Recent reviews by Ghorta

(Note: hours on record do not accurately reflect playtime as I played the majority of this game offline)

I don't want to say too much because this game is more than what it appears on the surface. As a fan of card games and rogue-lite games this game did a great job scratching those itches while also providing a very intriguing narrative. I won't say much more, just play it. It's great.

The game is terribly boring. I like rogue-lites, card games, resource management games, and even retro aesthetics but this game is way too grindy. Progression is slow during the middle section of the game and the RNG nature of what cards you get makes it so you don't even get much of what you were farming for on some of the runs. The overall "loop" process just doesn't change enough to make it fun. I kept giving it a chance but over and over I felt let down by all of the systems at play here. It was interesting at first but grew very boring very quickly.

One of the better deckbuilders I've played in recent history. The gameplay (which is arguably the most important aspect of a game) is very well done and entertaining. A lot of deckbuilders recently have been harvesting the looping nature of rogue-lite games but not really nailing down any fun mechanics to make each playthrough engaging. Arcanium, while short, is very engaging with its content because the core gameplay loop is very fun.

There is only one act to play at the moment, but I still found myself playing it over and over to try out new things because it gives you a selection of heroes to choose from and you combine three of them together for what is essentially your "deck." They each have their own deck that you modify and upgrade individually. You then combine their different actions together to overcome each fight and it feels like a small team of heroes cooperating to take down foes. This setup encourages you to come up with strategies as you go along, and discover synergies with each hero that you didn't start the game off with.

The amount of cards available for each hero is wide and widens even more as you play and level up the heroes to unlock new cards and artifacts. All of this adds to the replay value and encourages you to try new combinations of heroes. I can't wait to see what the finished product of this will turn out to be.

Everything Arcanium does differently from others in its genre really stands out in a good way. I can tell a lot of labor and love has been put into this game and I've even seen what the game used to be in videos and it has definitely been refined and upgraded to a better experience and I imagine that this will continue going forward.

My favorite aspect of the game is the check on your greed they put in place. You can easily go around and explore the map to your hearts content, but this will eventually cause a lot of problems. There is a "Corruption" meter at the top and whenever you discover a new node, it increases by 1. This meter goes all the way to 10, and for each corruption you have by the time you get to the boss you essentially lose out on a reward. The faster you get to the next boss, the more cards you get to upgrade at the end of the fight. However, this means you spend less time going around and getting rewards from other nodes and the faster you get to the boss, the more enemies you have to fight before the boss even shows up in that fight. In addition, the more corruption you get, the more likely some nodes you encounter are to be "corrupted." These corrupted nodes deal damage to all of your heroes right off the bat, making it harder and harder for you to stay alive. This whole balancing act of getting rewards and making it to the boss in time feels great and adds some strategic depth to the map traversal.

I do have a few complaints about the game that are most likely going to be resolved by the time the game is finished. Currently there is a lack of content. I was able to play through everything in about 12 hours, and that's including the most difficult "Apex" difficulty for the one chapter that is available right now. Also, there are some heroes that either feel horribly inefficient when compared to other heroes and other heroes that feel so much stronger than any other hero. As I stated, these issues are minor and I'm sure they will eventually be resolved but for now, be aware that they exist. Great game overall and I'm excited to see what's in store.

This is essentially Slay the Spire with training wheels. The game plays almost exactly the same but it gives you a ton of control over your build, which makes it really consistent and easy. This may not sound like a downside but the challenge from games like Slay the Spire is trying to build a deck and make selections around what you're given. Neoverse gives you almost everything you would need or want for a build because it throws rewards at you like you're a Vegas stripper. The main source of this problem is the shop because it is literally available to you at all times. Even while you are in combat, you can use the shop to buy cards, items, and skill points. The shop is waaaay too accessible.

There are some really good ideas in this game though, such as Precision and Parry. You get rewarded for perfect lethals on enemies and I think this is great because it was an added challenge I was already giving myself on some of my Slay the Spire runs. It can cause some tension as you're trying to figure out how to deal the last bits of damage perfectly. Parry is also a great system that lets you stun enemies by building up the exact amount of block required to counter their attacks. The reward for this is that you stun your enemy on their next turn. This idea of asking the player to perfectly plan out their turns can actually make what would be an otherwise monotonous fight into an interesting puzzle.

