Shadow Era vs Faeria
When comparing Shadow Era vs Faeria, the Slant community recommends Faeria for most people. In the question“What are the best digital Collectible Card Games on PC?” Faeria is ranked 6th while Shadow Era is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Faeria is:
Insane amount of PvE. There are games vs AI opponents, puzzles, a solo arena mode... and all of them provide gold or straight up packs as rewards.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Good deck balance
Many TCGs often have unbalanced decks where one specific deck can trump most others, with devs being slow to correct this. Shadow Era does not have this issue as the devs spend a great amount of time making sure all the deck combinations have good balance and even have a player run team for testing before new releases.
Pro Unique Sacrifice Mana system
Shadow era tests its players by having them decide which cards to sacrifice in order to gain resources (mana) one time at the start of each turn. No easy buildup of resources (mana) here. You want to make plays, you have to plan it out strategically.
Pro Over 600 cards (approx 250 legal per hero)
The card pool has grown to a very decent size, spread across Neutral, two factions (Human/Shadow) and seven classes (Warrior, Mage, Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Wulven and Elemental). Each of the 32 heroes belongs to a faction/class combination, where they can use Neutral cards and cards from the faction or class. This gives each hero access to approximately 250 cards, which allows for great variety of decks.
Pro Free-to-play done well
The game is free to play but all cards in the game can be earned with free play, there is no need to purchase cards if one does not want to. Though it can speed up being able to build a better desk.
Pro Amazing artwork
The card artwork is of a very high standard and all cards are available in a full-art foil version too.
Pro One account usable across Android/iOS/PC/Mac
Whatever platform you register on, you can grow and access your collection and decks on any of the platforms, so you can use whichever you prefer at the time.
Pro Truly free to play if you want
The in-game currency rewards for playing are very generous and card prices in that currency are low.
Pro No rotation of sets (all cards still legal)
In all modes, all your cards are legal. No cards are rotated out of Standard play and the developer has said they have no intention to bring in rotation ever.
Pro Very limited RNG
Aside from a handful of cards from the original set that had "at random" on them, the developers have gone out of their way to bring more control into the hands of players. Effects will specify they damage "the ally with the lowest health", for example, and on a tie there is a Standard Resolution Order (the ally closer to the hero takes priority), so always know which one will be affected. Sometimes on other games you might think the RNG is skewed/faked, but that can't happen in Shadow Era. This means the main element of randomness and luck is the shuffle of the deck, which is how a card game should be.
Pro New free Single-player Campaign mode being updated regularly
There are already 120 missions to play through with dialogue, telling the story from the very beginning, for 10 Human heroes and 2 Shadow heroes (at the time of writing). Over time, more dialogue is being added to other missions for the remaining 6 Human heroes and 14 Shadow heroes, and then more maps with more missions will be added in future. The campaign mode is completely free and gives generous rewards for playing.
Pro Vibrant Tournament scene with prizes
A variety of player and developer organized tournaments, with prizes rewarded by devs, in both competitive and casual formats provides opportunities for players of all skill levels. It all culminates in the annual World Championship, a brilliant display of skill and deck building.
Pro Devs listen and interact with community
Main developer, Gondorian, is often commenting on questions in the Official forums as well as interacting with our player community on the Telegram messenger app.
Pro PvE Content
Insane amount of PvE. There are games vs AI opponents, puzzles, a solo arena mode... and all of them provide gold or straight up packs as rewards.
Pro Unique gameplay
There are many unique mechanics in Faeria. If you don't know about them, look them up on YouTube. If anything should convince you to try this game, it's this.
Pro Easy to learn - hard to master
This is #1 requirement for successful competitive game and Faeria did this part very well. PvE content will help you understand how the game works and then it will be up to you have far you can get. You'll often have to think forward while facing multiple good options during your turn and RNG will not win you any games.
Pro Almost no RNG
RNG in Faeria is heavily reduced. It's still there like in every CCG but it won't win you any games.
For example there are no cards that deal from 5 to 8 damage.
Pro Beautiful art
Not only the cards but the Menu, HUD and board background are simply gorgeous.
Pro Very good balance
Of course, there are cards that are bad no matter how used, but most of them are in very good spot right now. There are cards that can be used in almost every deck, and there are cards that can be used only in specialized decks, but that doesn't mean that these cards are bad. Also, Legendary cards are not better than cards of lower rarity. Same goes for epic and rare. Legendary cards are often simply unique in what they do.
Pro Relatively fast progression
Compared to most other ccgs, Faeria allows you to build your collection significantly faster than most other card games. Recently after Faeria's official release the dev's improved the rate at which you gain cards as well.
Pro Available in 12 languages
English
French
German
Spanish
Portuguese
Russian
Portuguese-Brazil
Italian
Czech
Japanese
Korean
Traditional Chinese
Pro Creative deckbuilding
There are no classes or factions. It's not that simple but you can basically build your deck from any card you own.
Pro Frequent updates
Even after release, the game receives balance changes and new content quite often.
Pro Amazing community
The community in Faeria is one of the best there is. The reason for that is probably official Discord server, Hub and amazing devs.
Pro Multiplatform
Available on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Android, iOS and possibly more to come. It has announced that it is coming to consoles as well, Switch included.
Pro Has it's own deck sharing website
The devs made a website called The Hub where you can share your deck and guides.
Pro e-Sports
Every month there is an official tournament with 3000$ prize.
Pro Great dev team
The dev team has listened to feedback so often and looks to improve the game constantly.
Cons
Con Poor design
The graphics often seem like they are a less priority over other aspects of the game, the UI often falls into this problem too, which can make for a frustrating experience in that it can be difficult to know how to do certain tasks due to a poor layout and graphics.
Con Mechanic of "storing mana" between turns leads to too burst-y gameplay
Con Starting hand size is very small
Games can sometimes be decided almost entirely by starting hand where you only get 3 cards as games can be over very quickly and you will see very few cards.
Con Can be addictive.
This game has so many different archetypes of decks, that a creative deck builder will lose themselves in the possibilities.
Con Heavily dependent on RNG
Con Static environments
The game features beautiful worlds but there is next to no animations bringing them to life.