Review: Heart of Crown Online Is a Faithful Adaptation of the Deck-Building Game

The Heart of Crown deck-building strategy game is pretty well-established, as the Dominion style drafting title’s been around since 2011 and multiple editions exist. This version, which entered early access in April 2024, is even based on the second edition. If you are familiar with its idea of constantly investing to build up your deck to acquire territory, currency, individuals, and of course a princess to get succession points, then you’re all set. If not, it’s honestly a really good place to start.

Heart of Crown Online is set in a world where the line of succession is in question due to the emperor’s death. Because it happened so quickly, he didn’t say which of his seven daughters he’d want to become queen. As an individual in a position to help determine who rules next, you need to build up territory and support to ensure Bergamotte, Flamaria, Klam Klam, Laolily, Lulunasaika, Ohka, or the twins Lain & Shion become the next ruler. If you’re playing a free or ranked match, it’ll be a competition to determine which princess you are able to get and support, but the Scenario Mode involves solo campaigns that help you learn how to play and support each princess. 

Scenario Mode is a good place to start, honestly. In standard Heart of Crown Online games, much like similar titles like Dominion and Tanto Cuore, you essentially all start in the same position and your deck-building determines what your cards and strategy looks like. You then build around your princess. For these campaigns, you end up with decks more specifically designed to work with and grow around the princess. It plays in the same way, but I really appreciate how the approach is designed to help introduce you to the princesses you could support as your pick for the kingdom’s new ruler. I will say that an extra editing pass could be used to ensure card effects sound a little less awkward. Things are clear, but I came into Heart of Crown Online having extensively played Tanto Cuore and being familiar with the Dominion formula, and I could see things being a bit confusing for other newcomers.

In terms of gameplay, things follow the stable second edition format and make a lot of sense. Your first task in Heart of Crown Online is to get Territories and play them. So you’ll be getting these from the Market at the start to get things like Cities, Towns, and Villages to get currency. When you have enough coins in your realm (6) to nominate one of the princesses, you choose one of the ones available as your potential ruler. In each phase you’ll play cards to your Realm to build up money (lands) or Succession Points (via cards like dukes) to win. You can also take actions against other princesses and the players backing them depending on certain action and Curse cards acquired. If you hit 20 Succession Points or have the most after all of certain types of cards like senators and dukes run out, then you win. 

Part of the thing that sets Heart of Crown Online apart is that each princess (or the pair of twin princesses) possesses an ability that affects certain actions in-game. As she’s the oldest princess, Lulunasaika’s ability is that you start with six Succession Points right away and only need 14 to win. Lain & Shion can be especially handy, since you could get tokens that let you take another turn. Bergamotte lets you tap into the discarded cards to get another action card to reuse it. But there are some princesses that are more situational and rely on lucky pulls from your deck, like Laolily and Ohka, which does make picking a royal more challenging in the casual and ranked online matches. 

But I will say that aside from some descriptions perhaps needing another pass over to ensure clarity since this is a complex game, this adaptation of Heart of Crown works very well. The UI is clear and the cards are easy to read. Matches worked well, and I didn’t have too much trouble finding someone to play with. It worked well on a handheld gaming PC too. 

If you enjoy Dominion, Tanto Cuore, and other kinds of strategic deck-building games, then Heart of Crown Online should be in your library. If the genre is new to you, it’s a good place to start! The concept is entertaining, and the single-player Scenario Mode is a helpful way to learn how to play. Since it also spent time in Steam Early Access, it feels really solid at launch too.

Heart of Crown Online is available on PCs, and it will also come to the Switch.