![]() Six cards are dealt at the beginning of each battle, with three more dealt each subsequent turn up to two can be swapped for different cards and three can be played each round. Players can take eight character-specific cards for each of three selected characters into battle. Players will find new cards as the story progresses, purchase new cards with currency, and upgrade others with specific items dropped by monsters.īattle animations are gorgeously illustrated, as are the hand-drawn cards used to command the characters. Cards come in a few different types: some will charge up a steam pressure gauge the party shares, many will require steam pressure to be played, and a few, typically item cards, don’t affect the pressure at all. Each is beautifully illustrated and detailed, showing the cost of using the ability as well as expected HP damage or healing. There are all the actions one would expect in an RPG: standard attacks, elemental attacks, spells, buffs and debuffs, and even item cards. Throughout the game players collect punchcards, artfully reminiscent of the old days of computing, that allow their characters to act in battle. Saying the battle system in SteamWorld Quest is a great deal of fun is an understatement. At the end of every chapter players are told what percent of treasure they’ve found, a nice little detail that encourages replays of chapters to find everything. SteamWorld Quest uses its beautifully detailed layers of graphics to hide valuable treasure chests and small passages behind foreground pillars or breakable boxes, encouraging players to explore every nook and cranny and even sometimes to ignore the dead end the mini map is claiming is there. ![]() There are rarely more than twenty areas in any given chapter, making each chapter a comfortable hour or so in length and providing a well-paced story. Each area is quite small, perhaps two to three screens wide before characters move to a new room or area and the game autosaves. Gameplay involves characters moving through side-scrolling areas such as towns, universities, woods, and dungeons to complete chapters of the story. Fellow party members Galleo, who’d much rather stay safe at home on Mom’s basement couch former hero Orik and orphaned thieves Tarah and Thayne also have some touching, life-defining moments as the story progresses, all as relevant in today’s world as in this steampunk fantasy realm. These encounters are excellently written and speak to the culture of hero worship and how often that idolization is sadly misplaced. Copernica, a college of magic dropout, also undergoes a bit of a rude awakening when the adventure takes her to her alma mater and an encounter with a certain college professor she’s long had a crush on. A great deal of the story revolves around how she deals with the constant rejection by the local chapter of the Hero’s Guild and the complications during the meeting with her idol, Ancient Hero Gilgamech. Armilly dreams of a life of heroism despite her humble beginnings as a grocer’s daughter. The main heroines in SteamWorld Quest are Armilly and Copernica, small-town friends who begin the story on a short journey to find a mushroom. There is quite a bit of humor to be found in this game, as well as some more serious themes. While a great deal of humor exists in the story, the characters’ more serious, fascinating personal journeys are where the narrative reaches its peak. The overarching story is standard RPG fare: save the town, save the kingdom, save the world, but it’s the characters and the lessons they learn along the way that really make SteamWorld Quest stand out in its storytelling. ![]() The game is split into chapters, while the book itself is used as a visual anchor for narrated sections, complete with hand-drawn still images, as well as for navigation through both the narrative and overworld. This storybook motif is wonderfully executed. SteamWorld Quest takes place in the same universe as other SteamWorld games and is presented like a storybook tale about knights and dragons. In taking a standard save-the-world RPG tale and populating it with fascinating characters dealing with relatable issues in a beautifully rendered world and adding an addicting, customizable battle system, developer Image & Form has created a true gem of a game for the Nintendo Switch. With the release of SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, a turn-based, deck-building RPG, my interest was immediately piqued, and my curiosity was handsomely rewarded. As a primarily turn-based RPG fan, the series was never so much as a blip on my radar. ![]() Before this April, I’d never considered playing a SteamWorld game. ![]()
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