Genkai: Primal Awakening is a roguelike deck builder and character collector where you must battle against enemies with Genkai and cards. Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the demo, and more.
Everything We Know About Genkai: Primal Awakening
Genkai: Primal Awakening Plot
Genkai: Primal Awakening is set in a mystical world where Genkai of various forms and appearances are at war for dominance. However, the real deal starts when the Primal Genkai awakens. Players must train their Genkais, collect and upgrade the right cards, and obtain powerful artifacts in order to face the challenges ahead.
Genkai: Primal Awakening Gameplay
Genkai: Primal Awakening mixed an interesting combination of hex-based grid combat and roguelike deck builder. Not only are there cards to collect and upgrade, but also Genkais to train and evolve. Synergies can be created using a combination of these Genkai and cards, as well as artifacts that grant passive effects on your side.
The game can only be played in single player for the most part, but there is also a PvP mode.
Genkai: Primal Awakening Release Date
Genkai: Primal Awakening will be released on PC within 2024. No specific release date or time has been announced, but there is a playable demo available on the game's Steam page for interested players to try out.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
 Steam |
TBA |
 Epic |
TBA |
Genkai: Primal Awakening Review (Demo)
A Sleeper, Not Yet A Hit
As a big fan of card-based roguelikes, I’m always on the lookout for new deck builders to grace the market. I’ve personally sunk more than an unhealthy number of hours playing Theseus Protocol and Chrono Ark during just these past few weeks, and I’ve recently picked up Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend as well.
However, what connects these games is that the combat is mostly linear. Fights simply involve selecting the right cards at the right time. The only real complications come from enemy patterns and the RNG that come from collecting the cards.
On the other hand, Genkai: Primal Awakening adds another layer to the standard formula. As a roguelike that uses a hex-based combat environment not dissimilar to Wild Arms XF (old title to compare it to, I know), you must also consider your position on the map in its three (horizontal and two diagonal) directions. This gives the game an entirely new layer of depth that few can come close in providing.
Intriguing Mix Of Genres
The concept of a tactical character collector deck builder roguelike is enough to turn many heads; that much is certain. After all, linear deck builder roguelikes are now so common that you won’t find any difficulty finding one the moment you take a single step in Steam’s catalog. However, it is by no means a unique concept.
Regardless, Genkai: Primal Awakening does have its charms. For example, many of the Genkais that you fight have unassuming qualities that can take you by surprise if you’re not careful. And since there’s no way to view your opponent’s data, progress requires old-fashioned familiarization and memorization.
Of course, this also applies to your own Genkai, and pairing two or more may reveal surprising synergies with each other and your deck.
Good Deck Variety
This is a great aspect present in many other deck builders that impart it with striking amounts of replayability. In Genkai: Primal Awakening, the deck archetypes include ones that scale with your discard pile, ones that involve trying to stack as many of the same types of cards as possible, and one that forces you to play with only one Genkai.
For a character collector roguelike, the last deck is especially great because it forces you to play the game in a way that completely ignores almost half of its mechanics. In other words, it becomes just a deck builder.
Unfortunately, the variety of decks is simply not that impressive, considering the much larger variety of Genkais you can use. On top of that, it’s incredibly difficult to collect extra cards that do synergize with the archetype you started with, if they even exist.
Lacks A Good Audio
Once you start your first battle in Genkai: Primal Awakening, then it’s safe to say that you’ve already heard almost everything — literally. The game has a striking lack of any kind of audio besides a few muffled sound effects and a handful of looping background tracks. It has no voice work done on the monsters, no decent repertoire of sound effects for immersion, and no background track that doesn’t fade into obscurity after 10 seconds into the fight.
No Onboarding
Admittedly, not all roguelikes need an onboarding process to ease players into the game. The controls are sometimes so intuitive that it’s practically a waste of time to make a mandatory tutorial stage.
But they should still be there. Always. I mean, what if someone completely foreign to the concept of roguelikes were to try the game? Should everybody be trusted to know the difference between doing a new run due to a wipeout and posting on Reddit complaining about their game "not saving and throwing me at the start"?
Genkai: Primal Awakening does not have one, despite its use of relatively unfamiliar mechanics and lack of certain quality-of-life features, and it can take a complete newbie by surprise. That is unless they’re willing to start from the ground up and explore the controls and features by themselves.
It doesn’t even explain when and how your characters evolve. Is it through experience? Number of fights? Artfiacts?
Lackluster Gameplay Feedback
One thing that makes deck builder roguelikes so fun to play is the familiarization of the pattern and adaptation to the RNG that comes with it. However, that requires being able to recognize what your opponents are up to. Some titles, such as Theseus Protocol, do this by telegraphing the opponent’s moves one turn in advance, while games like Chrono Ark make players familiarize themselves with the enemy patterns through flashy skills and repeat fights.
There’s no such thing as that in Genkai: Primal Awakening. Instead, enemies simply gain buffs out of nowhere and attack you with zero context. What ends up happening is that you’ll proceed with fights on your tippy toes, hoping that the enemy doesn’t do something completely absurd, like deal absurd amounts of damage out of nowhere.
Which they will.
Genkai: Primal Awakening has the potential to become a great game. However, as of the moment, potential is all it has. It lacks way too many things to be anything but a whimsical purchase for the occasional timesink. But there is no doubt that it can become an excellent game worthy of its place in the genre with enough care and attention.
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Genkai: Primal Awakening Product Information
 |
|
| Title | GENKAI: PRIMAL AWAKENING |
|---|---|
| Release Date | 2024 |
| Developer | Mega Game Studios |
| Publisher | Mega Game Studios |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Roguelike, Cards, Strategy |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | TBA |
| Official Website | Genkai: Primal Awakening Website |
