Guild of Darksteel Reviews

A fairly neat experience. The lore and setting carry a fair bit of the game for me, but the combat is a nice balance of timing and skill that works well enough.

Worth your time on a deep discount. Mechanically, there's no real exploration of the map and no platforming: the game is a series of one-on-one battles with enemies. Occasionally, an enemy may be bypassed by simply going around it (there are no instances when this requires platforming skill) -- do this every time you can, there are no secrets to be found in such dead ends. The few times the path branches mean more boring backtracking and may cost you achievements -- tragically so, because the replay value of the game is nonexistent. Battles are easy if you found the healing ability but will grind down imperfect players if you didn't (you can always backtrack, but it's not even called "healing", good luck). If you've seen one monster of a type, you've seen them all. The game goes into "battle mode" when you touch an enemy, so there's no way for enemy attacks to interact and no danger of getting swarmed. Pixel art is pretty, with no weebshit. Characters are well-proportioned and beautifully animated. Despite how ridiculously overhyped the writing is on the store page, it's not actually terrible and only goes full retard once, in a scene that does not impact the story. The "living, breathing world" is unfortunately a lie. No bugs. Works great with my xbox controller. Most importantly the game doesn't punish you for playing, which is apparently something of a novelty these days. The protagonist's principal good deed is never taken away in a bout of drama!!!1!!, despite several convenient plot opportunities to do exactly that. Two thumbs up.