Dungeons & Dragons and the card game? – Early Access Experience “Gordian Quest”

The curse darkened the world. The dead have risen from their graves, and gangs of thugs and other monsters are invading settlements and cities more and more boldly. However, not all is lost, as you appear with a group of heroes to save what is left of this fallen world and destroy unspeakable evil. Another roguelike game ? Well, not really. Here is the Gordian Quest from a small Mixed Realms studio.

 

Before you go on your way, you should assemble your party

The story that we will experience in the campaign mode will be quite simple, but it will allow us to get into the atmosphere easily. In ancient times, people lived in peace with the Vanai, beings characterized by unrestrained desires for enormous power, which enraged the gods and were banished. As a result, people inherited a cursed and divided land full of various beasts, monsters and – of course – crazy cultists (in a good fantasy story they could not be missing).

From the very beginning, the creators do not hide the fact that they draw from the world of Dungeons & Dragons by handfuls , because the player takes on the role of an adventurer, who one day ends up in a mountain town besieged by the undead, the Silver Fortress. There, Captain Rodrick, the garrison commander, introduces the protagonist to the current situation and distributes the first tasks to be performed. Of course, in the town we will meet more people who will want us to do something for them, but will calmly repay us in one way or another.

Quite quickly, the player will also come across other adventurers who can be recruited to join the expanding team. Ultimately, it will have nine daredevils (actually ten, but let’s not anticipate the facts). Who will be on the starting team will depend on our prior choice of champion, and the choice is not that simple. The creators have put at the disposal of players nine character classes based on easily recognizable and iconic classes taken straight from the textbooks about dungeons and dragons. So we have: a troubadour, a cleric, a druid, a golem-lover, a hunter, a rogue, a sorcerer, a warrior and a sorcerer. Little? In that case, I will add that each of the character classes has four more subclasses, from which we have to choose one to start. Each of them influences what style of combat will our hero have, and so, for example, a cleric, inspired by divine power, can focus on dealing damage to single targets, bring destruction to entire hordes of enemies like the most unrepentant inquisitor, or focus on supporting her companions and dressing their wounds. Of course, it is not a problem to lead the development of your heroes in such a way that they draw a bit from each subclass, and in case we are not satisfied with how the character tree has grown, we can cut it down as well and use the appropriate item to start from the beginning.

The team can only consist of three daredevils, so you need to think carefully about its composition. Depending on the heroes you choose, the fight will require you to master a completely different tactic. It is very likely that when we manage to create our dream team , we will stick to it for the rest of the game, leaving the other heroes in the guild waiting for their turn.

The story itself is divided into acts, currently there are three available, but ultimately there will be four. They are semi-independent pieces of history. Each of them has a large map to explore and a base where we can return to rest, buy supplies, upgrade weapons and receive quests from NPCs.

Strategic Approach

The aforementioned map consists of a network of nodes that the player can go to. They can represent skirmishes, an exploration event, rest points (i.e. camps) or shrines, or a story event. Some of the nodes are called landmarks that are essentially fast travel points, allowing you to easily move between different parts of the map.

Occasionally the player will have the opportunity to set up a camp. Spending time in this place will not only allow our heroes to rest, but also allow them to prepare for further exploration. Each hero has skills and, depending on their complexity, will be able, for example, to heal himself or allies, collect supplies or provide team bonuses for future battles, and upgrade cards and weapons. We can only stay in the camp for a few hours, and each activity consumes a certain amount of time or resources, so let’s try to use them as best as possible.

Shrines are places that affect other nodes. The player can pray in them and, using mysterious incense or fate points, add or remove positive and negative effects. In this way, we can earn powerful rewards, but we must also take into account the resulting growing threat.

Exploration events are small mini-games in which we will have to mark a path using markers on the map. The map can show places such as cellars or dungeons and contain randomly generated symbols. The trick is to strategically use markers to overlap as many symbols as possible. Each time we place them on the symbol, we have the opportunity to get a treasure chest, supplies, equipment, reach the castle tower, find monsters wandering around, or anything else.

Story events are situations where the heroes face a choice, often involving a skill test. Here, as in D&D , the player must roll the d20 to see if he can pass the test. Depending on individual statistics and skills, heroes may have modifiers that make it easier or harder to pass the test. Trials are based on three main stats – Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence (which are much more important, but we’ll get to that later).

To be successful, a player must roll the appropriate number of dice. To make the task easier, each of the heroes can use one of their own cards to increase their chances of winning, but regardless of the result, it will be associated with wasting them and receiving the so-called. exhaustion. These types of events are meant to encourage the player to juggle heroes, because having someone who can handle various challenges makes it much easier to get valuable loot while maintaining a low level of threat. Exhaustion is cards that have no ability and will hinder the game. They remain exhausted until the character rests, either at the starting location or reaching the camp. Moving around the map is complicated without it, because the player has to take into account not only the level of the heroes’ health points,

How much inventory we have defines how long trips we can go on, and each trip between nodes will cost some amount. Therefore, sensing movement around the map is the key to success. There are, of course, ways to recover supplies during the game, but when the amount of supplies drops to zero, each step will exhaust them, making more and more cards unavailable. Exhausted cards appear each encounter, taking up valuable hand space and are useless in combat or in a skill test, so it’s important to minimize their occurrence.

Magic and sword

And here we smoothly move to the issue of combat, because in Gordian Quest the battles take place on special maps, reminiscent of those known to fans of the Heroes of Might and Magic series . However, in this aspect, the gameplay is mixed with ideas that can be found in games such as Griftlands or Slay the Spire .

