With so many incredible city builders and RTS games being released over the last few years, there is more competition than ever, and while Gord has an ambitious mix of RTS, city builder, and RPG genres, but somehow manages to fall short in all three areas.
Gord manages to take dark fantasy to the next level, with a world that has somehow forgotten about the sun. While the idea of keeping your people sane by ensuring they stay in the light sounds great on paper, in reality, it quickly becomes as dull as the scenery in Gord.
Each map follows the same style of theme, a dark swampy forest, filled with the same monstrous creatures, and the usual animals you would expect to see in the forest, such as wolves and bears.
Progressing through the campaign quickly become stale, with each map looking the same, and the tasks quickly becoming repetitive. At the start of the game, managing your group’s sanity was a fairly fun endeavor, but even this quickly became more annoying than it did a challenge.
One of the main challenges in Gord is keeping your population happy. Making sure they have enough food, and keeping them sane can be tough at times, but once you’ve mastered it, there’s little else that offers much of a challenge in Gord.
As your villagers start to venture further out, one of the main challenges is making sure they survive the perils of the forest and also ensuring they don’t lose their minds in the darkness. And while this is undoubtedly a unique feature, it quickly became annoying and took the focus away from building your settlement or progressing further through the campaign.
Gord tries to throw moral choices at you, such as choosing between attacking a god-like monster or sacrificing a child to it. The issue with these choices is they’re not really a choice, the game itself tells you that fighting the monster is borderline futile, so for the sake of saving time and resources, it’s easier to simply hand over the child and save yourself time and hassle.
While Gord’s campaign can be a little frustrating, thankfully custom scenarios are a little better, with the ability to completely customize the map, amount of resources, and difficulty, it can lead to a much more enjoyable experience.
