Game:

SteamWorld Quest (2019)

Duration: 13:42

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Developer: Image & Form Games
Publisher: Thunderful Publishing

To celebrate the impending launch of Steamworld Build (plus the fact that I’m not sure if I’ll even be able to summarise that city building game within a 10 minute video), I went and made a video of the previous Steamworld game.

Steamworld Quest is a turn-based RPG where character growth and customisation is done via a deckbuilding game, where all of your combat actions are tied to certain cards. I guess the closest comparison would be a game like Baten Kaitos?

This video shows off the first boss fight that you encounter after unlocking the 3rd playable character (3 is the size limit for your party), and I gave it a go on Legend difficulty (which is one higher than the default setting). The combat may seem a bit rudimentary here, but once you unlock more cards, characters and items it becomes a much deeper game with way more flexibility in how you set up your party.

The two main things to explain here are that you use free actions to charge your SP (which is then spent on more powerful abilities) and that there are ‘chain’ abilities where playing three cards from the same character gives them a 4th action in that turn. The 4th action is tied to the weapon they have equipped and can be changed by changing the weapon. You’ll see in this video that chain abilities are essential for beating the boss, but there are also situations where it’s better to ignore them in favour of a different combination of cards.

You can also collect recovery items that can be used in or out of battle. I completely forgot about this while I was recording, so in hindsight I probably could have saved Galleo from being knocked out… but hey, it all worked out in the end!