Crown Gambit

RPG, як відеоігровий жанр, є надзвичайно комплексною річчю в розрізі створення. Це породжує численні проблеми, що можуть та будуть знаходитись у представників жанру. Більшість, щоправда, чисто гіпотетично можна розв'язати нескінченними часом та бюджетом на розробку. Варіативність проходжень, кількість альтернативних подій та закінчень. Наявність чи відсутність цих речей мені не так цікаво обговорювати, адже це радше питання виробничі, хоч і ґеймдизайнерські також. Я ж вбачаю одну серйознішу проблему, непричетну до технічної реалізації, що криється в ідейному підході: небажання рольових відеоігор досліджувати людську моральность. Хоч Crown Gambit, яка навіть не зве себе рольовою грою, й має велику варіативність проходжень, альтернативних подій та закінчень, я вважаю її винятковим представником жанру якраз за те, що вона це бажання має. ‍ У Crown Gambit ви гратимете роль трьох паладинів, мілітаризованих представників церкви, що одночасно служать короні та простому люду. Своєрідні поліцейські у рясях та обладунках. Після провалу одного із завдань ви опиняєтесь у центрі інтриг із безліччю сторін, що намагаються отримати владу. Ваша мета, як паладина, посадити на трон найбільш підхожого претендента. Проте крім того, щоб надати гравцю різні шляхи для розв'язання цього питання, гра пропонує ще й різні відповіді на нього, ні одна із яких не є однозначно морально правильною. В той час як інші представники жанру згодовують гравцю у схожих сценаріях павер-фентезі, з якнайповнішим контролем над діями та наслідками, Crown Gambit ставить гравця у постійно невигідні обставини і обмежує не лише часом, а й впливом. На противагу більшості RPG, в яких моральні вибори стоять десь між "боротись зі злим злом" та "копнути білочку", і майже завше розв'язуються правильним вибором чи боєм, дилеми ж тут складніші, тому що вибір стоїть між по різному поганими варіантами, крізь які потрібно дійти до чогось морально правильного на вашу думку. Протагоністи тут не є центральними фігурами подій, а лише однією із рушійних сил. Замість "добра заради добра" і "зла заради зла" як звичних рольових площин, тут потрібно не лише постійно обирати між добро-злими та зло-добрими варіантами, а й зрозуміти як все це використати на благо країни. Це не про сіру мораль і діяти тут можна як праведно, так і ні. Проте, як часто це буває у реальному житті, праведність дії і праведність наслідку, на жаль, не завжди крокують поряд. Свою ж варіативність Crown Gambit використовує для того, щоб розмістити на полі величезну кількість рухомих фігур, які пересуваються одночасно, за той час що гравець робить один хід. Відчуття контролю над власними діями тут не означає контроль над очікуваним результатом. Частина результатів завжди буде від вас прихована, бо зробити все за одне проходження неможливо. А багато із видимих наслідків не є моментальними чи навіть відомими гравцю одразу, та розгортаються вже тоді, коли завантажити сейв і передумати — занадто пізно. Навіть свої дії гравець контролює не завжди. Як члени ордену, персонажі мають законне право носити реліквії, могутні божественні предмети, кожне використання яких робить носія ближче до богів, цим впливаючи й на психічне здоров'я. У боях, що складаються із покрокової тактики з одночасно трьома картковими колодами, ця божественна сила дозволяє використати сильно покращені варіанти здібностей. Це викине здібність із колоди до кінця бою і збільшить шкалу божественного впливу, яка зберігається на всю гру, а знижується складно та рідко. Ця шкала ніяк не зачіпає бій, проте від неї напряму залежить ступінь влади персонажів над собою у діалогах. Із високим божественним впливом персонажі рідше роблять те, що ви обираєте, що напряму впливає на хід історії. Наші житті складаються з довжелезної черги несправедливих виборів, які ми мусимо робити, маючи обмежений контроль. Crown Gambit вважає рівноцінно важливим те, ким це нас робить, і те, чи вийшло все зробити правильно. Вона використовує концепт рольової гри задля рефлексії над нашою здатністю діяти і мінятися. Бути людиною. Хорошою, поганою і складною.

世界观丰富的剧情卡牌，如果喜欢黑书/卡牌之声/王权的陨落/预言奇谈这类游戏的话推荐。 还有很多美丽的帕拉丁罐头……虽然都有开罐但人设实在美丽可以溺爱，感觉有点像为了这盘醋包的饺子，最后两章制作组想着我可千万不能浪费画的这么多人设啊于是塞满了比前面所有章节boss加起来还多的战斗，一张接一张目不暇接的cg，请问这里是罐头天堂吗

I've never left a review before but I love this game and I can't believe it isn't more popular and I need more people to play it (it doesn't even have a subreddit!). I've just finished my third playthrough and I'm still finding new things all the time and I'd even say it's been the most enjoyable one so far. That's not to say I don't have criticisms. The combat has a really weird difficulty curve and the card that immobilizes an enemy nullifies like 80% of the bosses. I purposefully tried a different approach to combat by banning a couplen of cards for myself and now combat is really exciting again. So then why do I recommend it anyway? Because of the amount of things this game has to love. The characters are great, the choices are hard, there are consequences to even small actions, the art is stunning. I can see myself having a fourth playthrough and I never replay games. This one goes in my favorites.

