teamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech has the perfect name. It's a reference to a Demigod who possessed of super-human strength. Gilgamech is not only a fantastic pun, but the character is an ancient hero with the primary attribute of strength. Finally Quest has the obvious connotation of being a fantasy setting. The inspiration doesn't stop there. The game is clearly inspired by Chrono Trigger with the Frog character, combo moves with allies (which you can now stack up as individuals). The gameplay itself is a simple premise, JRPG meets card builder. The battlefields are set out like a typical JRPG, and stat increases are predetermined for us, but there is plenty of customization in how you build your deck and I'm all for it. Each character has a limit to the cards they can each pool into the total deck. As you fight you draw from the same pool, and you can play up to 3 cards. If you play 3 from the same character they do a combo move as determined by their weapon. This can be anything from an extra swing, to providing a small shield or defence buff for the team, to letting you play an extra card on your next turn.
There is an elemental system with vulnerability, resistance and immunity like D&D. Lastly you can spec your characters with weapons and trinkets to give them various buffs. Anything from a state increase to increasing damage of an element to more unique abilities like reviving once when close to death or immunity to poison. All this absolutely shattered what I expected to be a generic JRPG based on the screens I saw. I enjoy mix and matching but in the end I settled in to my ideal party, which to my surprise was not two of my original characters. My perfect party was Orik who maximized lightning damage and used excess gears (the resource used to play strong cards) to a continuous strike, combining this with Tarah and Thayne's doom that added extra damage to each hit, finally my good friend Galleo for the heals and survivability, allowing me to build up the combos. Everything else I pulled off was gravy. When you did pull off that combo and Orik does 2000-3000 damage in one hit my god does it feel good, his blades of thunderous wind flourishing. Although I did appreciate Armilly's straightforward sword buster move set and Copernica the frost queen, supporting with magical overshields.
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| A thing of beauty. |
The levels have a bit of darkest dungeon and dark souls to them. The levels move from room to room, finding loot, buffs and encountering goblin mechs and dark knightoids, but there are far less traps, basically a casual version. As you progress you can heal at statues, but this resets enemies, making you backtrack and explore every nook before you do.
The art style is perfect, everything it needs to be. A simple watercolour backdrop with plenty of detail. The setting is full of magic, castles and farmlands but still scifi with a magitech feeling. The frog shoots water jets from its hands, the robots bleed oil, Armilly is a warrior who fires off on all cylinders, burning enemies from her exhaust.
The story is generic fantasy and that's all it needs to be. Stop the Dark Lord and fulfil the party leaders lifelong dream of joining the Heroes Guild. It starts off with Gabriel "Seabrass" Stubb telling a story to his child of the "ancient times". A really call way to allude to both the continuation of a story and setup a prequel to Heist. Also it makes the reality of the story open to interpretation, was it a tale of a begone error or an exaggerated fairy tale. As I mentioned all the abilities fit the world and I love the idea of a post-human world where the robots adopt a mediaeval fantasy culture by choice.
The character are all fantastic. Our original party includes. Armilly the Knight - I wasn't sure about the gender but was awesome to find out she was a girl. She's a massive fangirl of the heroes guild, its her dream to join. At milestones of the adventure she narrates their Fanboy of the guild. Narrates their next direction in 3rd person Copernica the Wizard - a typical smarts a polymath who wants to venture into the world to learn more about it. Generic in premise but executed really well. I love this idea for a Wizard as well, adventure sparked by natural curiosity. Galleo the Frog - Just like in Chrono our Frog friend is an absolute Chad. Except here he has more in coming with an El Luchador that doubles as the party chef and provides healing, buffs, debuffs and of course can tank.
Orik the Ronin - The first to join our band and the edge lord of the group, except he's not exactly... He's an almost satirical enigma, found locked in a cage with an unknown past. You break him out and he constantly gets locked up again. We find out later the Dark Lord is Gilgamech and they're friends, whom he's trying to stop, hence the lockup. He carries a katana, is as swift as the wind and has a really cool mechanic where he changes masks which both has an active ability and passive buff, increasing arcane or lightning damage, dodge, etc. The mysterious Ronin who wears a mask is sounding pretty edgy. Except the character is very feminine, like many of the characters breaking the trope for the archetype. Tarah & Thayne the Thieves - are the last to join. Our twin brothers who are basically children, from the cursed lands, an unfortunate stereotypical name for their homelands as they'll explain to you. They're survivalists, pure and simple and they join the party for good loot. They're a play on the Greek Muses Thalia and Melpomene, Comedy and Tragedy. It's not the typical character I gravitate towards in both character and combat, but I love them for it. They were the biggest surprise and they complimented my party really well.
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| What a wonderful journey... |
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