The chronicles of Emerland. Solitaire.

For a relatively old game, I really enjoyed this!!

Great art, the UI is decent especially for the age of the game. I enjoyed the storyline.

The various mini games in between the card levels are fun, though they are skippable if you'd rather not do them.

My main annoyance is that I can't take it out of full screen mode, the check box for that is never clickable in the game settings, even though the option exists!

I find this game relaxing and yet challenges you. Fun game.

a great game with variety

The story line and dialog are cheesy, but amusing if cheesy is up your alley. The card games are a lot of fun though.

This game keeps crashing! And nobody can help me or refund it. Figures.

Overall, a decent card game. Gameplay is solid with no bugs or glitches.

Difficulty is a little higher than the other Solitaire games. I got tired of replaying a few of the levels and just moved on. Its a bummer not being able to save in the middle of a level, but that did not stop me from completing the game. I never had to replay an entire level to progress to the next level.

Achievements were easy to get, and no annoying time-limit based mini-games!

Not the best card game out there, but I do recommend it.

A fun solitaire game with a great story and fantastic artwork ! The theme makes this game stand out from other solitaire games, especially if you like the fantasy genre. Power ups and card styles fit the theme perfectly. There are also hidden object levels scattered throughout that play into the overall story. The level selection map is a great feature and makes it seem like you are on a expedition straight out of Lord of the Rings. If you are looking for a solitaire game on Steam to play, I highly recommend The Chronicles of Emerald.

This card game is quite good.
Important thing is that there are no glitches, bugs, crashes, or needing to pay more to proceed. Everything needed is included in the game. You can play timed or relaxed, and works very well with a mouse.

This game has all the potential to be a great little time passer, but is let down by the save system. If you have to stop playing due to life, you must finish up with a perfect if you are trying to complete all levels as perfect. If you finish your last level of a session with less than perfect and exit, the game will save that score and you will start your next session on the following level. This is really frustrating if you also happen to have hit one of the harder ones to complete. I just gave up trying to get the perfect after 30 minutes of continuous attempts, while also needing to stop playing.

If this is ported from the mobile version rather than vice-versa, I would guess that the F2P microtransaction mechanics have not been rebalanced due to the low rate of bonus card drops and slightly grindy nature.

If I was simply able to restart where I left off, it would be a recommend, but this irritant is a game breaker for me.

Chronicles of Emerland Solitaire is a great high-low solitaire game. The graphics are beautiful. The card play is smooth and engaging. The power-ups are in the form of companions you recruit as you advance the plot of the story. You can also buy wild cards. The last level is actually a bit challenging with the Golem periodically setting your cards on fire. You can replay any hand just after you finish it, in case you think that you can (or need to) do better.

People complain about the game counting their incomplete chapters as failed. The devs have tried to fix this and been unable to, so just roll with it. I simply played in 10 hand segments (takes about 20 minutes) and then exited when the following section's first hand was dealt. No issues at all.

Took 13 hours to finish the whole game with all achievements. The nice thing about the achievements is that they reward you for half-measures. What I mean is, you need to complete half the chapters with top rating. You get top-rating by getting perfect on 5 out of the 10 hands. You get an achievement for getting half the amulets from the store. In this way, there is nothing compelling players to grind hands to get everything perfect, except their OCD perhaps.

Highly recommended!

I have 140 plus hours againt the free version, so I happily purchased this. I should have looked at date of release.
The free version is two years after and is a lot more polished.
I won't be playing this as much, but I will look at their later releases.

it's an alright game, can get a little repetitive and boring though 6/10

I keep saying that I am going to stop buying Solitaire games since I own a lot of the, but Devs keep bringing them out on Steam and I keep buying them. Chronicles of Emerland is one of those games. Very good Solitaire. Comes with a story and is a solitaire/hidden object hybrid. One of the best solitaire games I have played. Great, beautiful graphics. 10/10

Another addicting Solitaire game.

You do not have the ability to replay one certain level to get a better score once the set is done. The only way to do this is to replay the level itself over and over until you get it perfect, or replay the whole set from the start of you have multiple non-perfects.

The hidden object portion of the game is really easy and if you get stuck you have the hint button that will fully recharge over a little time.

If you exit the game midpoint through a set, it will fail that level once you restart the game. So, if you do not want this to happen, make sure you are fully commited to playing all 10 rounds in the set before you exit the game.

Achievements are easy to get.

Personal Rating: 5/10

Perfect Relaxing Game to wind down late in the evening .... 10/10 :)

*OK, I'm changing my review to not recommend this game because of the level replay issue everyone else mentioned. At first, I didn't know what they were talking about because it hadn't happened to me. Now, it has, and I'm so annoyed I'm abandoning this game entirely. You can't replay a hand unless you're on the stats page at the end of that hand. Once you move on from there, you have to replay all of the 10 hands in a level if you wan to replay only one of them. That's horses**t. It's far too difficult to complete a hand the first time to then force me to do them all again. The game warns you you'll lose your progress on the level if you quit the game mid-way, but that's not an accurate warning. What it should warn you about is that it will record a loss for you, and you'll have to replay the entire level to fix that one hand. The thing is, if you quit the game on, say, Hand #5, and it records a loss, you can't simply start over at Hand #1. You have to complete the remaining 5 hands until you've complated the level then you can replay the entire level to fix Hand #5. Screw that, and this game.