In short, instead of a game, it feels like a collection of knight cards with a hackneyed plot and a couple of game mechanics tacked on to make it feel like a game. It starts off promisingly, but quickly fizzles out and becomes boring. What's good: -knight design -new universe with its own rules -the game has a framework that has the potential for engaging gameplay mechanics What's bad: -the knight design has little impact on their gameplay mechanics, as these mechanics are few and poorly implemented -there's a new universe, but there's no point in understanding it, as it's overloaded with information, and the game itself doesn't utilize it. For example, a player who understands the divine pantheon or social hierarchy gains no advantage over a player who perceives this information as white noise. Furthermore, this information is used selectively, even when it's implied by the game. Here's a micro-spoiler: we're walking around the city and bump into a footman who admits he's preparing a feast/ball. We get the characters' reactions. As the game progresses, we stumble upon the location where this feast/ball is taking place, and the heroes are extremely surprised, as if hearing about it for the first time. And such situations become more frequent the further you progress. - And you also have to consider the sheer volume of this information: gods, their servants, royal relatives, noble houses, their servants, knights, their mentors, their relatives, random passersby, regalia, etc. And 99% of these new entities are simply there to show that they're invented. For example, at one point, the game bombarded me with relatives of one of the protagonists: parents, a mentor, sisters, servants. And only a couple of them appeared more than once. Why there are so many of them, given their minimal impact, is unclear. - In terms of gameplay mechanics, the game is extremely sparse. For example, there are escape/chase/flood mechanics, and they're all the same. The protagonists are different, and the tree even shows role differences, but leveling is only nominal; after completing Chapter 1, you already have all the necessary cards to complete the game. There are "different" bosses and in-game encounters, but we already earned the necessary cards in Chapter 1, and all fights follow the same pattern; there are no situations where you need to adapt to new combat realities. - It feels like the developers simply ran out of steam during development and didn't bother to enrich the game to make it varied and engaging. From a certain point on, the game consists entirely of repetitive fights that follow the same pattern. It barely takes into account the characters' past choices and actions and ignores information about missed events.

If you're tired of AAA games, please play Crown Gambit. It will show you that there is still a lot of energy and creativity in the indie scene. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this game is good. Starting with the obvious -- this game looks incredible. Fantastic, Inspiring. It's insane how well it looks. The graphical style is pretty unique and consistent throughout the game. Character design, menus, animations, locations, cutscenes, everything gels together and enhances the beautiful artistry on display. The cards, the enemies, the Paladins, everything is so consistent, that it becomes very hard to fault the game visually. Literally every frame could be a cutscene (maybe except for the battles themselves), and the game doesn't rely only on 2D art, also having incredible 3D effects and animation interacting with the 2D elements. It's *chef's kiss*, really. Sound-wise, it's fine. I never got tired of the soundtrack, but it's nothing to write home about. The moments with vocal backgrounds are standouts, but they are so rare that it's hard to highlight them. Regular sound effects are good but unremarkable. You're not here for the sounds and neither am I, so let's move quickly past it. Gameplay-wise, it's a happy mix of so many genres recombined. Battles are grid-based deckbuilding bonanza, where you draw skills from a card pool and use action points to either move, attack, or cast a skill. It's a system that's easy to understand, and yet, never gets old and keeps bringing exciting combat encounters based on map layout, environmental effects, size and type of mobs, and unique traits of champions and bosses you face. I played on Normal difficulty and found the beginning a bit hard (when you're still pretty weak and lacking skills), but 1/3 of the way into the game I started blazing through encounters and even bosses. It became risky near the end, when you have a massive gauntlet of boss battles and some duels (my decks were definitely not tailored for duels), but overall I still beat the game without ever letting one of my heroes die. If you are experienced with deckbuilders like Slay the Spire and its ascensions, except something much easier. Adding the grid and thinking about movement adds somethign to the fold, but it's not overwhelming. If I had to fault the combat, it's mostly because it becomes somewhat repetitive quickly, and the skill trees offer some build variation, but not much. I assume most people will end up with Aliza as a rushdown melee fighter, Rollo as a tank-ish AoE brawler, and Hael as a support/ranged/effects caster, regardless of how they progress through the skill tree. Which is not the end of the world, but is something that could be improved. Part of the skill is choosing which cards to keep and which ones to remove from your deck, but any experienced deckbuilder player should have this as second nature. I will admit that I didn't need to engage with the Ancestral Grace system, so I only touched the surface of the card system and maybe playing on harder difficulty would be more fun in that sense. Same thing for enemies' relics -- I destroyed them all, but some of them seemed to have really fun effects to mess around. When you're not in combat, you're either in some light-randomized traversal (from node to node, nothing too complex), and interacting with the world in a visual-novel manner. There is a decent amount of choices you can make throughout the game to customize your run and roleplay your characters, and if you want, no two runs will look the same. I thoroughly enjoyed the choices I had to make and how they played out. I wasn't happy with the ending, but I could see how clearly I shaped it and there's satisfaction in that. Last but not least, the story -- this is a high drama about noble families backstabbign each other, religious factions with swinging loyalties, and a populace ready to revolt. It's entertaining as hell, and the amount of variations in the places you can visit, the characters you can join forces with or rebel against, and the amount of events you will experience is really staggering. I can only imagine how many branching paths you have before you arrive at one of four (or five?) endings. I was a bit troubled with the pacing at first -- it really is a lore dump, but after one or two hours the pace improves a bit and the dump lessens, thus the game becomes easier to follow. It is an absolute work of passion and symbolizes one of the reasons why I love indie games. It's such a well crafted and polished game, and except for two game-breaking bugs I had after beating certain battles (both already reported on the devs Discord and which just set me back 5-or-so minute each time), it's certainly a game worth your money, full price.

