While combat is generally a short and sweet rendezvous, when everything else depends on luck, losing even an inch of life to these problems can feel like complete sabotage.
It doesn’t help that your companion, while generally reliable, will sometimes get stuck on fighting a dead enemy if you step in and kill said enemy before they do, making them loop on attacking a corpse. Other times you might run into situations where two enemies strike you at once and you can only counter one or risk being hit by both. Sometimes you run into situations where enemies interrupt their own animations to suddenly strike you with little chance for escape or counter.
More cards mean more opportunity to control your fate, but at the end of the day, a lot of it is luck of the digital draw.Moreover, though combat feels fair for the most part, there are a few hitches here and there that can make crucial engagements frustrating. A few bad rolls or steps into unfortunate encounters can send you back to the beginning in a hurry and coming to the end of a challenge only to be thwarted by luck can feel crushing. This is still a rogue-like in what encounters you come across and when you have few cards or companions to nudge luck in your direction, it feels like the odds are absolutely stacked against you. The massive amount of chance checks for success or failure in encounters mean almost all of the challenges hinge on some level of luck.