Rune is a very enjoyable game, after playing dozens of long 40hours+ rpgs, i see it short stay as a good thing (you may differ), its a game that doesn't overstay its welcome, with a fun and interesting battle system that is really easy to grasp and simple but enjoyable common rpgs places to briefly explore.
You play as princess Katia, tasked to save the world from an evil fog that is filling it with evil monsters.
She cant really do anything herself, but her magic runestone lets her use the power of the cards, every card holding one of the very same monsters you fight, going from werewolves, lizardmen, orcs, goblins and fairies, you arsenal is made from the very enemy.
You have 3 card types, attack cards that summon the monster to do a quick attack (giving it a very action rpg feel with some slashes and thrusts and maybe some energy balls or lasers), assist type that summon a monster to the field to help you with attacks, buffs or spells with they own hp meter and stats, or summoning a very strong monster in a more old fashioned FF-like summon where they take your place to do a devastating attack.
You go into the levels with a deck of 30 cards, you must conserve your cards because if you run out of them you're completely defenseless (you don't lose your cards, they are just useless for the rest of the stage, and there are ways to get them back mid-stage) , you can also skip cards at the cost of losing them for the stage or use them as a finishing move to capture a weakened enemy monster (so there's some monster catching elements here too).
The game must have less than 20 main stages that are pretty short, usually having a simple objective like getting to the exit or beating a boss, the story is nothing to talk about really, bare bones and completely lacking but not awfully unbearable, if anything, this is a gameplay centric game, and it shows because on its 5 hour duration you mostly just enjoy the fighting and craft better decks with the cards you can find or buy, there's also some collectibles and side-stuff in the levels, but you cant return to them later so you better get them before beating them if you really want them.
Like a very nice stroll in the park, its a fun game with lots of charm, never the story gets in your way or make you drop the controller in frustration, its a very flawed game however, as it can feel overly generic and lackluster and filled with balancing issues and repetitive music (which i kinda enjoy, guilty pleasure of mine), not taking price into value, it can be forgiven considering how much of a simple fun it is, it should be remembered for that.
I might talk about Lost Kingdoms 2 at some point, I'm playing it at the moment and i would say its better in many ways, so i'll tell you how that goes later.
