Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roarsisan artful, cleverly-designed RPGfrom Square Enix that attempts to recreate the joy of table-top adventure games in a digital space. And, in large part, it succeeds, delivering a beautiful world filled with colorful and charming characters.

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With all its strengths, though,The Isle Dragon Roarsdoes boast a few issues in need of fixing. Caught somewhere between a table-top game and a video game RPG, it brings the strengths as well as the failings of both mediums along for the ride. Here are some of the biggest fixes that would truly make it a great video game.

9Additional Voice Actors

Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roarsboasts an impressive performance from the Game Master, an enigmatic figure who narrates the entire adventure. He speaks for every character, reading aloud both their words and actions as though telling a bedtime story to the player.

While his performance is good, the lack ofdistinct voices for each charactermakes it hard to perceive them as individual people. This, coupled with their lack of animation, makes them feel less like agents in their own story and more like game pieces being piloted through the narrative.

an old man speaks to a party of two women, a young man, and a blue creature

8Faster Movement Through The World

This game’sdedication to its tabletop inspirationis almost always a treat, but there’s one way it makes the game frustrating. Moving the game piece around the world is just slow enough to be a nuisance, as each card requires a very distinct movement that must be seen through to the last frame.

The game offers a small solution to this issue for any player trying to backtrack, but exploring a new area often isn’t as fun as it should be because of movement. Speeding up the motion of the game piece is a simple fix that would make travel a lot less painful.

a small game board piece on a grid of flipped over playing cards designed like terrain

7More Customizable Progression

As with most RPGs,Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roarssports a few different methods of increasing the power level of the game’s playable characters. While party members can equip different pieces of armor and learn different skills and abilities, each character grows in a set way over the course of the game.

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Players have little control over how their characters grow other than what attacks to use, robbing the game of creative team-building. Offering some level of customization tocharacter progression like skill pointsor character classes makes it feel more meaningful to invest in the team.

6Character Animation

While the aesthetic ofThe Isle Dragon Roarsis consistently charming, the static nature of the characters makes it hard to take them seriously when they’re supposed to be conveying strong emotion. It’s hard to reconcile the main character’s constant, easy-going smile with a rage-fueled scream.

Giving these characters a range of emotional templates to switch between would alleviate this problem, without having to fully animate them. Anime-style facial expressions, slightly different poses, and even dedicated battle postures would go a long way toward establishing these characters as multifaceted beings.

menu with a brown haired young man next to a row of different attack cards and above another row with just one attack card

5More Accessible Grinding

Grinding isa staple in any RPG, andVoice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roarsis no exception. Battles with monsters throughout the world provide experience and gold, which players can use to level up their heroes and purchase powerful new equipment for them.

But the randomness of these encounters can make it frustrating for players trying to grind with specific goals in mind. There’s no way to target specific monsters, and there’s no breakdown on how much experience, gold, or treasure different monster types contain. Grinding is an important element of the role-playing genre, and it should be more intuitive to execute.

a man in black talks to a brown haired man, a woman in black, a woman in white, and a large blue creature

4More Rewarding Exploration

Just about everything inVoice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roarsis built on a playing card: the characters, the items, even the environment are all made up of playing card-shaped tiles. As the player moves throughout the world, these cards flip over to reveal new pieces of the terrain with each step.

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While the act of uncovering new areas of the map is satisfying on its own, there’s not much else for players to experience when exploring the overworld map. There just aren’t enough hidden items and collectibles to incentivize players to stray from the path and see the whole map.

3Better Side Content

The Isle Dragon Roarshas a compelling, driving campaign that carries players across continents and into the path of dangerous, interesting people from all across the world. Outside of that, though, there’s not much for players to experience between big narrative beats.

Outside of the Go Fish style card game and a few dialogue choice side quests, the side content inThe Isle Dragon Roarsis practically nonexistent. Building out the card game in a more meaningful way andadding more involved side quests would provide players more to dobefore heading out to start the next chapter of the story.

card with two crossed swords in the middle and the words " an enemy approaches"

2Auto-Play Dialogue

There is a lot of dialogue inVoice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars, from different characters arguing with one another to the Game Master describing a scene in great detail. And, althoughthe dialogue is all very well-written and engaging, there’s no way to play through it without clicking through every page individually.

Many narrative-heavy games, such asFire Emblem: Three Houses,include an auto-play option that continues playing each new section of dialogue as the last one finishes. It’s a great compromise that allows the player to listen to the scene without having to constantly press a button to keep it going.

game board piece selecting an environment card to jump to

1A Detailed Bestiary

An in-depth bestiary is a valuable tool in any role-playing adventure, offering information on anything from an enemy’s weaknesses to what kinds of rewards players can expect them to drop after defeat. Unfortunately,Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars’bestiary doesn’t offer much information at all.

While it does offer some compelling stories about enemy monsters,The Isle Dragon Roars’bestiary doesn’t have any useful info about enemy monsters, including discovered weaknesses. This is a huge fix the game needs, as any good RPG should have a way for players to access that essential info in-game.

a young boy in front of two green and black flags, welcoming the player to a gambling den

a young girl next to a green slime speaks to a party of two women, a man, and a blue creature

playing card with a picture of a faun-like creature named an “orc child”