Gordian Quest

Much Gordian, Many Quests

What a terribly balanced game. I know I'm late too the party. If there even is/ was one but highly don't recommend. Good game at inception but developers got bored/ lazy/ ran out of of money. Early access for that long for what? Jesus

This game has a lot to like, but also has what I see as some pretty serious flaws.

The biggest one is how damage is balanced. When your characters have 30 health enemies can routinely deal 20-25 damage with their hits, especially if they apply ailment damage. This means killing enemies or avoiding their attacks is critical. But there is an initiative roll! Players seem to have a significant advantage on initiative, but I had two runs in a row ended because I lost initiative and was one-shot before getting a chance to act in battle. This was on normal difficulty.

I generally don't like the way damage is balanced in the game, but add the ability to not go first on top of it, and it's just ludicrous. Not being able to take a turn before you die, from full health, is a pretty unforgivable flaw.

Really fun.
the problem that I had was balance. The last act of the campaing was so easy I stop playing (you can just become a bear and destroy everything alone). I believe they wanted solo character play to be viable, but it messed up with the balance in general. If I wanted a solo character card game I would play slay the spire...
Harder difficulty seems to only give more HP to enemies too which is a bummer.
I also tested the infinity mode, but the game started to break down.
I will recommend because I would like to see a better version of this game in the future

I put about 5 hours into Gordian Quest back in early access and walked away, reasonably satisfied with what I saw and perfectly willing to let the game be until it reaches 1.0 and maybe accrues some further updates.

Having revisited the game now, however, I'm left scratching my head, because the painfully mediocre and bothersome experience I got to witness doesn't line up with memories of my early access foray into Gordian Quest. I barely managed to make myself finish the first act, and I have zero desire to press on.

I feel that the game is utterly outclassed by its competition, titles that manage to combine tactical combat with deck building in far more satisfying ways (Trials of Fire and Fights in Tight Spaces come to mind). While fairly good-looking and functional, Gordian Quest offers nothing that'd make it if not special then at least properly enjoyable.

The game's key and most fundamental issue is the way deck building is tied to levelling up. So, the opportunities to trim and expand your party members' decks are there, but the pace of acquiring them is far too slow. Card upgrades are also tied to this context. I strongly suspect that decoupling all the card-related business from levelling, thus letting it be all about stat boosts and perks, would've done the game quite a favour.

...moreover, if you level up and decide you want a new card, you'll only get a chance to draw one from a random set of cards. Yes, this is standard operating procedure when it comes to deck builders, but sticking with it while tying card acquisition to levelling up strikes me as a questionable move, putting it mildly.

The campaign structure and related mechanics? No joy to be found here in my experience. Everything feels superfluous and unnecessary; I may have to admit that the exploration mini-game has managed to rub me the right way, but that's a minor exception at best.

There's a story somewhere in there, but everything about the setting, the characters, and the plot is so enormously bland that paying attention to the whole thing quickly becomes an undesirable proposition. I'm all for a good narrative, but what's here is barely able to conjure a decent backdrop.

Itemization may well be the only aspect of the game that's close to being respectable, but it's not exactly able to carry the game by itself.

I rarely bother with penning negative reviews, preferring not to dwell on the things that aren't up to snuff, but here we are. If you are looking Gordian Quest's way, chances are your time and attention are better spent elsewhere.

++

Progression in both campaign and rouge-like feels underwhelming. Too much management, too little effect.

I like pie

Not amazing but it is fine, I enjoy it.

I play alot of roguelike deckbuilders and this is one of the better ones ive played. Build variety is solid and the runs actually take a very long time which is unique to a deckbuilder but works great in this game. Graphics are good and game runs great for me. They did a good job of giving each character the options of having some synergy with others, makes a big difference on difficult runs. Great game all in all, i recommend it and give it a very solid 8.5/10

Gordian Quest is a refreshing and addictive blend of deck-building, strategy, and RPG mechanics. Its deep and rewarding gameplay offers countless ways to customize your heroes and approach battles. The hand-drawn art style is stunning, and the lore-rich world adds depth to the adventure. With its engaging combat, intriguing progression, and cooperative features, Gordian Quest provides hours of satisfying gameplay for card game and RPG enthusiasts alike. Highly recommended!

good

dis good.