Each turn, the player receives a certain number of action points (AP) and strategy points (PS), which allow characters to move around the board or play offensive or defensive cards. Many of them have unique effects such as poison, shock, bleeding, or fire damage that can cumulate over time. The boards are actually built on a grid (3 × 3 or 3 × 4, if we are going to face the boss), in which our units and enemy units stand in opposite rows. Depending on the type of characters in your party, having them in certain rows can have both advantages and disadvantages. Some heroes do better when it is exposed in the front, some at the back and some in the middle. For example, enchanters are harder to reach when we place them behind, archers, on the other hand, have additional opportunities to deal damage from a greater distance. Some skills will allow the hero to move to a different line, using valuable strategy points instead of action points, although normally this will cost us AP.

Careful formation planning is of the utmost importance in later battles, and is absolutely crucial in boss fights when less armored heroes will fall quickly. Of course, it cannot be too simple, so the player will have to face not only the opponents themselves, but also the terrain where the skirmish will take place. In some places on the board you can find obstacles in the form of traps or boggy terrain, forcing a higher cost of movement if you want to move units through it. This, along with the variety of enemies, heroes, their extensive skills, and the equipment that our characters can equip, makes combat varied and enjoyable.

Complications continued

Oh yeah, inventory and character development. Now let’s move on to this very important part of the Gordian Quest and let’s mix it up again, eghm… I wanted to say of course, let’s clarify (delete as appropriate).

As already mentioned, characters have different classes (from warriors to bards) and also have three defining stats: Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. They not only determine what skills we can use on the battlefield and which cards are available to us, but also allow us to equip the team with weapons, armor and disposable items that we come across during the game. Some equipment provides bonuses to strength, dexterity, or agility, while the rest can provide the hero with additional cards or provide offensive or defensive bonuses.

Each item also has several slots depending on its rarity (Common, Magic, Rare, and Legendary). Roughly, the rarer the item, the more it will have. Slots can be used to further upgrade existing items with runes, which in turn unlocks further bonuses to the character’s base stats. Runes are a relatively rare find and tend to drop only after significant battles. Alternatively, they can be purchased from a merchant. The slots can have three standard colors: red (strength), green (dexterity) and blue (intelligence), which forces the player to find a rune of the appropriate color if he wants to improve an item. I said by default, because there are still items with white slots that can accommodate any rune, but these are quite rare. What’s more, In addition to the rune slot, items can also have skill slots. It is interesting because specific types of skills can be reinforced by them.

Sounds complicated? Relax, I’m just getting started. As you level up, the hero gains skill points that can be used in the skill tree to specialize in a specific subclass, in fact a card deck, or acquire useful passive skills. In case someone has not noticed yet, it’s the gameplay mechanics of Gordian Questis largely about building your own deck. Choosing a starting subclass for a given hero, we get starting cards. Along with unlocking the appropriate points on the skill grid, we can draw additional ones from the remaining three subclasses. Draw? Well, yes, because the next cards are drawn from the pool of three, where we can only keep one. If we don’t like the choice, we can always use the Fate Points and try our luck again.

Thanks to this, we do not have to worry about choosing a class at the beginning of the game. Character development was built on the same premise, and I admit that I liked this aspect the most. When we advance to a new level or when we use certain items, we gain points for which we can unlock skills for the so-called skill grid. After using 4 points, you can get another one, and each of them is assigned to a given subclass. Each grid also gives you access to one talent slot that allows you to further enhance each hero’s strengths. In this way, you can easily build a character specializing in the aspects of interest to us.

Did I mention synergies? By deploying classes with skills and tactics that stack together, you can, for example, cause a bleeding effect on multiple enemies only to have another class use that weakness to unleash a massive and devastating attack. It’s not that simple, as it depends a lot on picking the right cards at the right time, but this can be controlled to some extent with a carefully modified deck.

I could go on and on, because it’s only a campaign mode, the fact that the most extensive, but apart from it, there is also a land mode, in which we have to fight an increasing number of enemies until we defeat the land boss (to go to the next one) and the skirmish mode , which is a PvP mode. For people who love to tear their hair out, there are also 5 different levels of difficulty with additional options such as the final end of the game after the death of the team without the possibility of resurrecting them in the temple.

What verdict?

Okay, it’s time to get down to the recap!

I realize that the multitude of dependencies that I mentioned earlier may scare you off, but if it did, it was only my fault. You see, Gordian Quest is a bit like Salvador Dali’s paintings – you can’t describe it, you have to see it. There are actually a lot of intertwining mechanics in the game, but it only takes a moment to understand that we are dealing with well-designed machinery where each gear works together. The assumptions are introduced gradually as the player progresses, so as not to overwhelm him. However, if someone got lost somewhere along the way, the game took care of a tutorial (still being expanded), which you can consult at any time.

The creators put a lot of time and effort into their game and you can see, hear and feel it. First of all, great graphics with eye-catching character models, reminiscent of the style of an animated series. Each of the heroes was treated with the required and expected reverence, just like the opponents. Secondly, music and sound effects that keep a high level and do not bore or irritate even after many hours of play, allowing you to soak up the atmosphere and plunge into a world that resembles that well-known D&D fans .

Third, just a solid RPG with a card game in one that only uses some of the assumptions of roguelike games . The title is soaked with content that is to be even more, as the studio promises. Remember when I mentioned at the beginning that there are ten characters, right? Well, the day I write this (June 22, 2022) is the day before Gordian Quest officially leaves Early Access. On the same day, the creators intend to release the latest huge update! Among the introduced novelties is the addition of another hero, the Monk, giving the players act IV of the story with new locations and a lot of enemies to overcome, as well as a new adventure mode which, as I understand it, is a “new game plus” with some interesting challenges.

Do I Recommend Gordian Quest ? Yes, with all my heart. Check it out for yourself, because it’s worth it!