Please read
First off, ignore the lower review score. If you’re into card/rpgs, this game is an absolute hidden gem. I have bought or played most of the card games on the App Store. I subscribed to Netflix to try this and some other games out. I gotta say, after many hours of Arcanium, I am just having a fantastic time. Awesome mechanics, items, cards, abilities, and heroes, this game has it all. I wish there was a store on here because i would support this dev. I hope you try it out! It’s so worth it!
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Wonderful (except bugs and length)
What a charming, engaging, and satisfying game! A rouge-like deck builder with card combat reminiscent of Hearthstone, but PvE (which I prefer). I’d love to see more modes or campaigns as this is a good deal of fun! Needs some non-game-breaking bugs fixed: one of the Rhino’s enchantments that lets you take damage instead of spending AP doesn’t seem to work. Also, transmuting artifacts doesn’t consume the old artifact. The Arena will sometimes show the wrong wound icon when choosing a perk that has a wound as the cost. In Arena, sometimes selecting the quartermaster will bug out and send you to the loot-box screen and/or essence upgrade screen before returning you to a different shop screen. Etc.
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Decent
Good production values, decent gameplay (nothing groundbreaking, but it does combine mechanics from a couple different game types, making it more unique). However, it's horrible at saving game state. First game (the tutorial run), I left the game just before the boss battle, and when I returned, game restarted and all run progress was gone (not even a "Continue" option). Second game (normal run), I was almost done with an elite battle when I had to leave the game. When I returned, game restarted - this time there was a Continue option, but the elite battle was reset (I was back at the tile before the elite battle). Really not into having to repeat gameplay over and over.
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Battery Killer
Killed 30% of my battery in an hour; its a card game! Shouldn't be a cpu draining app by any stretch. Lazy coding.
Very underrated
Excellent strategic and tactical card game. As often seems to be the case here in the App Store, great games with significant depth get poor reviews because they aren’t a F2P match-3 or tower defense. If you enjoy thoughtful games like Slay the Spire, Monster Train or Wildfrost, you’ll likely have a great time with Arcanium.
No crashing issues as of April 2025 on an iPad Mini (7th gen).
No crashing issues as of April 2025 on an iPad Mini (7th gen).
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Amazing depth
Unique approach to these card type games. Unlike anything I have ever played. Very difficult, especially in the beginning. Very refreshing and interesting gameplay with zero micro transactions. Highly recommended and I’ve played just about every game of this type! Play it, stick with it, and you will love this.
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Fun Overall
One of the better card game available on iOS. Significantly better than any f2p garbage. This is a real game in which strategy and tactics matter not your wallet or time. Only criticism is at the highest difficulty it seems to me only a small amount of the characters and strategies are viable, but overall it’s still fun to try different characters and builds.
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Great Game
I think this game is great. I think the balance is good and I was able to beat it on normal in my second run. Haven’t experienced any crashes referred to in other reviews. I love Slay the Spire and this game adds somewhat more complexity with improved graphics and story. You now have three heroes instead of one to play and upgrade, the map is more open, and you have more selections of artifacts to apply to your heroes. Recommend for all Slay the Spire fans.
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Cant even play
Game crashes immediately, cant even get past the profile selection screen
A fun deck builder
I like the combination of a hex based map and deck building.
Great roguelike games
Form a team of three heroes, assemble your decks and power up as much as you can before facing the boss. Very formulaic gameplay, but enough content to keep you coming back for a while
Pros:
-16 different characters to unlock, each with unique cards and abilities. Additionally, for each hero, you can use one of three Heirloom artifacts that let you lean into a different playstyle/archetype for that run (e.g. tanking hits vs dealing backlash damage, summoning minions vs. applying burn to enemies)
-Progressive unlocking system where you earn experience with each separate hero to unlock more cards for them in future runs, which keeps you coming back for more
-Unlockable difficulty levels - you might struggle on the lower levels as you’re still learning the game, but now I can’t even imagine playing on less than level 4
Cons:
-My only complaint about gameplay is that it is comparatively easier than other roguelikes. In Slay the Spire for example, you might win 1 out of 5 games in normal mode, 1 out of 10 once you get to the higher challenge level. But even at maximum difficulty in this game, I still win more than half the time. Part of this stems from the “open map” design where you can go back to a capital and heal whenever you want (though the price does increase every time). But the deckbuilding aspect is also very forgiving - you can edit your deck between battles, and it has to have between 9 and 14 cards. So unlike other games, there’s no “bad” choices, no times when you’re forced to dilute your deck. If anything, you get to replace your weak cards with stronger ones, and by the end of the game, you’re cycling through your entire deck every 2-3 turns.
