Ed has an interest in streaming, people and communities, and giving a voice to marginalised people.
Baldur's Gate 3, Street Fighter and Lost Ark developers discuss.Read our editorial policyThe grasslands lay out before me, the greens and blues seemingly luminous compared to the polluted, labyrinthine city of Midgar. The map screen is a tantalising glimpse of how sprawling this particular region is and icons at the top of the screen tempt me towards the main quest. But all I can think about is playing more cards.
Which brings us to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Queen's Blood is this game's iteration: not just a fun diversion, but a key example of Square Enix stuffing the game with content to keep players occupied away from the main quest. Perhaps even too much.So how does it work? Players curate a deck of 15 cards all based on the monsters fought throughout the game. These cards have a power number, a number of pawns, and a Tetris-style shape.
Some cards have abilities too, like boosting the power of cards within certain squares, so placement must be carefully considered to make the most of your deck as cards are randomly shuffled into your hand.It all seems deceptively simple and initially I breezed through matches. Laying down cards to quickly spread pawns and cover the grid worked nicely at first. The thing is, if opponents lay cards to overlap their pawns with yours, they steal that place on the grid and you lose your advantage.
Queen's Blood is also where I found plenty of humour. I played against a man who wouldn't stop crying ; a woman who barricaded herself behind cardboard boxes; and, bizarrely, a ventriloquist child who spoke like she smoked five packets of cigarettes a day. Yes, there may be an evil corporation sucking the very life out of the planet and a crazed war hero on the loose, but there's always time to pause in the street and play a quick card game with a random kid.