In recent months, I suddenly have a thing for deck-builder games. I've always liked role-playing games, so Gordian Quest seemed worth a try. It's a decent game overall. It has a good amount of RPG elements, including different classes, leveling stats, magic items, and character abilities. And the deck-building adds some flavor and randomness to the game. The art style is okay, the story is quite forgettable, and the battles can be tense and enjoyable. However, by the end of the first act (there are 4), you've seen everything the game has to offer. By that time, most of the item drops are trash, you probably already have the best cards, and the monsters are both predictable and repetitious. Fortunately, the boss fights are interesting--the last one is ridiculously hard--and upgrading cards and stats can be fun, though I never really got the hang of crafting and enchanting things. Once you've finished the main campaign, there is a Realm Mode that allows you to play a random map with a big boss at the end, but its largely more of the same and probably will not hold anyone's interest long. Ultimately, this is worth a try if you like RPG games and deck builders, but don't expect anything amazing or fresh. Definitely wait for a sale. Pros: +Different character classes +DnD role-playing flavor +Combat is engaging, often requiring a strategy +Boss fights are generally interesting and intense +Decent risk-reward system Cons: -Story line is not especially interesting -Character appearance cannot be customized -There are a good number of poorly explained systems at work (crafting, camping, enchanting, etc.) -Way too many trash cards, items, and skills -A few instances of the game stopping in a fight and requiring a reload
This is one of the most immersive and creative games I've ever played. It takes a lot of inspiration from table-top DnD, insofar as it focuses on character stories and narrative details. But it goes further. Not only do you end up caring about your characters; they care about each other! They can become rivals, fall in love, have memories, become legends--everything that you would expect in an RPG game that is alive with good storytelling. The narrative arc branches based on your decisions and seems amazingly personalized to fit the character and situation. In about 20 hours, I have finished two of the campaigns and have several more to go. Thus, there is a good deal of content. Mods add interesting new details, but the base game is already quite complete and very well done. Pros: +Deep, rich RPG elements and character development +Simple but charming and effective art style +Witty, often moving dialogue. Narration can be surprisingly philosophical (in a good way!) +Strong DnD vibes for those familiar with the table-top game +Only 3 classes, but they can be customize with various abilities items +The relationship system is well done. +Combat is simple but never gets old. Sometimes requires good strategy and right party mix. +The injury and death mechanics are well implemented and make sense. +Music is enchanting and calming and appropriate for this kind of game. Neutral: )There are no spoken words in the game, though the reading is not laborious )Difficulty can spike, though it can be overcome by careful attention to your party's abilities and the enemy strength (represented by a number) )If you play long enough, you will eventually see side quests repeated (they can be skipped). However, there is so much content here that that's not really an issue. Cons: -There is occasionally awkward wording here and there. -Characters age far too quickly. -A few things are not explained well, such as the legacy system. But you can find the information online. Superb game
This Mechwarrior game is kind of strange to review. It's pretty, has a lot of great effects and explosions, and has received several expansions and patches. However, I just could not get into it. I played MW2 back in the 1990s and loved it. I also played MW4 and thought it was pretty good. But this one left me cold after just 3 missions. The controls seem clunkier than even the 1995 game, and the game lacks the same sense of tension and dread that you felt when an enemy mech lumbered up to you firing missiles at your legs to maim and disable you. Maybe I just didn't play long enough to get immersed, but after a few hours of chasing annoying little tanks and airplanes around while stumbling into destructible infrastructure, I just kept asking myself, "why?" Why not drop me into some real action after the tutorial mission? Why am I getting stuck on the terrain? Why the long trudge back to the drop ship after each mission? Why is the background music so awful? Again, I assume that the game might get more interesting after several missions and several hours of play, but why torment me with minor, boring busy work until then? Looking back, I probably should have just jumped into the career mode and skipped the base-game campaign. At least the game may have picked up a bit in that mode, or so I've read. Anyhow, I probably won't go back to this, though I spent almost $40 on it. If you must play this, definitely get it on deep discount (no more than $20) and be prepared to be patient with it for the first few hours. Otherwise, if you can't be bothered--at least initially--with a dry narrative, pesky controls, and cliché missions, give this one a hard pass.
I am new to the Crusader Kings (CK) series, so I wasn't sure what to expect. However, after playing it for several hours, I am glad that GoG had the base game for free.I am not bothered by the DLC model, since the base game is free. However, the base game does not offer enough to make me want to pay for more. In a nutshell, CK2 is a mix of the game series Total War, Civilization, and the Sims in a medieval setting. However, it does not do justice to any of these genres and just doesn't work as a coherent product. At its core, it's a household management game with a grand strategic map slathered on top of it and a lot of other systems buried beneath. There is warfare, but it's very abstract and cumbersome to wage. There is a city-management and economic system, but they are quite basic and only feel complex because there are so many menus to navigate in order to do simple things (oddly, I could not find a way to adjust the tax rate). I assume that diplomacy and stealth systems operate in the game, but like everything else, they are buried under layers of menus, tabs, and mini-spreadsheets. Almost everything that happens in the game suddenly appears in a pop-up window, and occasionally you are required to click a Yes or No answer. Often those are the limits of the player's interaction with the game. Maybe some of the DLC fixes a lot of these issues? I don't know. Anyhow, if you have any interest in the historical setting or the idea behind the game, go ahead and give it a try--after all, it's free! However, expect boredom, repetition, a steep learning curve, and minimal payoff.
