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amazon SteamWorld Quest Hand of Gilgamech reviews
When it comes to the card game genre, everyone must think of the fierce confrontations between players in Yu-Gi-Oh, Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering … To blow new wind into the genre a rookie named Slay The Spire has incorporated the cards into the roguelike role-playing game, quickly becoming a hit on Steam while delivering a highly satisfying single-player experience.
Image & Form, a long-standing Swedish developer, has just launched SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, promising to bring a different direction to the genre by incorporating so many role-playing elements into the card game.
So, what special features does SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech bring to this fussy genre of players?
If you are familiar with the SteamWorld line that Image & Form has built during the last time, players will encounter extremely funny robot characters, mixed with the context of the fantasy genre makes the characters of SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech extremely special and impressive.
The game tells the story of Armilly’s journey to save the world with the friends she gets along with along the way. Armilly is an ideal girl, admiring the heroes of Guild Hero, on her way to rescue this guild. To be able to do that, she joined forces with her friends, including comrades along the way. Gradually, the game reveals a higher destiny for her – that is to save the world.
With the not so outstanding content that has similarities with many JRPGs, the “worth” point of the game lies in character building. The characters in the game are meticulously built, portraying each character’s personality with funny lines. From the extremely “crazy” heroic Armilly, the serious and engrossed Copernica with the study of magic, to the lazy but reliable frog guy Galleo … all are delineated in detail in the words, fighting style of each character.
In terms of art, it is impossible not to mention the gentle music that plays throughout Armilly’s evil journey when the melodies are very clever and reasonable. Gentle, melodious songs when players move on the countryside with vast fields, music filled with blood and fire played when the player encounters bosses …
Everything works like cogs in a pattern, coordinating smoothly and together to create a living world in SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech.
Despite possessing a card battle style, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech brings in itself the core of a turn-based role-playing genre like Final Fantasy. Therefore, the fiery fighting phases in the game are also faster and more compact than the traditional card game.
The mechanism of the game is quite easy to grasp, players will arrange a lineup of three members, each member will be allowed to bring eight cards into the fight. Starting with three characters, the player can open up new characters at the end of the game, each with its role that you can arrange and customize to suit your gameplay. Armilly favors physical attacks and encourages her teammates, so her cards will mainly be physical damage, take down enemy damage, increase self damage; Copernica will favor magic elemental damage, possessing impressive wide area attacks; The lumpy Galleo is the only healer with the ability to protect teammates very well.
At the start of the battle, players will be randomly drawn six cards from the deck, allowed to draw again twice each turn. These cards will remain in hand until the end of the game unless the player uses them or picks them up again.
Each turn, the player will be able to use up to three cards, some of the basic cards that will help you create SP (literally, magic power) to use stronger cards to help turn the game around. If all three cards are played by one character during the turn, you will activate the Heroic Chain, a very useful fourth card, like Copernica will shield the entire team, Galleo will heal, and the entire team physical defense… Heroic Chain cards will be decided by weapons as you equip your character.
With a total of 24 cards in each battle, players need to build standard decks for their characters to maximize their capabilities. These cards can be found in treasure chests or crafted/upgraded in the shop. The number of cards for each character is extremely diverse and quite balanced, not making a character too “powerful” but need to support each other to promote their full potential.
One extremely critical point the game creates that can make new players squirm is that in battle if a character is defeated, their cards are still in the deck. So you can hit those cards but can’t use them, making your chances of losing almost significantly increased. If two of the three characters are defeated, the player’s chances of winning are almost very slim. Therefore, it is very important to keep all three members of the team alive.
With gameplay that is extremely easy to grasp but requires a lot of thought in building decks and interacting between characters, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is ready to satisfy even first-time card players and veteran players who want the challenge to find the most “powerful” deck of cards in the game.
If the condensation and accessibility of SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is the attraction for players, the poor level construction makes the game less challenging.
First, the screens are designed to be very simple and repeated continuously during the game. Although the game has many turns for you to move, explore to find support items on the road, they lack obstacles to challenge the player in the process of moving like solving puzzles. To complete the level, players only need to defeat about six enemies in the level with a final boss.
Next, the enemies in SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech are not too diverse. Except for special bosses, all monsters and bosses possess some of the same properties. The bees all have the ultimate technique to enhance evasion and sting, Queen Bee is a boss but only has more than one technique: call the disciple. Giant monsters all possess Rage ability when hit, more health, if the boss can have more ability to heal fast, and wide attack skill.
All of the above makes the game somewhat easy to breathe, allowing players to enjoy the storyline and not be too “overwhelmed” when first touching the card genre. However, with a story just barely going to be used, is the lack of such a challenge the right move?