would have that great of a time with it.

    TL;DR: I think its a pickup for the players who want a short, but emotionally resonant experience, while also having a tremendous amount of patience for watching the same 5 animations slowly play for the whole    While I quite like this game, I don't personally feel like I could give it any more than a 6 because I genuinely don't think most people would have that great of a time with it.

    TL;DR: I think its a pickup for the players who want a short, but emotionally resonant experience, while also having a tremendous amount of patience for watching the same 5 animations slowly play for the whole time.

    For those familiar, it is quite similar to 'Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars' in a lot of ways, and even improving on a few. That said, it has a lot of the same flaws as it predecessor.

    Positives:
    Even at a glance the artwork is beautiful, and deserving of praise in and of itself.

    The narrative is also strong, if not a bit slow. Without spoiling anything, the game does well to make short stories that are effective in making you care about the characters involved, while also serving the larger narrative of the game. Its not insanely complicated by any means, but it is quite strong for a 20-25 hour rpg.

    party members. You get more than the first game, as well as being able to field 4 of them at a time. No spoilers, but i think its a nice improvement over the last game.

    Negatives:

    The card mini game. Stay away. don't 100% this game because you will be forced to play this rng hellhole. Its not improved from the first game. if anything its worse. I wouldn't let this affect the score because I feel its unfair to make optional and minor content drag the rest of a solid experience, but if I did the revised score would be 4/10. I hate this mini game with a passion. nearly 1/4 of my play time came from getting rng screwed in the gambling hall.

    Combat gets extremely repetitive extremely quickly. In almost every fight, you will pick the same cards to play in the same order, with little deviation for healing and canceling debuffs. The number of fights in the game that make you have to think about your moves can be counted on one hand, and many players aren't going to want to stick around to get to them.

    Combat, Animations, Text, exploring, events, and everything in between moves at a snails pace. Many emotionally resonant scenes happen after the fatigue of a dungeon that's filled with mindless-to-fight enemies on a background that is 9/10 some variation on grey flooring. This problem may be alleviated by not grinding the game out in2-3 days like I did, but I cant say for sure. If they were to patch the game to have a 2-3x turbo button the score would be boosted by 1.5 to 2 points.    … Expand
  6. Alexu1001
    Jul 26, 2022
    6
    Es bueno como RPG, pero mecánicamente es tan simple que si has jugado bastante el género se vuelve aburrido en cuestión de horas. La historia es interesante y está bien elaborada pero no es una obra maestra en cuanto a narrativa.
  7. Rhizian
    Jul 26, 2022
    3
    The first Voice of Cards game was a charming and simple jrpg with a good, humble story with several twists. It knew what it wanted to be and it achieved that in a fun and interesting way. The Forsaken Maiden kind of suffers by comparison by trying to go a little bigger with it's plot and doesn't quite meet the expectations. The story turns out to be a bit too formulaic and relies on tooThe first Voice of Cards game was a charming and simple jrpg with a good, humble story with several twists. It knew what it wanted to be and it achieved that in a fun and interesting way. The Forsaken Maiden kind of suffers by comparison by trying to go a little bigger with it's plot and doesn't quite meet the expectations. The story turns out to be a bit too formulaic and relies on too many anime tropes, and the gameplay is padded out with frequent unimportant combat encounters.

    Firstly the narrator: they changed the narrator, and he's not as good. The charm and warmth of the first game's narrator practically made the game, but the new guy just doesn't have it. Nothing specific to say about him, he just doesn't feel right.

    The art for the characters in this game is inconsistent, either being too generic (your character) or too ridiculous (other main characters, townsfolk, etc.). In the first game the character designs were also pretty wacky sometimes, but it was being playful and silly on purpose. This game really lacks the same sense of humor.

    You sail to the north/South/East/West of your home to meet other maidens with supernatural abilities and their attendants, and solve a mystery or local problem. Every new island has one dungeon, one city, one maiden story, etc. You get pretty bored of this formula after the second one, and sometimes the plot twists really don't feel impactful because you always know you're just moving on to the next island after each chapter. The relationships between these maidens and their attendants also lean heavily into anime tropes and I find that boring.

    The combat encounters seem far less engaging than in the first game, with the enemies kind of feeling like they're only there to pad out the game time. The spells and abilities provided to the player don't feel comprehensive enough sometimes to deal with the enemies quickly, and it just becomes a total slog after a little while.

    My expectations were almost subverted one time when it turned out that one of the maidens was actually a boy, and I was thinking this game was actually starting to get interesting, that maybe being a maiden actually has nothing to do with your sex or gender, and whatever implications came along with that. No, it's soon revealed that this boy is actually a girl pretending to be a boy, a very overused trope found in lots of East Asian media. I wouldn't say that nobody could like this game, but there are so many disclaimers that I can't really recommend it. As a jrpg it's pretty mediocre on every front    … Expand
  8. Mokha
    Feb 20, 2023
    10
    A good follow up to a good formula. Focuses more on story by simplifying some parts of party management that people usually ignore anyway.

Awards & Rankings

66
#66 Best Switch Game of 2022
69
#69 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2022

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 18
  3. Negative: 0 out of 18
  1. Cubed3
    Aug 29, 2022
    90
    The bittersweet themes of Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden, with brilliantly worked plot twists, a flawless battle system, and a captivating story all make it a near-perfect game. Perhaps the only downside is that it is not an overly long one, but the hope is there will be more instalments to what is proving to be a thrilling RPG series.
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  2. Nintenduo
    May 29, 2022
    77
    Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden is a rather continuist game in regards to the original installment of the franchise. However, that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. At the end of the day, it is an independent role-playing adventure with very original ideas that make it worthwhile. Of course, it is not a marvel, but it is more than enough to have a good time.
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  3. RPG Site
    May 16, 2022
    70
    Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden does do enough to stand out on its own, mostly due to the narrative. If you weren’t impressed with the first faux tabletop experience, the minor combat changes won’t be enough to persuade you. Likely, due to the closeness to its antecedent, there aren’t enough improvements in this entry to really qualify it as being notably better than the first. Nonetheless, it is a complementary experience that fans of the first are likely to enjoy just as much.
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