Gord

Gord is an alright game. But that’s it. Nothing more. I had more fun playing this than, say, the new Settlers, but there’s so much unused potential here that a hypothetical sequel could be infinitely more interesting.

Gord is an interesting and, at times, good, albeit flawed, survival city-builder mixed with action RPG and strategy elements. The atmosphere is excellently done, but this is countered by the sanity mechanics taking too much from the rest of the game. Almost every positive has a negative. The character development mechanics bring a fundamentally broken inventory system. The excellent monster development introduces a few that are just outright broken. The (sometimes) interesting campaign brings a near-opaque element of worldbuilding, requiring much side-reading as names are unceremoniously thrown at you. All in all, Gord isn't a bad game, and while I can have a decent time of it, there are too many flaws to recommend it universally; hardcore strategy fans may apply.

Innovative adventure strategy, especially adventure, which has an interesting approach, atmosphere and folklore. But in practice, the gameplay is quite cumbersome, unbalanced, and after a few hours you will find that it is also sterile and brings only limited fun. What starts out as a promising settlement management quickly turns into a routine with limited construction and lifeless wandering in the forest.

For all the interesting and novel things that Gord brings to the city building genre, it's just not coherent nor determined enough in what it's trying to do to create something with the necessary confidence to compete with the countless options available to genre fans these days. The result is a game with a strong start and a compelling world, but one that cannot build upon those strengths to retain interest over each new settlement and its repetitive gameplay.

Gord wants you think that it is a very different RTS, but once you get into it, you find out all those differences are superficial. Still, if you want to relive the Witcher atmosphere in a RTS, check it out, but also prepare yourself to be bored.

Gord succeeds in painting a dark and gritty picture of a group of people surviving against the odds in a dangerous environment. The Horrors are fantastic, but small niggles and big frustrations dampen the enjoyment somewhat.

Gord had the potential to be an enjoyable survival builder, but alas, it fell short in several key areas. Its narrative was lacking, gameplay felt repetitive, and the choices offered often seemed devoid of meaning. As a player, you found yourself excessively concerned with tasks that were typically automated in other games. Perhaps the most captivating aspect of Gord was its folklore, yet regrettably, the campaign failed to fully explore and leverage this rich narrative backdrop.