Impressions after beating Rook's Story for the First Time

[LETSCHAT]

I beat Rook's Story for the first time today.  As a note, beaten Sal's campaign at the highest prestige.  

1. "Wow, Rook's decks work completely differently than Sal's."

It's great that the game is willing to do completely different mechanics, synergies, etc. with a new character.  Rook really does feel different from Sal from the ground up.  I'm surprised how little of what I learned in the Sal campaign transitioned to this new character though.  I can imagine a brand new player feeling a little overwhelmed if they had to grapple with both characters from the start of the game.   I wonder if Rook's story will be locked at first--which I'd recommend, esp. since his storyline deals with political intrigue of fractions you can be introduced to with Sal's campaign.   

2.  "This coin flip thing is weird.  But okay, I see the potential.  I'll eventually wrap my head around it."

I eventually found a coin that would land heads 90% of the time, and so I removed all the cards that had anything to do with snails.  My negotiation deck was really straightforward from there.  I don't plan on keeping to that strat--but here's what I learned from that whole process:  The synergies don't really exist on just the red/green cards like how they do with Sal.  With Sal, if you stuck to green/red, you can have cards really support each other in a very grand way.  But with Rook, gambling *is the synergy*, ie, flipping the coin and having something happen as a result.    

On the flip side, I feel like most opponents during negotiation ever really did 4 damage per turn even all the way to the final day.  It felt like they were holding back--but that could just be the difficulty lag coming from Sal's prestige runs.  Either way, that was appreciated as I wrapped my head around the process.

3.  "These days are long..."

I felt like the days kept going on.  I feel like each day was noticeably longer than Sal's.  Also, the boss battles in my playthrough were all with humanoid characters (The Random Cultist Assassin, Spark Baron #2, Main Spark Baron--then finally the Bog Boss).  Because of that, the days sorta blended with each other.  I was surprised I didn't run into the Flead Queen in my play-through, so that sort of variety is great.  Is there a good/evil side though?  Because I really sympathized with the Rise whereas I felt that both the Admirality/Spree had a reasonable amount of grey to both of them.  Guess I'll have to playthrough the Baron route to find out.

 

Random:

Sal's campaign is like full breakfast.  You finish it and are energized to try new stuff.

Rook's campaign is like a protien/carb rich dinner.  You finish it and you're ready to take a nap.