Rave: SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech

     

    Imagine how cool this would be. You start a campaign of Dungeons & Dragons and you are familiar with the setting already. You know what orcs, elves and dragons are and the first game you play it is played to its strengths, roll the die, dungeon master, hero sheets and what not. However when you return the next week to play it again, the dungeon master says this week you are playing the game like a first person shooter instead of a dungeon crawler and asks you to play by completely different rules. Same setting tho, just everything else has changed and the week after that the rules changes again. Well this is what it is like to experience a SteamWorld game.

    Hailing from Sweden, the SteamWorld series of games are created by Image & Form in partnership with Thunderful Group. Each of the SteamWorld games share the same post apocalyptic setting, steam punk aesthetic and an old western look but every game that comes out through SteamWorld (unless you count direct sequels) are different genres every time. For example; SteamWorld Dig is a Metroidvania, SteamWorld Tower Defense is a *gasp* tower defense game, SteamWorld Heist is a tactical shooter and our game in this Rave is an turn based, deck-building Roleplaying Game. So far the SteamWorld games have made a decent impact and they are selling enough of them to warrant direct sequels to Dig and Heist and the games themselves have dedicated fanbases. I, personally stumbled into the SteamWorld ecosystem via SteamWorld Dig 2 and I enjoyed playing it for awhile and funny enough now I am enjoying Metroidvanias again I think I might even go back to it sooner than later. With SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech through I decided to finally not only play it but to complete it as well and now we are done I must say it was a very fun experience. However I did have some gripes with some of the systems so I can only give it a Rave not a RAVE (which is the highest recommendation I can give). A Rave is still a 'you should play it' recommendation through and I think if you enjoy the RPG genre, this unique take on it will scratch that itch for you.

    First, it must be said that SteamWorld Quest (SWQ) keeps the setting from the other SteamWorld games but frames this one as a fairytale. This means steam punk-esque monsters, knights and more. The Western motif makes way for the typical swords and sorcery and it makes sense for them to do that. However it also changes the formula in some unique ways. The most obvious is that it goes the deckbuilding route and every character has a deck of cards they can pull from that you can change on the fly, upgrade existing cards and unlock stronger ones. More on this later but this difference changes the formula slightly and is one of the reasons I was attracted to this game since I am big fan of deckbuilding games such as Slay the Spire, Inscryption and many others. The second unique change is instead of a top down perspective that most RPG game use to traverse, SWQ decides to go with the side scrolling approach, more akin to beat 'em ups like Streets of Rage, Final Fight and other classics. This unique approach is another reason why it initially caught my eye and made me want to play it. It is funny now in hindsight that these two unique changes might be contributing to why this game only gets a Rave from me.

    Let us start with the elephant/ dragon in the room, the deckbuilding mechanic. So very quickly, you'll have a team of three characters and each of the characters have access to 8 cards they can draw from a collective pool. Some of the cards are free use and does not require the 'cog' mechanic which is what the system requires you to pull off stronger attacks/ cards based on how many cogs you have accumulated (if anything these let you add to your cog meter), most of the cards have a moderate cost of 1 to 2 cogs, that is fine as well. The very powerful cards tho require at least 4 cogs however more on that in a minute. My biggest issue with this mechanic is there were many, many battles where I will be stuck with useless cards that I could not use or because you have to constant attack and use up whatever cogs you built up you rarely get to use the powerful 4 cog attacks. Many times I put a 4 cog card in a deck hoping to use it at least once but by the end of the battle I just remove it because you never get the chance to use them. Sure, some characters can build cogs with certain cards but these require to use a turn just to 'power up'. Over the course of the 20 hrs I played I had many experiences where I was just spamming certain cards and get frustrated when certain cards did not show up even tho I built my deck around it. The game also allows you to 're-shuffle' not useful cards at least twice a turn but normally the RNG would not work in your favor and you'll get two more not useful cards. A lot of the times I would end a turn only playing one actual attack card, one buff card and not being able to use a third one because of all the bad options I was given. In extreme cases I even had whole hands where all I did was do some buffs with barely notice-able effects aka buff evasion and the enemy still hits you 90% of the time and I did no damage to the enemy. The enemy on the other hand always have attack options on deck and never miss their chance to attack you. Their attacks seem to have no cool down requirements and in one egregious example, would spam certain overpowered tactics over and over. The game also liked to encourage certain synergies as well, for example, if you use cards only from one deck/ character, the character will get an extra turn and perform what every skill is attached to the weapon they were wielding. However 90% of these effects are not even that great with an extreme examples being my favorite character Orik having 2 'chain' attacks which felt pointless. As mentioned before, the deckbuilding aspect is why I decided to give this game a try and after playing really good deckbuilders (Slay the Spire) and even competent ones (Tainted Grail: Conquest/ Indies' Lies) I was blown away by how un-finished this system felt. Personally I felt that each character should have a free cost block card to use if you ran out of card options. I built my decks, playing to my squad's strengths but due to the RNG nature, I seldom got the cards I needed, when I needed them and when that happens and you just hit have to move to your next turn after using only one attack card, it never felt good. This system SWQ implemented did not work as intended because this is the first deckbuilder where I constantly felt I had to just take hits from the enemies due to bad deck RNG. I know this is not just me too, I have seen many players complain about the same thing happening to them. I feel with a slight tweak and the addition of 'block' cards for every character (a mechanic used by pretty much every other deckbuilder) this could have been much less frustrating. So with this being the main hook of the game and it doesn't do it great, it is no wonder why I did not love this game as much as I wanted to.

