Gordian Quest review - "A wonderfully complex deck-building RPG"

• A fantasy hybrid of heavier genres
• A compelling story available as a full unlock, but a perfectly serviceable free version
• A solid port almost entirely free of any technical issues

Equipped with both beautiful artwork and stacks of depth, Gordian Quest offers something that's incredibly uncommon to find in the mobile space - even if it is walking the path of incredibly familiar tropes while scratching at incredibly popular mechanics.

Existing at a crossroads between RPG, Deck-Builder, Strategy and - in the case of the Realm Mode - Roguelite, Gordian Quest is often in danger of feeling a little bit too deep. In fact, it very much feels like it's taken a lot of the strong points of those genres from over the years and then glued them all together without thinking about the journey of how they came to be there.

The thing is, being built on the shoulders of giants is great; however, you have to make sure that you still establish and educate people on how to play. Onboarding here is, unfortunately, a little rough, and while that's something that most people will forget by the time they've peeled back enough layers to be fully-hooked, it's likely going to bounce people off before they have a real chance to see exactly how great Gordian Quest actually is.

How does Gordian Quest play out?

And, Gordian Quest is fantastic. That, and it's doing something incredibly clever with how it monetises: offering the dungeon-diving, roguelite mode away as a free experience (albeit with half the characters - five of ten, with each having three play styles) while having the core campaign and the other half of the characters available for an incredibly affordable price point.

I said earlier that it was built on the shoulders of giants, and it definitely is. There are elements in here that will be familiar to fans of RPGs like The Banner Saga and, well, a lot of classic jRPGs, as well as a tight deckbuilding system for each character which will quickly summon up memories of Slay The Spire. The run-based roguelike mode, too, plays it safe but plays it well, with a node-based map full of events, shops and battles culminating with a boss fight. 

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In combat, character placement is important, with most battles taking place across two 3x3 grids, one for each battling team. Enemy attacks are incredibly varied, but their intent can be seen through tapping on them, giving you a decent window of time to move around the rows and columns to negate or avoid damage. Similarly, clever placement of your own units (and allies) can work out really well, with others joining into your attacks, or the card/attack effects stacking depending on how and which ones you use.

So many cogs turning

There is, as you can probably tell by now, an incredible number of moving parts all going on at once. While those parts might feel familiar (and they'll certainly seem less familiar once you start investing time into the campaign), the more and more you play, the less that will matter, because the scale at which all of those pieces are moving is incredibly impressive. To have a fully fledged adventurer's party, running off a hybrid RPG, ttRPG, jRPG system, directed by deck-building... it's an amazing feat of balance, and one that very few companies are able to pull off.

I can't fault the level of effort that has gone into those core systems, the mechanics and the gameplay loop.

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Where Gordian Quest does fall down, beyond that faith that you'll quickly learn the UI as a reflex, is in some of its UI elements, which are just a little bit too small. This isn't too much of an issue when you're playing on a larger screen; however, things like the level-up prompt, and some of the smaller icons on characters, are tough to tap on smaller screens, which can be quite a frustration when there's other interaction points nearby.

Squeeze past those issues though, or simply play on a larger screen, and you'll find an RPG of incredible depth and one that feels natural in this handheld form.

Hopefully, Gordian Quest is a sign of things to come, the latest in a long line of 'Post Subscription' premium titles coming in the direction of the original developers and publishers of the PC and console versions. I can't wait to refer back to it as a core part of this new wave of fantastic 'hardcore' mobile releases, and if you're looking for something to really get your teeth into, you simply can't go wrong here.