"Time-clock combat that clicks, with no runway past the credits"
About
Shards of Order is a dark-fantasy RPG built around card combat, from Fardust, the studio behind Tainted Grail. You lead a party of three survivors through a world whose underlying Laws have shattered, restoring those rules one by one and living with what each restoration changes. Combat swaps the usual energy pool for a shared time cost: every card you play advances a clock, and much of the tactics comes from shortening your own time while stretching the enemy's countdown. Outside fights you build the party through a skill tree with free respec, equipment and armour choices, and a single shared deck across all three characters. The campaign runs as a linear story rather than a roguelike, with a true ending gated behind how you use the Law and Rule mechanic, and there is no New Game+.
Verdict
Shards of Order gets the important thing right: sharing a time clock across the whole party turns every card into a timing decision, and it makes the combat feel unlike the deckbuilders it borrows from. The dark art and the soundtrack sell the world, and the story, translation wobbles aside, has ideas worth following. What holds it back is the shape around the fights, enemy scaling that leaves you behind, no reason to replay once the credits roll, and small omissions like deck presets and a proper respec reset that grate the longer you play. Take it as a strong one-and-done at a fair price, and know the second half tests your patience more than your tactics.
You'll like it if …
- +you want a card RPG with a mechanical twist rather than another energy-and-block loop
- +a strong one-run story matters more to you than endless replay
- +grim fantasy with eldritch ideas and heavy atmosphere is your register
You'll dislike it if …
- −difficulty spikes that feel like the numbers, not your play, sour a run for you
- −you expect New Game+ and deck presets as a baseline in a deckbuilder
- −uneven translation and edgy-meets-bleak tonal whiplash pull you out
Breakdown
- +The time-cost turn system is the real hook: instead of spending energy, every card pushes a shared clock, and manipulating your own cost against enemy countdowns gives fights a rhythm most deckbuilders don't have
- +Deck variety and the freedom to reshape a build keep the moment-to-moment combat lively for players who like tinkering
- −Enemy scaling outpaces your upgrades, and several players describe the second zone onward as a grind where you can't meaningfully catch up
- −Die and you earn nothing from enemies you'd already beaten, so a bad run compounds rather than teaches
- −Late encounters lean on RNG enough that losses feel dealt rather than earned
- +Card combinations, skill specialisations, and equipment synergies give genuine room to experiment with different party setups
- +Free respec means you can rebuild without starting over
- −The campaign is short and there's no New Game+, so once you clear it there's little pull to try alternative builds
- −You can't save deck presets, which turns build-swapping into busywork
- −A finished save parks you at the final boss fight; replaying to see other builds or story branches means a fresh file and the tutorial again
- +The grim setting leans on eldritch ideas that feel fresh, and the dialogue reaches for a Disco Elysium register that many players enjoyed
- +Restoring the shattered Laws ties story choices to consequences you carry forward
- −Translation is uneven, with some English lines reading as unclear or broken
- −Jokey, edgy dialogue clashes with the otherwise bleak tone
- −Moral choices can feel like set dressing rather than decisions with weight
- +The dark gothic art direction draws near-universal praise
- +The soundtrack lands hard and carries the mood in combat
- −Card tooltips often fail to display correctly, which matters in a game that lives on reading card effects
- −Graphical glitches on widescreen and stutter on Steam Deck are reported repeatedly
- +The developers push patches and respond to reported problems, which has softened some early frustration
- −Respec forces you to unwind skills from the top down with no reset button, wasting time
- −The absence of deck presets is a real omission for a card game
- −Various bugs block progression, and the final-boss save lock compounds the replay problem
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