Gord Reviews
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 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 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.
I really wanted to like Gord but sadly, despite an interesting concept and ideas, the execution comes off frustratingly disappointing and shallow.
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.
As a dark, story-driven settlement sim, Gord offers a moderate amount of replayability and a pretty compelling central narrative.
A detailed and moody setting wasted on a dull and repetitive RTS/management hybrid with the strengths of neither genre.
"It's all very grotty, and that's meant fully as a compliment."
Beyond the shock value of its demonic horrors, this survivalist city-builder has little to recommend it.
Gord is, in its most outstanding moments, a mediocre colony sim/RTS/RPG hybrid. The rest is just boring.
It is quite punitive with its harsh sanity setbacks, tough enemies and slow-paced gameplay. Nevertheless, it covers a particular niche, and after waiting for it for what felt like an eternity, I’m pleased to see that the folks at Covenant.dev have successfully managed to come up with one of the most interesting strategy games in recent memory, even if it’s not one of the more entertaining ones.
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 fast-paced with a bit of a learning curve that might deter a few players, but it's well-worth the challenge for the ones that stick it out.
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.
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 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 beautiful adventure strategy game and proof that even developers from bigger studios can start a small team and make a great game. If you like Slavic mythology, you will enjoy it to the fullest. There are plenty of visually colorful monsters, but also demons. The story is engaging, although the ending is a little too open-ended. The characters seem to have fallen out of Sapkowski's pen. Sound-wise, but also musically, the title excels. The sung Polish songs are a caress to the soul. However, the lack of Polish dubbing and multiplayer is disappointing. Not to mention that this is one of the few games in which even children can die for the greater good!
Review in Czech | 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