Gord Reviews
Gord is, in its most outstanding moments, a mediocre colony sim/RTS/RPG hybrid. The rest is just boring.
Beyond the shock value of its demonic horrors, this survivalist city-builder has little to recommend it.
"It's all very grotty, and that's meant fully as a compliment."
A detailed and moody setting wasted on a dull and repetitive RTS/management hybrid with the strengths of neither genre.
As a dark, story-driven settlement sim, Gord offers a moderate amount of replayability and a pretty compelling central narrative.
Nice setting and premise mostly wasted on a game that would have needed more development time and refinement to fulfill its potential.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Personally, I found the 'grim' nature of Gord just too nasty, the developers often shocking for the sake of it, rather than doing so to support the story or gameplay. Still, there's a lot to admire about Covenant's creation, with the game offering a compelling and tense survival RTS experience. Only really worth picking up on PC, mind.
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.
Gord is a richer and more complex game than it first appears. There are interesting layers of moral ambiguity and mental health to consider. Gord is a dark Slavic folk tale in survival/RTS-game disguise. Its mechanics and systems add up to an engaging gameplay experience. For a modest entry price, Gord provides a lot of entertainment, an engaging story and plenty of replay value via customizable scenarios.
Gord is an impressive marriage of base building, adventuring and storytelling across a ruined world fraught with horrors from Slavic folklore. Though it's more than a little rough around the edges, such issues aren't enough to considerably tarnish the uniqueness of what developer Covenant.net has wrought here.
Gord is a fascinating product, both thanks to its imagination and thanks to the playful elements that characterize it.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Gord won't be for everyone, but its dark tone and high difficulty are worth working through for the top-notch world-building on display here.
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.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Gord isn’t the deepest of city builders, and its campaign can sometimes feel like an extended tutorial, but nevertheless, it provides an engaging mix of city building and exploration. With its sanity system and pesky Horrors that need to be dealt with, there’s not much else like this around. Jump into its Custom Scenario mode with both feet, and you’ll likely a find a game that will eat up hours of your time.
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.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
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.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
An ambitious strategy game with too many conflicting gameplay mechanics, at least until some balance patches come out.
Review in Russian | Read full review
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 bids to be a link between colony sim and city builder, geared toward survival management. The developers' care is evident in the narrative refinement, based on the lore of Slavic mythology, and in the play structure, in which macro and micro management of layered systems are constantly intertwined. However, it is in the overall atmosphere that the Covenant.dev production leaves a distinct mark, conveying (ludically and morally) the absolute precariousness of one's tribe in an inhospitable, cold and gloomy world. An inevitably niche title, but one that will appeal to lovers of the genre and dark fantasy.
Review in Italian | Read full review