It's a definite improvement, but some of the issues with setting appropriateness and balancing still apply.
Comparing it to Owl's Eye/Eagle's Eye it does less damage to the other player, but the ability is cheaper, you can have more than one in play and the ungraded version does more damage to creatures. In fact the upgrade could take out most dragons in one shot. Eagle's Eye is a rare card, and I feel like this OP in comparison to it.
In fact the upgrade does more damage than any other renewable creature control in the game, aside from fire nymph, who also boost creatures attacks and it extremely rare. Fire nymph's ability also costs
as opposed to
. Fire nymph also only has an attack of 1 and costs 9
to summon.
As far as setting appropriateness goes the names and images on the card imply something high tech and modern, whereas the game has generally stayed away from anything technological. Steam machine is, obviously, a machine but it falls more into the steam punk category then high tech. The images look modern or maybe WWII era.