If you struggle with playing Slay the Spire or other deckbuilders like it, Neoverse might be a great starter for you. It's got the same gameplay loop that makes the others entertaining but if you enjoy the challenge that the others provide, then you should probably avoid this game.

I also have gripes about the aesthetic of the game, but that's very much a small gripe to have. Afterall the gameplay is the most important aspect of a game. Hell, I didn't like Monster Train's "mobile game" aesthetic either but I got over that and that game is excellent. The animations can be entertaining but you could literally strip this game to just be numbers and words I'd probably enjoy it all the same since that's mostly what I'm looking at the whole fight anyways. For my tastes the characters are unnecessarily sexualized (although I get that some people would be into that kind of thing I think you're actually limiting your audience by doing that), a large majority of the enemies are unmemorable, and the backgrounds are very generic. Like I said before, you could literally blackout everything except for the UI and I would literally not notice a difference.

I think the game could really use restrictions on when the shop is available to you. Don't allow me access to the shop throughout the entirety of a run. It makes the card rewards from combat seem pointless because most of them suck or are things I've already grabbed from the shop earlier in the run and no longer need. Limiting access to the shop means I have to really consider my options when a card reward shows up. As it is now I skip 90% of them. The game could also use some more mechanically unique enemies. The enemies I remember are the ones that have very interesting mechanics like the enemies that give you a card that if you don't waste mana on and play it, the entire group of them get more powerful. The first time I fought them I didn't really understand what was going on, but I soon realized what I needed to do and that fight became memorable because I made mistakes. Unfortunately most of the fights run down to just me playing defends until I take no damage, and then attacks with the rest of my mana. My final suggestion would be to also create some out-of-combat events like other games. Give the player opportunities to make decisions that aren't combat related but also allow them to still do something to progress in some way. The game isn't atrocious, but as a fan of the deckbuilding genre, it's too easy and there are better options when it comes to having fun like this.

If you have a group to play and communicate with on a voice chat program such as Discord, the game is fantastic. But you probably don't me to tell you that at this point. Simply look up any gameplay on Youtube and you'll see what makes this game so much fun.

Randoms can be okay, but overall a much worse experience than playing with friends.

So even with the game being in early access it is absolutely amazing. The amount of content available at the current moment is insane. I've sunk enough hours in already to where the game has cost me less than $0.50/hour. And I'd easily pay twice that much for it.

So what is the game about? Progression. The survival aspect is a bit light so don't go into this expecting to have to worry about gathering food, water, etc. to stay alive. The main aspect it focuses on is the progression of resource harvesting and development. You start having to do everything manually but eventually you automate everything. So if anything it's like a first-person Tycoon game where you are simulating the harvesting of resources on a planet. There is no money to manage, only the many different resources you will find throughout the environment.

The map is massive and in the beginning you choose what section of it you want to start in. This decision will determine how difficult certain aspects of the game are for you. From there you build your base and start harvesting resources so you build bigger and better projects. As you progress, harvesting older resources becomes easier but you unlock new resources to harvest that become increasingly more difficult to manage. This progression scales extremely well and feels great.

If you are into exploration, there's plenty of that to be had as well. The world is massive and full of secrets to explore. While your base is producing resources, feel free to roam about and grab things that you can then bring back to your base to research. This research will unlock things from quality of life improvements to alternate recipes to craft items that you will most likely need.

Buildings get unlocked in a way that means you are constantly evolving your production lines. In my current playthrough, I have built and rebuilt my base probably four times already. It's very satisfying and doesn't feel like a chore because the end result is a much more streamlined and optimized version that produces new and more advanced resources. Optimizing building production is fun if you're into it, but it's not absolutely necessary.

The building animations are what you will spend most of your time looking at and they are absolutely fantastic. There's so much detail in them that they feel believable. Whoever the animation designer(s) is(are), they deserve a lot of praise for their work. There are details that aren't necessary but add so much extra to the design of the structures. An example of this is the Water Extractor that when it is running has a giant fan that blows a fantastic-looking mist out. Does it need that detail to look awesome? No the building itself already looks great, but the fact that it's there shows that these guys are willing to go the extra mile to polish an already astounding game.

I could literally talk for hours about why this game is great, but a lot of the nuance is fun to just find out for yourself. Would I recommend it? Absolutely.

