Death Howl is still a good game. I think for me at first glance it looked so amazing that I was half expecting a 9-10/10 and it's more like a 7.5-8/10. The art is beautiful and never stops being fantastic and the gameplay is very solid. Once you accept that the emphasis is on the grid-based strategy part and solving encounters like puzzles instead of cooking up crazy creative deck combos the game starts to click much better.
The big let down for me is the story, I don't hate the main conceit of it even though it's a little played out, but I think it could have been delivered in a much more subtle way so that you connect the dots much later and get a much more impactful end result that way.