-My only other primary issues have to do with the user interface. While this is a game, it’s abundantly clear that it was not originally designed for mobile. For example, when you’re scrolling through your cards, you can’t tap and drag; you have to put your finger on the scrolling icon and move that. When you’re upgrading your cards however, you can tap and drag, but holding down your finger on a card is how you expand it so you can read it more closely, so if you take more than a second to scroll down, you get interrupted by a card blowing up in your face. It would also greatly benefit from a way to sort cards or artifacts (e.g., by rarity) instead of only displaying them oldest to newest.
-Finally, the main reason I’m only giving 4 stars is because the game closes a lot. It’s not while I’m playing that’s the issue, but if I turn my iPad off, even for just a couple seconds, when I come back, the game is closed and I have to go back through the main menu. On the notes of both difficulty and game crashing, you cannot save your game in the middle of a battle. While this seems like a good idea, there’s very little RNG involved, so it’s not as though you could abuse saving in that way. What this does mean, is if you quit your game in the middle of a battle (whether intentionally or not), you go back to the map and you can choose not to go into that battle.
Overall, very good game, but probably better enjoyed on a computer.
Pros:
-16 different characters to unlock, each with unique cards and abilities. Additionally, for each hero, you can use one of three Heirloom artifacts that let you lean into a different playstyle/archetype for that run (e.g. tanking hits vs dealing backlash damage, summoning minions vs. applying burn to enemies)
-Progressive unlocking system where you earn experience with each separate hero to unlock more cards for them in future runs, which keeps you coming back for more
-Unlockable difficulty levels - you might struggle on the lower levels as you’re still learning the game, but now I can’t even imagine playing on less than level 4
Cons:
-My only complaint about gameplay is that it is comparatively easier than other roguelikes. In Slay the Spire for example, you might win 1 out of 5 games in normal mode, 1 out of 10 once you get to the higher challenge level. But even at maximum difficulty in this game, I still win more than half the time. Part of this stems from the “open map” design where you can go back to a capital and heal whenever you want (though the price does increase every time). But the deckbuilding aspect is also very forgiving - you can edit your deck between battles, and it has to have between 9 and 14 cards. So unlike other games, there’s no “bad” choices, no times when you’re forced to dilute your deck. If anything, you get to replace your weak cards with stronger ones, and by the end of the game, you’re cycling through your entire deck every 2-3 turns.
-My only other primary issues have to do with the user interface. While this is a game, it’s abundantly clear that it was not originally designed for mobile. For example, when you’re scrolling through your cards, you can’t tap and drag; you have to put your finger on the scrolling icon and move that. When you’re upgrading your cards however, you can tap and drag, but holding down your finger on a card is how you expand it so you can read it more closely, so if you take more than a second to scroll down, you get interrupted by a card blowing up in your face. It would also greatly benefit from a way to sort cards or artifacts (e.g., by rarity) instead of only displaying them oldest to newest.
-Finally, the main reason I’m only giving 4 stars is because the game closes a lot. It’s not while I’m playing that’s the issue, but if I turn my iPad off, even for just a couple seconds, when I come back, the game is closed and I have to go back through the main menu. On the notes of both difficulty and game crashing, you cannot save your game in the middle of a battle. While this seems like a good idea, there’s very little RNG involved, so it’s not as though you could abuse saving in that way. What this does mean, is if you quit your game in the middle of a battle (whether intentionally or not), you go back to the map and you can choose not to go into that battle.
Overall, very good game, but probably better enjoyed on a computer.
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The best of Netflix games
This game for having a mobile port is amazing one thing though is that at first it seems that it’s impossible but if you keep playing for long enough you will learn to love it
No longer works, not sure why it’s even in the App Store
For over 6 months the game crashes when choosing a Netflix profile to sign in when. As soon as I tap the profile the app just closes. As far as I can tell there is no way to bypass this problem and I’m actually shocked it hasn’t been fixed in all this time. I’ve reinstalled the game and tried on multiple iPhones running the latest versions of iOS.
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It’s fixed it works it beautifully crafted
Four times I have checked as to weather this game cost me money or not that’s how good it is
Really fun.
I love card collecting and the combat is really fun.
real play experience
Never had any crash issue on ipad pro m1 chip，very fun to play and with many different Character with different skill. Only wish for thi game is if there will be a infinite mode we can play for fun.
Please talk to Netflix we need more games like this
One are the best games? I’ve played in a long time. Good progression, good fights requires smarts. balanced beatable on every difficulty level. If you know what you’re doing, it’s great totally worth your time!
Reviews are right.
There’s a good game in there But the theme is so generic, UI is exceptionally clumsy, constant surprises that ruin a run simply because it didn’t tell you what would happen.
It’s fine? But I wouldn’t bother with it
It’s fine? But I wouldn’t bother with it
Impossible to beat
Enemy health starts at 87, get it down to KO and then next thing it’s back at 87 again, this happened for 2 cards in the same battle. Yeah no thanks,impossible to win….deleted
Broken
First tutorial mission doesn’t allow progression after selecting Ability reward, can’t even exit to menu (options grayed out).