Gordian Quest Review (fr0sty)
This game is the quintessential example of a mostly positive reviewed game.
Everything in the game is done on such level that for every cool feature there is a serious flaw:
1) Classes - I haven't seen such diverse and viable classes anywhere else, they are fun to explore. BUT there are a few big "BUTs":
* the characters are just dummies, and their personality is shown very sketchily, although they are drawn well.
* there are 10 characters in the game, each with 3 classes for which the game does not provide training or a clear description of the mechanics.
* the plentiful classes seems to encourage experimentation with combat mechanics, but there are only 3 slots in the party and the rest are left on the bench.
* when you need a character from the bench, you have to build a deck for him blindly, and there's almost no chance of not shitting yourself because it's hard to gauge how effective the cards in a class deck are.
* you can only pespec a character with a special artifact, which you still have to figure out where to find, so you can't experiment within one character either.
* after level 30, progression ceases to have a significant effect on anything.
* you don't get many synergy points and it's better not to spray them on several characters.
Often, this means that the game motivates you to play with a once assembled party and once chosen class for each character.
Okay, is there a Realms mode for experimenting with characters? No, almost every difficulty level in this mode is tiresome, forces you to play as safe as possible, and doesn't reward challenge in any decent way at all. In addition, for a rogue-lite mode, it lacks metaprogression, and each new run not only doesn't make further play easier, but also differs little from the previous one - in general, I consider this mode a failure.
2) Battles are dynamic, variable and can entertain even after a few dozen hours. BUT they can be randomly generated in such a way that they can either be over in 1 turn or impossible to complete at all - this is frustrating. The reward for most fights is more often than not randomly generated trash, and that's frustrating too.
3) There are some curious game mechanics, BUT even more useless ones. There are so many of them that it sometimes becomes frightening, and the game itself does not highlight these mechanics in any way: random loot, gearing, leveling, several types of currencies, 4 types of merchants, 2 modes of exploration maps, several types of interaction with runes and item modifications, random events and randomly generated fights, shrines - all of this exists as if in parallel to each other and mostly exists only to quantitatively bloat the game.
4) The game runs smoothly on Steamdeck, BUT there are ergonomics and visibility issues. For complex fights, you need to move to PC for better control. Also, in some places the game can lose control and stop responding to button presses, but it doesn't happen often.
5) The soundtrack is good, although not outstanding, BUT only for the first 15-20 hours, then only Spotify.
The game is either poorly balanced, or the game concept itself is carefully planned so that it's fun, but not so much.