Crimson Court (CC) is decent DLC. However, like the base game, it suffers from the same issues. It has interesting concepts, good artwork, great narration, but poor gameplay mechanics. I think some of the worst issues have been ironed out with patches. But it is still a grindy, tedious experience, unnecessarily drawn out by a questionable disease system and overly long dungeons that have you searching for keys and running into dead ends (you'll need to look up some maps on the internet to figure out the 3 main dungeons). Still, all is not lost. There are mods that can make CC worthwhile. For a game (Darkest Dungeon) that has more than its share of diseases and afflictions already, you can mod CC to tone down the new disease or disable it all together (which is what I did). The new bosses are tough and well done, though you'll have to endure the ridiculously long dungeons to find them. CC adds more trinkets and district buildings, which are helpful in the base game as well. Once you finish the last boss fight, there is really nothing else to do. However, for $10, it's worth it, especially with mods.
I really enjoyed Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (CoJ:G). The gameplay is solid, the graphics and sound work well, there is a well-narrated story line, and the controls and UI work fine (I played with an XBox controller). The protagonist, Silas Greaves, is likable, and the voice acting is well done. There are enough weapons to add variety to the gameplay as you hunt down some of the Wild West's most notorious outlaws. There are several quick-button events, but no big deal. The only issues that I had with the game are all minor. The quick-draw mini-game was hard to figure out, even when I won. These draws should have been high points of the game. Also, some of the skills that you could acquire were rather useless, though there were a good number of choices overall. But these are again minor gripes. Red Dead Redemption is still the gold standard for western-themed games. However CoJ:G is a great addition to the genre.
I really liked this game. It's essentially a card-deck builder with light fantasy role-playing elements. The art style is great, and the tactical combat is well done. There is no voice acting, so you'll be reading everything that happens. However, the music is decent. There are four main quests in which you journey across the map and complete minor quests. All along the way, you will encounter different creatures or parties to fight. Most rewards are loot that is basically cards or money to buy new items (which function as cards). It all comes together well. I had no problem with the food dynamic, and the battles seemed fair enough, though some bosses were challenging. The only drawbacks for the game to me were the rogue-lite elements, where if you die, you are dead and have to restart the entire main quest. I don't really like that kind of dynamic, since I am not one for restarting games from the beginning. You can work around this by alt-tabbing out of the game occasionally and copying your saved game files. However, I am just not a fan of this kind of hardcore penalty in a video game where random stuff can kill off a party pretty quickly. Anyhow, a very good game overall. I have to admit that I never finished the entire game, beyond the first 2 of 4 main quests. It just lost my interest after that, since I had seen about all that the game had to offer and the story lines are not especially compelling. Still, I highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPG games.
I love the idea and vision behind the game, but the implementation lags far behind. It is rather Star Trek-like in that you "explore strange new worlds" and seek out alien races and civilizations, And for about 2-3 hours its kind of interesting. However, the more you explore, the gameplay loop exhausts itself fairly early. You build a ship, search for resource for upgrades, scan a planet, read a description, pick an answer from a multiple choice menu, and then you're off to the next planet or worm hole. There are encounters that break up the monotony, such as the occasional ship-to-ship skirmish, but these are too simple and arcadey to really be fun. I put in about 5 hours, and it seemed that I had seen about all that the game had to offer. If you want a solid space exploration game with some decent missions, good combat, and engaging leveling and upgrade system, play one of the Space Rangers games or Freelancer. Spacecom: Nexus was a bit of a letdown. It starts off promising, but then drops the ball pretty quickly.
This is one of those games that I should have played when it first came out. Here in 2022, I don't really understand what all of the fuss is about. I played the tutorial and part of a campaign mission with all of the recommended mods and was completely underwhelmed. AoW: Shadow Magic beats this every day of the week, as well as AoW3 and several other similar games. If you have a dollar or 2 to throw away, you might want to pick this up on sale. Otherwise, don't bother.
I really wanted to like this one. I placed Cossacks 2, and it was decent. However, C3 does nothing new that RTS games didn't do 20 years ago. IF you have played Warcraft, Age of Empires, or any of the other old-school RTS games with monotonous resource collecting, bad pathfinding, and unsightly base sprawl, then that's exactly what you are getting with C3. I played one campaign mission and one skirmish, and then promptly uninstalled. There is just nothing here to hold your interest. It actually seems a step backward from Cossacks 2. Not recommended.
