izigame.me

Oh, boy... now I feel bad for Klei

Slay the Spire was, basically, a proof of concept.
Griftlands is taking it a step further.
Then comes Gordian Quest and obliterates both.
It's not even fair to compare them. This one is on a whole other level above the others.

Why?
Here's what you'll find in GQ (I could just say "everything" but I'll try to be a little more specific):
- Instead of playing with one character, you play with a party of 3, currently selected from a pool of 8 different ones (given that the last one was recently released, there may or may not be more to come);
- Your characters have a full set of equipment: headgear, gloves, chest armor, boots, weapon, off-hand, amulet, 2 rings and a belt;
- Items are diablo-like -- four different rarities, including legendary ones, with interesting bonuses and they can make a huge difference;
- Items can insert new cards in your deck, and you can socket gems in them (including one that removes the item's card from your deck, if you don't want it);
- The combat is card-based, as I'm sure you're aware. But each character has 3 different classes and, thus, 3 different pools of cards to pick from when getting new ones;
- Characters have 3 attributes -- Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence. They increase the power of your cards, and every class has cards that uses all 3 of them (to make that clearer: you can find Str, Dex and Int cards in any class, of any character);
- Items also have attribute requirements;
- Yes, you can "multi-class" or, in other words, draw cards from any of the 3 pools available to each character, and mix them up;
- The skill-tree system is pretty cool. Every 4 skill points spent unlock a new group of skills that you can connect to a grid, where your initial skill-group was, and then connect both to reach the skill-nodes on the new one (It may not make much sense reading it, but it's pretty clear once you see it);
- Skill points can be spent to draw a new card (from 3 different tiers, on top of the classes), upgrade, master, discard or copy one in your deck, gain attributes, or unlock "Perk" slots (these also make a huge difference);
- "Spellcasters" have Channel, "Warriors" have Fury, "Rogues" have Agility, and there's a bunch of cards to generate/spend these;
- In combat, you can/should/must move your characters around, and there are also obstacles and breakable stuff that gives you bonus items after you win;
- Fights often have modifiers on them, which can be both beneficial or harmful to you;
- There are boss fights;
- You can freely roam the map, going wherever you want, whenever you want. And the currently available ones (Acts I and II have been released so far, out of the 4 intended) have a good size;
- The 2 acts currently available take about 15 times longer to finish than one climb in Slay the Spire;
- After 40/15 hours in StS or Griftlands (EA), respectively, I had pretty much seen everything in them. After 10 hours in Gordian Quest, I was still trying to decide how I should build my characters (the 3 I was trying to win with, not including the other 5);
- You need Supplies to move around, there are Consumable items, and merchants in town sell relevant things;
- The first 2 Acts of the Campaign take 10-12 hours to beat (once you know what you're doing, and manage to do it);
- You can play in casual mode, rogue-lite (if your entire party dies in combat, the game is over) or rogue-like (dead characters can't be resurrected? I'm not sure, I played in "rogue-lite" mode);
- There's an alternative, more "roguelikeish" (quicker, akin to StS's style) play mode already available;
- I don't remember seeing any bugs. And definitely got no crashes;
- I wrote a post on the forums, in a topic about a quest in Act I that is rather confusing ATM, and one of the developers responded right afterwards with "We'll try to release a patch tomorrow fixing it." So... that's cool.
I'm probably still forgetting something, but I think that's enough.
Oh! There are artifacts too. And status effects, of course. But nvm, you'll see them.

Why not?
The only flaws Gordian Quest has, in my opinion, are inherent to any Early Access title:
- Acts III and IV haven't been implemented yet. And I want to play them;
- The game is somewhat unbalanced at the moment. If you manage to beat Act I, Act II becomes too easy, with the exception of a few boss fights.
And... that's all. I can't really think of anything I could fairly criticize in this game.

What I'd like/expect to see when 1.0 comes out:
Acts III and IV, of course, but also more cards and legendaries. Neither is really lacking right now, but the more builds you can come up with and the more items you want to chase after, the better. That's essentially what makes a game replayable and rewarding.
IMO, legendary items should also be rarer. If they come up too often, you don't value them as much, nor are you as thrilled when you find one. Making their stats oscilate more might also be a good idea, so that finding the one you want doesn't necessarily mean you got what you wanted. Or you could end up getting something even better.
More characters are always nice too, but I think we can all agree 8 is already a pretty good amount of them.
Perhaps most importantly, they gotta make sure the game is well balanced. It needs to be hard. You must have to master it. There's nothing worse than a game that is awesome but too easy -- it ruins everything else (which is what happens to all AAA titles these days). Given GQ's complexity (if not in any game), this can only be done once the whole game is finished, so... so far, so good.
And I hope the developers have some surprise up in their sleeves because, you know, that's always cool. Maybe set items? Or some extremely rare ones, above legendary? A 4th tier of cards? Unlockable and/or large (2 or more grid-squares) units to play with? ALL OF IT?!?
Ahem! I got carried away there for a moment.
Anyway, given what they've made so far, I'm very confident this will be an amazing game when it's complete. They put everything they could and should on the table, and already managed to make it work. I don't see how things could go wrong from here.

In short:
Forget Slay the Spire and Griftlands (sorry, Klei; I still love you). Gordian Quest takes the prize.
It's not as short and simple as StS. It's not full of endless dialogues, like Griftlands. And it has a lot of features those two don't have. It's five steps ahead of them.
Buy it, and spread the word. Then buy it for your friends, and tell them to do the same. Gift it to your grandpa, and tell your mother she'll never guess what you got her for her birthday. And then... well, you get the point.