Yomi - Complete First Edition Review

Yomi is a competitive card game that is inspired by 2D arcade fighting games such as Street Fighter or Guilty Gear.

As in its inspirational source material, two characters use their attacks, special moves, throws, blocks, and dodges to gain the upper hand and knock out their opponent before he does the same.

The title of the game, "Yomi", is a Japanese word that loosely refers to reading the mind of an opponent.

This turns out to be a central aspect of Yomi's gameplay -- if you can correctly predict your opponent's moves and base your own off of that information, then , you are highly favored to win.

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A Brief Overview of what Gameplay in Yomi is Like

Yomi's rules are extraordinarily simple. This is a game that gets its depth from the interactions between a character's playstyle and the mindset of the player controlling it rather than from its rules.

On each game round, you will basically just be picking a card from your hand and playing it face down while your opponent does the same. Both cards are revealed, and the rules dictacte who comes out ahead in the exchange.

The Different Types of Cards:

In Yomi, each character has a deck of 54 cards, and each deck has the following different types of cards (with the exception of Rook, who cannot dodge):

Attacks are agressive manuevers and are often the main source of damage in Yomi. When you land an attack, many attacks allow you to follow up with more attacks resulting in a combo. Attacks do no damage against a block, dodge, or Joker.

Throws also do damage and sometimes have a limited combo opportunity of their own, but typically lead to less damaging combos than attacks. However, throws always beat blocks and dodges. They lose to attacks and Jokers.

Block: If you successfully block an attack or Joker, you not only negate or reduce its effects (some attacks still do a small amount of damage even when blocked -- be careful!) but you also get to draw a new card. Blocking does no damage, but puts you into a stronger game-position with a better hand.

Dodge: Unlike a block, if you dodge an attack you do not get to draw another card. However, a dodge allows you to counter attack!

Joker: A Joker beats both attack and throw, but loses to block and dodge. Instead of doing damage, a Joker allows you to search your deck or discard pile and retrieve your character's "super move" (more later).

For some characters, many of these cards will double as a "special ability" card that can be played to give you some sort of advantage, so you will have to carefully choose how you want to use those special cards.

There is an intentional imbalance with how well each character uses these moves. Some characters have abilities that compliment their blocks. Others have a lot of really good attacks, etc.

But that's not the only way that the characters differ. No, each character has entirely different stats on each of their cards and a global innate ability that they can typically potentially use on any given turn. More on characters later.

Component Quality -- What Exactly Do You Get in Yomi?

Yomi tends to be seen as a bit more expensive than your typical card game, but when you hold the cards, if you are used to how cards from most games feel, then something becomes immediately clear.

The cards in Yomi are of a remarkably high quality when compared to most other hobby games on the market. They shuffle extremely well -- they are not the resistant, hard cardstock found in many other games.

On the back of each card on each of the 10 character decks is a unique and beautiful color scheme that matches the character's artwork. It is a sight to behold.

And there is fantastic artwork on the fronts of the cards, too, which show your character attacking, throwing, or performing a special move. The special move cards in particular have incredible artwork.

The Complete Edition also comes with two fancy large playmats that make it easy to track your character's life total. To my knowledge, these really cool playmats are without equal in a game like this.

Basically, Yomi is an incredibly well produced game with a killer sense of style. Props to SirlinGames.

Asymmetric Characters -- The Most Interesting Part of Yomi

I already talked about the characters a little bit earlier, but the way each character changes how you play the game is really, really cool and deserves a bit more attention.

While every character has their own unique blend of attacks, throws, blocks, dodges, and card-based special abilities, they also have a global overreaching ability printed on their "character card." To give you an idea of what I mean, and to give you an idea of how this influences gameplay, here are some examples of two characters:

Argagarg Garg: He is a peaceful water shaman -- he looks sort of like some kind of fish. His special ability is "Hex of Murkwood", which makes his opponent suffer 2 damage per turn -- sort of like a slow acting poison.

This makes Argagarg's opponent extremely eager to kill him as quickly as possible, because the longer the fighter continues, the more of this residual damage they receive. A clever Argagarg player can use this desperation to his advantage and exploit his opponent's eagerness...

Valerie Rose: Valerie is a manic painter who can use her creativity to string moves together in unconventional ways. Whereas most characters are limited in the ways they can string their attacks together, Valerie can do so without restriction. If she lands a hit, a dazzling display of combo goodness is sure to follow!

The more cards she has, the more attacks she can string together, so an obvious strategy for Valerie would be to use blocks to build a large hand and then unleash her fury. But a clever opponent will predict this and make life hard for Valerie... unless Valerie predicts their counter and gets the last laugh! It's these sorts of mind games that make Yomi interesting.

Playing Time, Demographics, Etc.

Yomi is a quick game that is simple to get into but hard to learn and master to the point where you have meaningful strategies. I would say that this is a rather niche game for a niche audience. However, if you are part of that niche audience, you will enjoy it immensely.

The game is 2 player only, but the playing time is relatively short, meaning if you have a group together Yomi is an ideal game to have a "tournament" for!

Extremely competitive and extremely interesting, if you are into the concept of a card game that feels like Street Fighter (the arcade game) and are a competitive-minded player (this is not one for casual or social gamers) then Yomi will appeal to you a whole lot more.

Recap Time: Positives and Negatives about Yomi:

Check below for my final verdict on Yomi!

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