On another note, it's glitchy as hell. I had a hard time even getting it to run. At one point, it was in windowed mode, or what they consider fullscreen mode, and the game prevented my mouse from moving anywhere beyond its borders, even when it wasn't the active window, until I went to Process Explorer, and killed it. I didn't say anything about the technical issues originally because I thought it might just be me, or my computer, but now I'm convinced its the game itself. Nothing in this game works as you would expect it to.

Just to further complain about this game because it deserves it: why is the title written "The chronicles of Emerland. Solitaire." Shouldn't "chronicles" be capitalized? Why is the word Solitaire its own sentence? This should be a red flag as to the level of care, and attention that went into this game as a whole.

Original Review

I've played every Solitaire game I can find on Steam, and this one is by far the most difficult. 6 hours in, and I only just finished the tutorial on Easy mode. I don't know how these games are designed, but this one makes it very difficult to finish a hand perfectly. I've played hands 5 times, or more just to get a Perfect - they're hard to come by unless you get a good run early. If you're looking for a relaxing game, this might not be the Solitaire for you. It's frustrating to keep losing over, and over. This is a mindless card game, not Super Meat Boy, or something. At least for me, the fun is in advancing through, and completing the game. This game makes it hard to advance past a single hand. If that's not an issue for you (you don't have to get a perfect, after all), then this game is exactly like all the other Solitaire games, and a fairly safe purchase. Same usual gameplay, rules, bonuses, etc.

Nice solitaire game similar to Faerie Solitaire.

If you're played Faerie Solitaire or Three Towers (as it's sometimes called) then you are familiar with the idea of this game. You have to clear all the cards in the layout by clicking on a card that is numbered one higher or one lower than the card in the deck. For instance, if your deck card is a 5 you can click on either a 4 or a 6. It's easy to get combos by going up and down the numbers, like 4-3-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-8-7-6, etc. depending on the layout and luck.

As the story goes on you gain 4 helpful allies with special abilites. There are also amulets you can purchase in the store with the gold you gain in the levels.

The story is kind of silly, but it's just a card game so who cares. Bad guy in black robe and holding a snake staff wants to conquer the world. You and your allies have to stop him. You travel the land of men, elves, dwarves, and mermaids (though you only get to see a merMAN, no maids unfortunately). In each place you have to restore the temple that has been desecrated by the bad guy, and restore the elemental crystal.

In addition to the card playing levels there are also occasional hidden object levels. That makes for a nice break from just cards, cards, cards all the time.

The gameplay is solid. It's fairly easy to get good combos even without using bonuses. Though, I was playing on casual difficulty, so i don't know if the gameplay is harder on the harder difficulty or if they just give you more things to accomplish to win.

Graphics are nice, with soft colors fitting a fantasy world.

Music is nice background music. It's sort of like classical music, just nice background music that does not intrude on your thinking.

There is also voice acting in this game. Each character has a voice. They also print the dialogue in boxes.

Length of playtime for me was 12 hours. However, I tend to keep replaying levels if I don't get a perfect or near perfect. So it could be less for someone who wants to just rush through the game.

tl;dr version:

Similar to Faerie Solitaire (Three Tower, etc)
Hidden Object Levels
Easy to get combos
2 difficulty selections
Full voiced audio
10+ hours of gameplay for first time through
It's Cheap!!!

So do you like solitaire games? Then go get Regency Solitaire or Faerie Solitaire. Those are much better games than this one is. The main reason why I'm giving this a not recommended is the fact that there is a pretty hideous bug that when you quit the game it records the hand you were on as a failure and moves to the next one, even if you didn't start that hand. That's pretty bad for a game that is meant to be more on the casual side and played off and on to relax, not to be played in one sitting. Though thankfully the game's achievements are easy enough that unless you quit during like every hand, you'll be able to get them all even with this bug.

The other issue I had with the game is that even on the easier of the two modes, it was very luck based and not skill based for a large number of hands. After about two of the chapters all of a sudden you get layouts with a lot of blocked cards and very little ability to get a combo. To be quite honest if you don't get the achievement for a 20 combo before restoring the fire amulet in the human realm, you aren't very likely to get it because getting any decent combo without saving up a ton of wildcards is not happening with those layouts. You'll get very sick of Seth's laughter for leaving more than 5 cards quite quickly because you'll be hearing it a lot. Of note, I played on casual, though I am a perfectionist. Between this and the bug I had to deal with not being able to perfect every level.

Another issue that is present is that at times the music just stops for no good reason.

Put simply, this game is a promise of a solid game that really needs some work and I'll gladly edit this review if some of these issues get fixed, though truly these sorts of issues should have been worked out before release, not after. The artwork is very lovely and the music when it actually plays right is relaxing. The game can be fun when I'm not getting frustrated at retrying a level a bunch of times just to get less than 4 cards remaining. Edit to add: The dev has responded that the bug causing fails in hands cannot be fixed.

As it stands now, I can't recommend the game outside of a much better sale or in a bundle because it's more frustating than relaxing and fun and a game should get harder as you progress, not easier It also mostly gets easier because you get amulets and power ups to be able to deal with the frustrating factors of luck playing such a role.

If you liked Faerie Solitaire and Regency Solitaire then you will enjoy this one. Same gameplay, different theme. Cute and great for the price. 10/10