The game is a lot of fun already and has more depth than it seems.
At first I thought it is just another deck-building game, this time with nice visuals and some RPG elements. Then I was like "Wait, I can add another skill-branch??" and "What, there are multi level dungeons in this game??" etc. :)
The combat system is really enjoyable, turn based but really fast paced. Maybe it can be a litte easy on higher levels, but bear in mind I have not tried the hard difficulty yet.
I highly recommend this game, especially for this price.
Gordian Quest is a game with huge potential. I say that because only the first part of the game is playable as of the time of this review. Biggest plus argument for this game for me personally is, that it lets you the option how you want to play it. I am not a fan of rogue-ish games and most solo-deckbuilding games are. Therefor I really like that you have the option in Gordians Quest to play it oldschool with no perma-death mechanics, but you can if you want to!
Here are some other pros and cons:
+
Interesting combat mechanics
You build not one deck but multiple decks (Every hero has his own deck)
Every hero feels unique
-
The loot is repetitive as of now
Some heroes are way more powerfull than others.
The best way to describe this game is 'Slay the Spire' combined with 'Darkest Dungeon'. The diificulty is variable- no there's no need to punish yourself if you don't want to. There's several modes available depending if you want permadeath for your heroes or the ability to resurrect them in town.
Each of the seven (as of now) heroes has their own skill decks that you build while playing, and within each hero class are three sub-category decks where you can refine your builds, which leads to quite a bit of experimentation and replayability. You can generally steer your heroes towards certain skills, but there is randomness involved, so you might change your plans based on what skills you draw. The addition of kitting out your heroes with items and runes expands the depth even further. There still needs to be some balance passes, as some heroes, items and specialization combos work much better with each other, and if you discover those combos, the late game becomes fairly trivial.
The good news is that each "late game" is contained within each region/Act (currently there's two, planned four), you start over with new characters/decks (with some carryover bonuses). New mechanics appear in the second Act as well, which are planned to be expanded as each Act is added in the game. Since this game is 85% battling monsters, the battle loops can get repetitive if you stay with your same teams doing the same actions.
Right now, there's enough here to keep players busy as they add more content. Once the game is finished, this game should definitely give a rich combination of deck-building and turn-based party dungeon crawler gameplay.
Pros:
-Characters look very nice, every one of them looks like you might imagine
-UI is great, press control for more info on cards, etc
-Sound is great, you feel the impact of your blows
-Music is fine too, I normally just turn it off, but left it on for this game
-On normal (so far) I'm not getting my ass handed to me like in other rogue-type games
-Speaking of types of games, this one has lots of choices as to how you play, which reminded me of older games where you'd be able to resurrect fallen team mates (optionally)
-It's fun, battles feel fair and I've had teammates die (I rez them in town)
-Even camping is fun but I don't fully understand it as I only just got the game
Cons:
-I am not sure what a few of the terms mean on the cards and the in-game glossary didn't help me, I think it's because the concepts are so well know maybe? but just not to me. So I'll have to bing up some help/guildes to work out what some of these effects mean. Still it hasn't made me suck at the game so that's a plus.
-I don't understand the upgrading options particularly, I "think" a cleric should have X, but maybe it's "Y" (i.e. strength vs intellect), I'd prefer some guidance there.
I played the game for about four more hours straight and the fact that it's got procedural content along with new areas on the horizon makes me feel I won't get bored with this game any time soon.
The game is great and it has finally released on GOG. Among the wave of deck building games that appeared after slay the spire this one stands out with very unique ideas and party building mechanics. Hope that in the future GOG version doesn't lag behind on updates and patches.
