Gord Review (Mesarthim)
I finally decided to give it a positive review but actually, it's more of a "meh".
We do certainly need more strategy titles.
With that said, Gord is a mix between a colony sim and a RTS, what makes it a "meh" is because the game could use a lot more quality of life like taking items from the ground which always require 2 clicks and opening the exchange item window requires to click on a unit, click on the item then click on the exchange icon... This could be streamlined.
The game is fun and well thought, you get a max of 15 people in your Gord (your city) and you get to know them and assign them the correct job, you get to care for them and mix between explorers and gatherers.
Explorers/fighters are basically your RTS units, right click to move and explore the fog of war, gatherer will automatically gather food to and from the building related to their occupation. Let's say, it all works, story is okay, music is pretty nice, voice acting and sound design is top notch, making you feel like you're in a survival horror game somehow.
There are 10 missions for the campaign and it's more than enough !
Now, the game is really basic on the colony sim, no tech tree, you unlock all buildings pretty quickly, gathering food, wood, reeds, hunting animals, wheat farms, clay, Iron and gold mining.
Your Gord size is determined by the walls you build which limit the number of buildings you can have and it's often a tetris game to build the buildings you want and you can increase the size of the gord but you will never destroy the wall between the extention and between your actual Gord making the extention a bit frustrating. Outpost are crazy small and you need to be a bit creative to succeed to build 3 buildings inside (a miner, a place to rest and a place to heal).
Your units have a health and a sanity trait which you need to care for, it's not too difficult to manage but it's there and you need to pay attention to it.
Now, one of the biggest flaw is that the maps are really big, I would normally be pretty happy about it but they're so difficult to move through (all the enemies, small events, obstacles preventing you from seeing what's ahead... And for lore reasons, it's also always night time... All this together makes exploration uselessly difficult.
Once in a while you get small events which requires you to take a decision, they're not really interesting, there's always a good and bad choice, the bad choice is just taking away ressources from you so it's not that important... There aren't many events so once you know what is the right choice, you can always select that answer in the future once they pop again.
The narrator can be a bit annoying telling you to take a look there and there and there... simultaneously!
This got on my nerves pretty quickly.
Also, you get to build a temple and cast spells but the healing spell is pretty much the only one I ever used which made the spell system a bit useless.
So, all in all, I was glad to play a RTS even if not a very deep one, there are room for improvements and if there is a sequel one day (the story makes us think so) the devs need to add a bunch of things.
(better UI, better maps, better navigation, tech tree improvements, better military defense, building improvement with the walls, and so on)