Guardian Cross is a CCG/RPG in the vein of Rage of Bahamut and all the other clones. What makes it different is there is some actual gameplay, it has final fantasy assets, and there is a (horrible) story. Plus who doesn't want to have cards like this?









The Basics:

The game formula can be summed up as: Do story/campaign missions for hunt and pvp tickets > Hunt for Cards > Level up your cards with excess from hunts > Use your powered up Monsters in PVP > Repeat




Hunting:

This is how you actually get new cards. Its basically a minigame that involves you shooting animals for pleasure. You have 60 seconds to murder as many tasty animals as you can. Its a little awkward at first, but soon you'' understand the amount to lead your shots by.

Flashing Red enemies can usually be killed in one hit.
Flashing Yellow enemies will give you an additional 10 seconds of hunting time, these are worth killing.
Always kill slimes, they will occasionally drop a rare 3* Silver Slime. If you get one of these you can also select someone on your friends list to receive one as well as a free gift from you. (you lose nothing). The primary use of silver slimes is feeding to your team to level them. DO NOT trade or feed these to your monsters unless you're sure you know what you're doing. Silver Slimes are the primary currency of the game as far as player trading goes.


Leveling

Leveling is pretty simple, you feed useless monsters to another monster and it will gain exp. Monsters will learn new abilities when they level up enough (first new ability is level 15 I believe. Feeding a monster another monster of the same element will give more exp, but it's not an overly dramatic difference. There are different monster types:

Type: HP | MP | Attack | Defense | Agility | Wisdom

Cool. 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |100%
Chaos. 110% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 90%
Sexy. 90% | 110% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100%
Powerful. 100% | 100% | 110% | 100% | 90% | 100%
Brave. 100% | 90% | 100% | 110% | 100% | 100%
Haste. 100% | 100% | 100% | 90% | 110% | 100%
Intelligent. 100% | 100% | 90% | 100% | 100% | 110%
Ace. 110% | 110% | 110% | 110% | 110% | 110%

What this means: Ace is the best, an Ace monster is about as good as a monster a * higher in rarity. Some Ace monsters are especially valuable. The other good mod is haste, since AGI determines initiative. This can be huge because it's very possible to 1 shot another monster and repeat that process. After that the only one I find decent is Intelligent, and only on monsters that deal damage through spells. Powerful can be ok, but the AGI hit is a big deal.

Monster's also have an element attribute, which works like it does is basically every RPG with each element having a strength and weakness vs different elements. I wouldn't pay much attention to what element something is in the beginning.



Missions:

These involve you reading horrible dialogue and pretending you enjoy it. The story is that Guardians are lose in the world and you have to ... honestly, who cares? Some of the characters are mildly interesting, and the art is all pretty good (at least to me). The basic premise of every mission is go into a dungeon, kill monsters to unlock the next floor. Repeat this process until you get to a boss. The monster's difficulty is shown through it's letter, with the weakest being A (because numbers are too confusing I guess?). There are also chests which will have decent loot. Completing missions advances the story which as far as I can tell has no point, because all monsters give the same experience, and items.....except for Guardian points (The currency used for leveling monsters).




PvP:

Right now PvP consists of an arena. You enter using a ticket, which will then allow you to battle 3 times. You have a different monster team for arena matches (bottom right button). The arena matches have special rules, so you'll need to fine tune your team. There are arena seasons which seem to a week long, rewarding rare cards and loot to people in certain ranking brackets:

You start a "Chain" when you finish an arena session. Chains last 2 hours, and their purpose is to give you a 20% boost to your arena points.
You get a Domination Bonus if you can wipe out the entire enemy team with your first monster.
You get a Win Streak bonus at 10/20/30/40/50 (after which it resets). This can be multiplied by the streak bonus.



General Newbie Strategy

This is a super basic strategy for when you start. When you get some initial cards, try to focus on just one. The reason for this is you're going to outclass most of these cards soon, so having only one built up will allow it to continue being worthwhile on your team. I wouldn't recommend overly investing in any two stars, but 1 star slimes can be useful a long time as an enemy debuffer. Try to find a 3 star. Naga/Hydra are pretty good choices. They will gain more abilities at 15/30/40/50. Their level 50 ability is Revival, which is pretty awesome. Save your silver slimes and try to trade for a 4 star to start majorly investing in. You can find 3 stars occasionally with a regular ticket, and very rarely a 4 star. However, the only realistic way to get a 4 star team is trading silver slimes to people with big wallets. I recommend Heca or Vampire. I'd invest heavily in them. Try to get 1 really strong monster, because this is the point in the game where you can actually Dominate people in PvP (beating their entire team with 1 monster) and get a major point bonus. Later on in PvP/PvE I recommend putting your strongest monsters at the end, and use fodder monsters to buff your team and debuff the opponents team.


Miscellaneous:
You can only carry 5 hunting and PvP tickets, don't forget to use them, because if you go over you just lose the item.
Adding people to your friends list gives you Friend Points, as does battling people on your friends list. Friend Points can be spent on miscellaneous items
Your Monster Catalog will give you item rewards if you find every monster on a page.
Your stamina will refill to full each time you level up.
You can refill your stamina to full using potions, which you should do if you have any. Because potions cannot be traded in this game.