The gameplay is smooth and good to play and the campaing mode is way better than I tought would be

Although I downvoted the game, I actually want to like it (as evidenced by my 72 hours of gameplay). It has nice graphics (in my opinion) and many card decks and roles to play—around 10 roles, each with 3 strategic sets of card decks. It seems like a lot, but they're actually grouped into a few core strategies: melee/ranged attack traits, support traits, and damage-over-time (DOT) traits. It's fun to discover each deck's potential, but the problem is... in my opinion, most of the decks are useless because the attack strategy is often the best choice. In a game like this, you don’t want to take too long in each battle; support or DOT strategies just drag out the fight and are likely to get you killed if you're overwhelmed (for example, by 9 powerful monsters on the field). As a result, only a few decks are really worth playing.

Another issue is that the decks are designed to be very specific to each set, with hardly any synergy across them. So, even though the game offers different sets to choose from, you mostly end up taking cards from the same set. Each set has specific combos that don’t work well with other deck sets. For example, one of the Warlock deck sets revolves around applying "blood" to the player character as a mechanic, while other sets focus on applying "blood" to opponents, which means there's no synergy between self-applied blood skills and opponent-targeted skills. This makes deck selection less impactful and reduces strategic variety.

Additionally, item improvements are too random. You often need to boost a specific attribute (like STR, DEX, or INT), and while items can contribute to this, their attributes are randomized, which means you often don’t get the stats you need.

The result is that when you near the final act, you end up with the best card set that can no longer be meaningfully improved (due to the limited strategies available in each set). You have to spam the same gameplay loop repeatedly, which makes the late game feel tedious. I’m not surprised that fewer than 10% of players finish the game. So, if it's on sale and you like card games, this may entertain you for a while.

I bought and refunded this game once before, but bought it again, because it had a lot going for it.

Happy to report, my return has been rewarded. This is a game that gets better and better the further in you get. Partially, its a matter of learning the combat and your team/combat style. Its also because a lot of the mechanics, in combat and with your builds, are not explained in any detail. You just kind of figure things out.

So, I would 100% recommend this game, just understand it takes a few hours to get rolling. Its good from the start, but I saw a noticeable blossoming toward the end of the first area, which has continued as I am working through part 2.

excellent deck builder game, great strategies with soo many different build options, very fun for the genre. huge replayability between the choice of characters with an added option of 1 of 3 different decks to choose from to even make them more of a niche' build. good branching storyline. can see many many hours of my life sunk into this. def recommend.

Too clanky.. There are better games in the genre.

Yes.

Great game

Written-by Mr. Kim Dotcom, circa August 18, 2024:

"This may be the most important post you’ll ever read because it provides a simple explanation about why our world is being destroyed, by design.

I’m not antisem itic nor a N azi. I’m simply a former hacker with great analytical skills who understands what’s happening in the world.

At the end of this post I will quote from a world domination plan. You will recognize the truth immediately because that’s what’s currently happening in the world. Today’s reality suggests that this plan is real.

When you do your own research you will learn that the origin of this plan was discredited and that the alleged creators have nothing to do with it. But who was the person providing the key evidence?

It was allen dulles. The man who raised money from US industrialists to fund Ad olf Hi tler, his Na zi party and his war. The man who later became the director of the CIA during Kennedy and the head of The Warren Commission that investigated the Kennedy Incident. Why would anybody believe a man with such a questionable character?

The protocols of the elders of zion have unquestionably borrowed ideas from several authors but you can say that about most important writings throughout history. It was called a fabrication and is one of the first uses of the term ‘conspiracy theory’.

Why do zionists have a massive over-representation in the media, politics, banking, and world-affairs? How did such a small community get to dominate all the centers of power and information?

Why can isreal ignore UN resolutions, international-law, and commit a genocide in Ga za, to standing ovations in the US Congress? Why is isreal acting like it is above the law seemingly without any fear of consequences.
Read some of the alleged zi onist world domination plan below and compare it with reality. Is all of this just a coincidence?

“Our power will be more invincible than any other, because it will remain invisible until the moment when it has gained such strength that no cunning can any longer undermine it.”

“We shall absolutely control the media, so that not a single announcement will ever reach the public without our control. In this way we shall have a sure triumph over our opponents, for without the media, they are helpless.”

“We will distract the brainless heads with vain conceptions, fantastic theories, rotten amusement, games, and filthy passions, so that they will be unable to use what intellect they have. They will never suspect that they have been stage managed by us.”

“We shall establish huge monopolies, so that all will go to ruin when the political smash-up comes. We must, at all cost, deprive them of their lands, we must lower wages, and raise the prices of all necessities of life.”

