Fantasy Realms is everything I wanted Red Rising to be – Review

David Norris

Oct 2

I reviewed Red Rising a while ago and although I enjoyed it, it felt bloated. Like there was a smaller, better game within it. Well, it turns out Fantasy Realms by Bruce Glasscois that game.

Like Red Rising, Fantasy Realms has you command a hand of seven cards, and on your turn, you can either draw a card from the face-up market or the face-down deck. Afterwards, you need to discard a card face-up to the market.

However, unlike Red Rising, there are no other mechanics.

Just get the best hand of cards you can, and score the most points.

While that doesn't sound too satisfying, the cards in Fantasy Realms are broken into 10 different suits. Each card has its own bonuses and drawbacks based on other cards in your hand. For example, the Dragon card has a base strength of 30 points, but if you don't have a Wizard card in your hand it's worth -10.

There's so much of this back-and-forth comboing, that deciding which cards to keep and which to give up has as much drama as a high-strung sorority party. If you invite Kurt, you need to invite his girlfriend Bianca. But then Serena won't go if she knows that Bianca will be there, and her dad is your dad's boss.

On account of this drama, figuring out who to invite to your party, or which cards should stay in your hand, becomes an ultra fascinating problem.