This game combines some of my favorite genres (deck building, rogue-lite, and tower defense) into a game that is fun and full of depth. There are so many ways to play this game that the replayability is through the roof. I will admit the art style is a bit off-putting, but the sound design fits it well enough that it is easy to ignore. I remember when I first saw the game I thought it looked like a mobile game ported to PC and was immediately turned off. But my attention was drawn back to it by a friend and I gotta say I'm glad I tried it.

The multiplayer is unique and surprisingly fun. I wouldn't think a deck-building game could support a multiplayer aspect, but I would be sorely mistaken. I'm happy with the approach they took. It really puts your decision making skills to the test against others in a battle for survival. I would like to see maybe a mode in the future where you could buy things to hinder your opponents as well.

The single-player content is still very enjoyable too. My only complaint is that the harder difficulties become a mode of "get broken or get broke." It's still a lot of fun to challenge myself with the insanely difficult modifiers added to the run.

If you like deck building games, it's a definite must try.

In the scheme of things, it's not a bad game. There are a lot of things to love about it. Cards being tied to equipment makes it so your strategy can adapt based on what you find. This is a great idea. I love the rewards you gain for leveling and fighting. Unfortunately, this eventually becomes unimportant when you get a build going and you've pretty much found all the legendaries you need. This doesn't sound like too bad of a thing except this happens way too early in the run and the game goes on long after I develop my strategies so I just end up using the same cards for 70% of the game with too few changes to the overall gameplay as you progress.

When you compare this game to games like it (Slay the Spire, Griftlands, Monster Train, etc.) there are a lot of things this game does right, but the things it does wrong are what make it stand out. The runs take way too long and the difficulty is nowhere near the level of it's competitors. Where I can play a game of any of the other three I mentioned quite quickly, a full game of Gordian Quest takes hours. The runs definitely overstay their welcome because by the time I've developed a good build, there's still hours left in a run.

The difficulty of encounters never really made me feel like my decisions mattered. It became "play cards to clear enemies and heal damage" quite quickly and there was very little thought involved. Playing cards in other deck building rogueish games often requires some thought process. I would normally have to plan the entire turn out before playing, but Gordian Quest has very little depth to its strategy in terms of playing cards to kill enemies. The animations and effects of the cards do have some "oomph" to them so they can be fun to play, but overall the strategy is quite lacking.

The story isn't very engaging. Which for a game with such a long rogueish run style is quite disappointing. Griftland's story was quite entertaining, and even then I'm not sure it's necessary for that game to even be fun. It's core gameplay loop was fun and challenging. About halfway through my run of Gordian Quest I stopped paying attention to the text because it's all very generic fantasy script. The characters were mostly bland, and overall it was just slowing down what is already too long of a game. My recommendation would be to let the characters interact with each other. The way it is now, it feels like the characters are speaking to a wall because there's no conversation, they just spew out information and you move on. Engaging dialogue happens when you see people react, not when you just read exposition.

So what did I like the most? The early game. Progression ramps up quite fast in the early game. This made me enjoy that section of the game a lot more. I was constantly finding new things to use and experiment with. But that is what these games should focus on. The reason runs are so enjoyable is trying out all the different combination of items, cards, and other various modifiers. And once you find a "build," you beat the game and restart so you can try something totally different. The late game started feeling like a chore because progression slowed way down and my decks just stopped changing altogether. I kept thinking about all the cards I didn't try because it would clutter my deck with unsynergistic stuff. I didn't want to do another run though because I knew I'd be bored with the game again well before the run was over. I won't say Gordian Quest is a bad game, but currently its design lends itself to be fun for only a couple of hours before the boring repetition of what started to feel like endless encounters kicked in. I think they need to either shorten the game's runs, create a larger pool of evolving gear, or find a way to make progression feel significant the whole way through.

Currently I give the game a 6/10. The only reason I won't recommend it is simply because there are better deck building rogue-lite games. I'll come back to it once the game has more content and hopefully they will make some important design changes by that point.

Pretty fun. The gameplay is essentially Borderlands without all the boring story stuff.

What can I say other than wow? Easily one of the best games of 2019 and even after spending hundreds of hours in it, I still come back every once in a while and throw myself into it. The game starts off hard, but as you learn you get better and eventually overcome the obstacles it throws in your way. It's unique art style may look odd at first, but it fits well with the unique gameplay and overall the game is just fantastic.