Gurk 2 is an open-world RPG in where we take control of a party comprised of three adventurers. Each of them have a specific class they must retain, though we are free to randomize their stats and appearance to suit our needs. It plays a critical role as to how they will develop throughout, since leveling up will automatically choose which stats to raise, making it so you can’t correct it down the line. With this in mind, you can make some pretty interesting builds with all three of the Archer, Knight, and Mage classes. If you want to make your mage into a badass front line warrior knocking the daylights out of his foes using his staff, you are more than free to do so.
For those familiar with the first Gurk, the first apparent thing is that there is actually music this time around. Like the original, you are tossed right into the world and are free to head in any direction to explore. Thing is, much like the first one, the beginning of the game is by far the most difficult experience you will have in the entirety of your adventure. This is largely due to two factors. The first being that your band of level 1 characters are rightfully as strong as wet paper, and the second most significant reason is how stacked against you the random encounters can be. It is not uncommon to take a few steps out of a town to then encounter a large horde of powerful monsters that will wipe out most of your party, causing you to immediately head back and waste cash to heal up.
If all your members get steamrolled and you die however, it is not the end of the world. You’ll simply be transported back into the nearest shrine with all your experience and equipment. All of your gold will be gone though, so it isn’t exactly a get out of jail free card, nor lowers the impact of biting the dust. This brutal introduction is not unlike the retro games that Gurk 2 is trying to replicate, it is just that a simple Run or Escape action would have gone a far way to making it feel less cheap. Once you get hit with a random battle, you are committed no matter the odds or how much equipment it will take for you to burn through to get out alive. It becomes much less of a problem as soon as you level up your wizard a few times to unlock some summons and area of effect spells to even the playing field.
Combat takes place around a grid-based arena and is also turn-based, allowing you time to think strategically and making the best use of your three usually heavily outnumbered heroes. Each character can only take a single action be it moving, using an item or attacking. The archer has infinite arrows and the knight’s swinging arm never gets tired. Your wizard will be the only one you’ll have to micro manage since casting spells takes up mana, and he is by far the one wielding the most destructive potential to smite your foes. Gather enough money for a sizable chunk of quite expensive mana potions and you’ll be set to take on any dungeon. The many monsters you encounter don’t specifically target your ranged fighters, they seem to strike completely at random or whoever is near them if it’s a melee based foe. Abusing the AI is not a difficult task by any means, it will become a battle of attrition and how well stocked up you are that ultimately effects your chances of conquering a dungeon.
While Gurk 2 lacks any status effects or much complexities, I enjoy its combat system and is great for casually playing on the go. Exploration this time around is much improved and you are initially sealed off into the starting island, until you can afford a boat to sail into the high seas. It offers a much tighter experience and actual quests to give you a sense of direction if you choose to pursue them. This makes it feel like an actual game unlike the first title which felt more like a prototype in where you just kind of stumbled around, not even aware if there was an end game or goal. That was easy to forgive since it was a free title, though this one is a paid product (a single dollar), so thankfully they did make it feel like a much-improved sequel. It’s still not great however, the quests are mainly there solely to give you direction and feature nothing interesting to them nor contain a worthwhile plot to speak of. Worse still is that it still feels pretty half baked. An example being if you receive a quest from a scroll on the ground and activate it again it will ‘thank you for your heroic deeds’ like an NPC would.
Much like the games it is inspired by, your enjoyment will come from the journey itself instead of the story. Be it on the sea, on the lands, or in dungeons you will be constantly attacked and do feel like your characters are progressing as you take on increasingly dangerous foes the further west you head on the overworld. In fact, regular mobs often time pose a far bigger threat than the bosses themselves, funnily enough, and your travels do feel dangerous as you hope being a cheapskate isn’t going to spell your doom as your supplies dwindle. Unlike the games of 1986 ala Might and Magic, Gurk 2 features a map so you always know where you are going. It marks all the important locations such as towns, ruins, and dungeons, though it is up to you to remember what they are and who it belongs to as they do not have a name displayed on it. It is a decent comprise as to not have the player trying to fiddle with graph paper on the train or wherever you decide to boot the game up.
The loot system I feel is one of the most important things that its sequel should revamp. Enemies do drop good loot and you can get some good gear early on if you save enough cash to buy them, though the landscapes themselves are devoid of any treasures or reasons to fully explore an area. I can only recall a single instance when I found anything in a dungeon, and by the mid-game made a beeline straight to the objective instead of scouring every inch of the place as I typically would in this type of title. Exploring on the over-world fares much better than dungeons, you can find a few cool locations such as a city of dwarves that sell really good gear. Typically important areas will be locked off until you get a quest to do them such as entering a crypt inside of a town or seeing the king himself. One wasn’t however and it was a giant labyrinth of trees with an NPC at the end. I didn’t have the quest for it and when I did get it, later on, I had to go all the way back to talk to him.
It is flawed in some areas no doubt, though its scale is impressive, as is the variety of enemies. While their attacks never feature anything more interesting than simply doing more damage later on, it is still great fun to progress from fighting lowly imps to deadly mind flayers. The menus have not been changed since the original and are honestly as terrible as ever. This title is quite a mixed bag all around, though one clearly made with a lot of heart. If you never liked this type of game, Gurk 2 certainly won’t win you over. On the other hand, if you do it offers well over a dozen hours of entertainment. Priced at a single dollar and unlikely to stress your phone in the slightest, meaning it won’t kill your battery life, Gurk 2 is a solid option for those that want an old styled PC title on the go.
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