“We shall create an economic crisis, which will stop dealings in all exchanges and bring industry to a standstill. We shall throw onto the streets whole mobs of workers, simultaneously, all over the world, who will rush to loot property and delight to shed blood.”

“In our government, besides ourselves, there must only be the mass of enslaved people, a few billionaires devoted entirely to us, police, and soldiers. To do this we must create chaos and hostilities, and we must use all deceit, treachery and falseness, possible. Our greatest weapon is the media.”

“We shall establish one king over all of earth who will annihilate all causes of discord, such as borders, nationalities, religion, state debts, etc., and get peace and quiet which cannot be secured in any other way. To attain our ends we must foment trouble in all countries, utterly exhaust all of humanity with hatred, struggle, envies, torture, starvation, and diseases, so that the people will be forced to take refuge in our complete sovereignty.”

“Our master card has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of all privileges, on the ruins of which we shall set up our absolute autocracy.”

Please be mindful that most pro-isreal comments on social media are generated by the largest bot network in the world, not by real people.

Specifically, this is what has been done, using video-games to brain-wash, indoctrinate, demoralize, and fractionalize, young(er) people who would otherwise be focused-on family and community, is IN-YOUR-FACE, now, and is openly-known to be happening with the games we buy from Steam, and others.

Search for this article using the following search-terms: Zero Hedge "Leftist Consulting Firms Exposed Behind Wokification Video Games":

""How the tables have turned in the past decade. If you were involved at the inception of the culture war around a decade ago then you probably remember an abrupt and distinct change in popular media from 2015 to 2016. There was a surge of far-left and feminist propaganda in movies, television, commercials and even video games that was highly aggressive, perhaps even militant. Some people spoke out at the time and questioned the motives behind the trend, only to be smacked down by angry mobs of activists and corporate journalists with accusations of “conspiracy theory” and “bigotry.”

In other words, their claim was that you were not seeing what you thought you were seeing. There was no feminist agenda. There was no gay or trans agenda. There was no socialist messaging. It was only in your head.
If there is one rule that encompasses all political endeavors, it is this: If you have to hide your intentions and lie about your goals when trying to spread your ideology, then something is probably very wrong with your ideology. This is exactly the problem inherent in the attempt to spread woke doctrine – Activists and provocateurs never ask anyone if they want to hear about woke ideas; they seek to force everyone to see and hear woke ideas, to the point that people cannot escape the messaging.

Even more insulting is the fact that even though most of these activists claim to be fans of the media they target, they are usually discovered to be frauds. Woke ideologues have little sincere interest in nostalgia, movie making, video games, comic books, etc. They only care about these properties because they see them as a vehicle to be co-opted, infected and dominated. Leftists know well that if they control pop culture they can control the thinking of the next generation."...

Absolutely love this game. Such a hidden gem. Spent many hours enjoying this title. Will play again to teach game design to students.

Good game, but I wish it was formatted a little differently at the beginning so that you could choose your party of 3 from the start. The end game is diablo like with running dungeons/challenges against the same enemies as the story for a random chance to get better gear which I don't care much for, but the base game was fun with different parties.

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
You will never understand how the majority of mechanics work without experimenting yourself, and there isn't much information on the internet. If you can't tie your shoes without watching a guide and spending five hours on Reddit, you might feel frustrated and discouraged.

This is an ambitious game, but from this perspective, it overpromises and underdelivers. The core gameplay is fun, but it is burdened by too many half-baked and shallow features, which turn the entire experience into a slog. Sometimes, less is more.

This is a well crafted game. clean art-style, and has been a rewarding experience so far.

I can't really get into it and I played a lot (check my playtime).

so i'm loving this game.

it's everything you loved about Slay The Spire but with more.

You get to maneuver your characters around a 9 or sometimes 12 "square" battlefield. So you can avoid some attacks just by moving your characters from one row or column to another.

Each character gets their own base deck of cards and abilities to draw from with the option to specialize into 3 specific subclasses based on their initial class.

Each character gets their own skill tree which upgrades cards, or adds new cards into their deck. These skill trees also access passive abilities and can remove cards from your deck, which is quite handy.

Characters have the ability to equip items which provide passive bonuses or even new cards. Equipment has rune slots as well as the ability to attach cards from your deck to that item so that the runes places in that item augment the abilities on the card.

The heroes journey around a map where enemy groups spawn,
There's also Special Encounters where a text screen pops up and random things can happen from there,
Exploration points on the map feel like a hastily added minigame, but allow for other game mechanics if you happen to need a break from the main gameplay.

game has consumable items potions and the like.


