Wait, there's an American dealer with them? I'm interested to know who.
Can't actually answer your question though, so I'll just say what stands out to me. Keep in mind, this really boils down to first impressions, I haven't really played it much.
Generally speaking, I find the game about as volatile as Marvel vs. Capcom or a game of Koi-Koi, mainly because of the ever-present chance of an attack's damage being nullified. It seems like everything else in the game feeds off this either directly, or indirectly. Without getting into much detail, I'll say that there's a huge luck factor involved, and because of this, the game gives you a lot of information (what you won't draw, what your opponent has in his deck but can't use until many turns out, both players' chances of damage cancel) and heaps of card draw in the hopes of bringing the luck factor back down and make it controllable at the same time. Luck manipulation is a part of the game, at high levels I imagine there's a lot of card counting going on as well.
If you make the right decisions, the numbers will like you, but in the end they're still numbers. Some people like the unpredictable nature of the game, others are turned off.
As far as if it's balanced... is any card game ever truly balanced?