due to unoptimized 3D battle sections the game is highly unstable and crashes too many times. so much so that you can't even progress after reaching a boss called Gwinbren. it crashes every time. and it seems like the devs moved on to Sovereign Tower (which is also on my wishlist) after releasing only 3 patches when there are still bugs in the game, like temporary status effects gained through battle rewards disappearing after reloading a save. unfortunately I can't recommend it at its current state, especially if you have a low end computer.

I came here after having played the demo of sovereign's tower and bought this game mainly to support the developers but after playing this game I can safely say this is probably the most underrated game I have ever played, The gameplay is good but the art and story on a completely different level, this game could have the worst gameplay ever and I still would recommend it.

This game is meant to be played and replayed to see how different choices can impact the story. And credit to the developers: your choices do feel genuinely impactful throughout the entire run. The catch is that the content of these choices feels arbitrary: the order in which you choose to enter rooms in a castle can change the people you meet and the bosses you fight. That might sound fun until you figure out that there's a wrong order to go about things. Once I found a note in a crypt telling me how to find a powerful artifact in a region I already visited. And one of my protagonists lamented "ah dang, we could have seen some *really cool* content if only we decided to do things in the opposite order. Oh well." And that was just it. Totally killed my enthusiasm for the run. You could go back to a previous save to experience that storyline, but you'll find that the combat is nowhere near as widely branching as the plot. Even the most positive reviews for Crown Gambit admit that the regular gameplay loop is shallow. Personally, I found it engaging enough to playthrough once, but certainly not twice.

This game is ambitious to a good degree. While it’s a card game with a layer of visual novel elements, this fairly short adventure can offer a good time with interesting choices and a plot that keeps you hooked until the end. However, while it starts strong, the game eventually loses momentum with a dragging mid-to-late section that overstays its welcome in my opinion. The good: - Art: You can’t talk about this game without mentioning the art. The visuals are fantastic, giving the game a distinct and unique look - even minor cards are beautifully drawn with creative designs. All knights and their themes are engaging, with colors and weapon choices that fit perfectly. - Soundtrack: While not superb, most of the songs fit the overall tone of the game well, with a few catchy tunes. Toward the end, some tracks stand out, adding tension and keeping the atmosphere exciting. - Story: This belongs both in the good and the bad. The plot starts strong and evolves into a complex web of relationships, nobles, knightly oaths, mercenaries, and moral choices. This is the strongest part of the game - the story kept me coming back between sessions because I wanted to uncover its secrets. The system that lets you hover over names for quick summaries is very helpful in such a morally gray and politically complex setting. Characters are introduced in interesting ways, and the branching paths spark curiosity. The not so good: - Gameplay: Honestly, the card-game aspect is fun at first but becomes repetitive quickly. Once you unlock about one and a half skill trees for characters (which isn’t hard), battles become trivial. By mid-to-late game, fights all play out the same: buff everyone in round one, unleash area-card nukes, and wipe the floor with enemies - bosses included. I only felt challenged in one or two early battles; afterward, combat felt like an obstacle just to reach more story. - Story issues: The morally complex narrative with rich characters is also a weakness. The writing often tries too hard, presenting vague motivations and empty speeches. Many characters repeat the same cryptic lines about “something bigger behind all this” without ever explaining. By the end, I was frustrated: the supposed god-related plot was never clarified, no one explained why gods were false, and characters got angry at my choices without offering reasons. It felt like endless moral preaching without substance. - Pacing: The game starts solid but drags heavily in the mid-to-late stages. You face a gauntlet of paladins one after another, which feels like artificial difficulty. These fights weren’t challenging, didn’t affect the ending, and mostly introduced new characters with little impact. By the Fort stage, I was just wishing for the game to end. - Bugs: I usually tolerate bugs, but this game has serious optimization problems. I often encountered critical crashes after battles, especially if I hadn’t saved in a while. The developers’ “solutions” - lowering difficulty, playing in windowed mode, or changing choices - were unacceptable. The game simply refused to run properly after certain fights, leaving me guessing whether my next attempt would succeed or crash again. Overall: This is an ok game - not a great one, but solid. Grab it on sale, play in windowed mode, and enjoy the ride as much as possible.