As for things i didn't care for.

Game has tutorial it darkens the screen allowing for the player to only click where the tutorial wants you to click. This in itself isn't a bad thing until i came to one part where i wasn't able to click or advance the tutorial at all.

Some of the card effects like "might" or "Agility" or "Channeling" isn't really explained what those abilities do until you use them and the buff is applied to the character.

in order to use cards on yourself or others you have to click in the space they are standing in, sometimes trying to click this you place your cursor over the character's health and status bar getting mouse-over prompts instead of anything you can click.

6.5/10 It's kind of like Iron Oath, but with heroes that use small decks. Surprisingly deep and rather satisfying to create complimentary decks... but a lot the depth is unnecessary. As others have said, you basically just refine your "deck" into a couple really good cards and rely solely on those.


Pros:

- Deep game with lots of gear/deck/talent options

- Actually has a combat log. Huge plus, though it was doesn't actually detail how it calculated things

- Some really cool combos available between heroes in the group

- Music is pretty good

- Seems to be a good variety of starting decks to suit all kinds of playstyles

- Good character art; it's not too anime feeling though it's got that influence. Kind of like Legend of Vox Machina, which is a compliment


Cons:

- Game's complexity mostly serves to waste time

- Big issue: no text/UI scaling. Card text is borderline too small until you actually click on a card to make it bigger (wouldn't be an issue but sometimes you literally cannot make a card bigger). Other text is tiny and there's SO much room to make it bigger at any resolution. People have repeatedly asked for it for YEARS on the forums and the devs always say it's planned, but never improved it

- Most legendaries are a trap. Low level gear with low/mid level runes will be *far* superior, which is hugely disappointing since there are so many legendaries

- Card mechanics aren't explained well, especially for the more complex classes with lots of keywords

- Getting new cards takes a long time and is largely random. I'd like more control here because a single good card can literally make or break the whole group's strategy

- Likes to crash or become unable to do anything in combat, forcing a restart

- Doesn't seem to have gotten much post-launch support

- AI controlled allies are extremely stupid and constantly move around even when it's very detrimental to do so. Pets aren't... quite as bad, but still waste attacks on empty tiles or something else dumb

- On top of previous issue, pets are a drag to use because they slow down combat and there's so much in the game, you'll want to be blowing through easy fights with area damage. This means your pets get maybe 1 whole weak hit in before the fight is over. In boss fights, your pets aren't smart enough to move out of attacks and you can't realistically keep moving them with skills, so... pets kinda suck in normal fights and kinda suck in boss fights. Sad

One of the few card game rpg's that has good story and long term progression. I like rogue-like card games, but I always felt like I was missing a true campaign. I think the class design, card choices, and optimizations are great, and it has some slight tactical rpg elements as well that end up adding a lot of depth.

I would highly recommend this to any card game rpg fans looking for something a bit more long term than a roguelike. Expect to restart 1-3 times though as you get used to how to level and advance your characters, as respeccing isn't something very easy or likely to do. Would love to see this game dev make more games in this vein.

The idea is nice, feels like playing a diablo game but with cards really. The thing I got confused by the "vast and ever changing world", you don't really know when to grind and when to go forward in your quest with constant respawn on very big dot map and loads of npc to talk to so it feels like you are wasting a lot of time otherwise it is a neat game, pleasing to play, it just did not catch me I spent too much time grinding around the initial village waiting for some signal to go forward in the story.

7.5/10

yep

Quite pleasant game, similar in its base to Slay the Spire.

Main problem for me is in small amount of characters in the party. We can have maximum three out of eight available. This clearly does not allow many tactical decisions and severely limits possibilities of party creation (unles we find pleasure in struggling with some strange setups).

After some more playing. I am fed up with challenges reduced to "hey, lats give boss 1k HP. And just in case let him rebirth with another 1k HP. Hey, still too easy? Let him rebirth another time or two". In two bosses fights Iin III Act I faced bosses with sick amount of health, regenerating, attacking like "800 HP"; summoning minions etc. All of that against three heroes team with altogether some 250 HP. No, thank you.

Tried it for a few minutes, but the extremely cheap combat animations turned me off.

In short you find a combo an repeat it infinitely, there is no reason to swap heroes and each hero progression is boring. After certain time new cards are worse then what you already have.

Judging by the achievement stats 70% of players never made it past the ACT 1. They left all these positive reviews and stopped playing?

I'm not a fan of the cards combat but this game graphic and design makes it interesting and less painful.