SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech

Fun but simple not alot of depth or deckbuilding synergy

Got this for free through Amazon, a cute story with combat that got increasingly complex. It kept me engaged for about 8-10 hours.

So yeah, the core gameplay was decent, but the story was marred by a weird alteration. So I mentioned that the leader is misgendered and that’s because, while they are all robots, they do have genders. The mage is a girl, the monk is a guy, and the knight is a guy. But is called a girl, because of some Sweet Baby Inc garbage inclusion that decided there where too many guys. So they made the quirky knight a rough tomboy, except they did it after the plot and game were done, so it comes off as very weird when it is mentioned. Everything about the knight is guy-ish, the way they talk, the way they dress, the way their backstory is about admiring knights and rescuing princesses, you get the picture. Even their name was more boy than girl, so whenever it was made a talking point it was handed really hamfistedly. Because of that quirk I was annoyed enough to be bothered, and the art style was kind of simple and boring. I can see it is from the lineage of other Steamworld type games with how it looks, but I honestly have never really liked the look of them. So I came for the gameplay lured in by the turn-based deck builder, even when the misgendering and basic animation did it no favors. It was good enough I beat the game but I ducked out of finishing the arena, which opened up one last match to fight an overpowered version of the final boss. Yeah, no thanks. SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech gets a 6.0 out of 10

liked the story, it was 11+ hours for me

Another great entry in the Steamworld series, with nice presentation and an engaging combat that uses a good variety of syynergiees to deal with yyour foes, my only issue with the combat are those enemies that reflect part of the damage you deal to them, there's no way to nullify the effect so my poor Milly KOed herself more than once with the cleave attack. There's a little bit of grind if you wanna upgrade your favorite cards. but it wasn't that bad. The story is pretty straightforward and the characters are not deep, but it gets the job done. Unfortunately the RPG mechanics are minimal, your cards and a couple of gear pieces is all you get to customize your characters. There are no dialogue options or branching paths. Overall, a good game, and a great foundation for further improvement.