All you need is Streets of Rage OST in the background

    The second change-up I was interested in was how you traverse in this game. Unlike every traditional RPG known to man, SWQ forgoes the top down perspective and allows you to explore the world in a side-scrolling perspective, much like the beat 'em ups of old. In this perspective, you can see the enemy encounters and you can either avoid them all together or if you are able to attack them before they see you, you can score a 'ambush' and deal some pre-emptive damage before the battle begins. The big problem with this however is there was a clear 'lag' felt when you hit the button in this mode to when it comes out and most of the swings come out way too late and the ambush mechanic just doesn't work as intended. The game also asks you to destroy scenery to earn extra money and open up pathways but even that felt weird and laggy. I would hit the button to swing at the log in front of me and many seconds later my character will do the action. Again, a good idea but it seems it was not implemented well at all. Also do not get me started on trying to avoid enemies, that never felt like that worked as intended either so you will find yourself fighting no matter what you try. Unlike the deckbuilding mechanics, I do not know what could be done to make these scenes less jank but in the end I just dealt with it.

    So with all the negativity so far, why does this game still get a Rave which is the second highest recommendation this blog can give. Well, the plain and simple part of it was I enjoyed myself. Whilst the story was not ground-breaking in any way, it still motivated me to play to the very end and complete it. It tells a simple tale of a rag bunch bunch of misfits finding the true hero inside each one of them and the game even pointedly at the end * spoiler alert * makes you fight your inner demons in one of the biggest example of bad difficulty spikes. The combat system whilst not the greatest as mentioned above is still competent enough that I kept playing and upgrading my deck and building strong strategies. Because this game is paced in terms of acts, I actually play one, sometimes two acts a day and I never got bored and near the end I even did multiple acts together because I knew I was getting closer to the end and wanted to see the credits roll and I am happy I did. I was happy to see the conclusion of the quest and see the outcomes for Orik, Galleo, The twins, Tarah & Thayne and Copernica. Anyone whom has played the game might noticed a notice absence from the roll call I just did and it is time to address my last big gripe about the game, its main character, Armilly.

    I am going to call myself out here, I really do not liked Armilly as the main character. I think it was a combination of most of her dialogue being obliviously day dreaming or generic hype manning (is that even a word lol), she seriously had no depth as a character and to top it off, her skill set was very underwhelming. When I learned early into the game I did not not have to always have her in my main squad I quickly changed her out and I never looked back. Also for the longest time I thought she was a male character because of the way she was designed but it turns out she is a female. I actually have no issue with a strong female lead character and even ones that don't look girl-ish, King from the King of Fighters/ Art of Fighting is one of my forever videogame crushes and I not threatened by Marvel's Captain Marvel in anyway for example but her design was just... weird. I think Armilly might be my least favorite main character of all time and sadly that also brings down my rating of this game. I actually started believing the mentor character (like Auron from Final Fantasy X) Orik was the main character and I stand by it and he had a much more exciting tool kit compared to Armilly's generic sword and fire attacks.

Who is this? The true main character? I believe so.

    SteamWorld Quest is also a pretty good looking game, nothing too fancy but it definitely keeps the SteamWorld steam punk aesthetic but tailors it towards fantasy as previous mentioned. It is cool to see a massive mecha dragon ( at least the first time we fought him... it became old after the third re-skin of them) and other classic fantasy archetypes re-imagined steam punk style and the music was suitably whimsical and suitable with the exception of an ending song during the credits that came out of nowhere that was actually really, really good. The controls were good enough tho as discussed earlier the weird lag during the side scrolling segments was a bit weird. I was however not a fan that the game was not fully optimized for mouse, having to use the keyboard to access a item/ healing menu which was also behind another click was not the business or to reload cards (which you frequently have to do). I feel both should have had an UI option on screen which you could have used the mouse to click on it but that is a minor gripe. A much more major gripe was the lack of tool tips aka what it does which are essential in deckbuilders. I played 20 hrs of the game and I can not tell you confidently what the skill 'Flinch' actually does. This could have been fixed with a simple glossary which I could not find in-game.

    Overall, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech was a fun experience, it was not too long but also had enough meat on it that it felt worthwhile to play. The story was decent but most of the characters (with the exception of one) had storylines I wanted to see to the end and the gameplay whilst it had many flaws was addictive enough that I kept playing it. If anything, this game has made me want to revisit other SteamWorld games like Dig because what Image & Form does is so unique I want to see what else they have under their sleeves. Not every Quest is an epic one but some are just a good time and enjoyable journey and a good enjoyable time was had by me hence why SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech gets a Rave from me.

AV