I still feel a little grief writing this one, because the license is dead, Fantasy Flight walked away from it years back, and the community’s response was basically “good night sweet prince” and then a very stubborn refusal to actually let it go. there’s a whole fan supported continuation running the game on donated cards and volunteer design teams, and that alone tells you how much this game means to the people who play it.

the core asymmetry is the whole draw. one player runs a mega corporation quietly advancing secret agendas behind layers of ice, the other player is a runner trying to break in and steal those agendas before they score. both sides are playing an entirely different game with an entirely different card pool, and the tension that generates is unlike anything else I’ve played. one reviewer said flatly it’s too tense for them to actually enjoy playing, they’d rather teach it than sit at the table, and I get that completely, there were sessions early on where my palms were sweating over a single unrezzed ice.

I won’t pretend the rules onboarding is smooth. the interaction between specific card text and the base rules gets genuinely fiddly, and more than one person I’ve taught has hit a “wait, that’s not how that works” moment mid game that required a rules lookup. it rewards sticking with it. once you and your opponent both actually know what you’re doing, the bluffing layer, is that server actually defended or is the corp broke, opens up in a way that simpler card games never get to.

it is, absolutely, a game that wants an investment. building out a real collection to explore the faction identities properly isn’t cheap even used, and I don’t think it’s a game you get the most out of playing casually once every few months. it rewards the people willing to actually live in it.

five stars, with real sadness that the print runs stopped. this is one I’ll keep sleeved and ready regardless.