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Grand Guilds (PC) Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along I started playing this game on Sunday 9 April, 2023 // I stopped playing this game on: Thursday 11 May, 2023
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.
May 8, 2023 10:48:29 PM
Oh, this did not go that well at all. I think this is partly because I've played too many other turn-based tactical games this year (critical game design seminar ftw!) such that it seemed rather clear - not having finished the game - that this game had some interesting ideas, but they're just not there in terms of execution. I've been trying to think about what it is that ultimately resulted in my not having a particularly good (or interesting) time - and it's hard to point out a single thing - the game lacks polish across lots of different areas - but the main two things are: (a) It's not clear to me if/what the game's unique/special thing is. In other words what is it in the game that might keep someone's interest while overlooking all the other things they might not like/appreciate/etc. It's a really hard sell when there isn't anything - and I've played lots of games from which I felt I could at least go "huh, well, that's interesting". Here, not so much... (b) The game seems very unbalanced in terms of the challenge/difficulty. Some characters are super strong, some levels seem super "unfair" and so on. The game seems punishing at times, and a forgiving in others, but without any particular rhyme or reason that I can tell. Therefore it's hard to tell if I was playing poorly, well, and so on. I only played for 3 hours, mind you - so who knows if the game takes a sudden turn for the better at some point? (i) In terms of the challenge - the AI can be brutal - it was super common for all the enemies to gang up on one of my characters and kill them in one turn. It doesn't always behave like this - so, replaying a mission might result in a totally different outcome even for the same actions on your part. (ii) At most (so far) you can have 3 characters for an encounter - there are often more enemies than that - which makes (i) above that much more...problematic. Each character in your party has their own deck of action cards and they're clearly meant to work together (synergize) - so perhaps there's a learning curve for them I was not able to get past? The game does have some deck-building in that you can adjust your character's decks - but getting new cards is really slow. So the whole system seems underutilized...

Grand Guilds (PC)