Crown Gambit Review

Crown Gambit is a narrative-driven tactical experience crafted by WILD WITS, an innovative French indie studio that has carved its niche by blending rich storytelling with distinctive musical elements across its portfolio. The game finds its home under Playdigious Originals, a publisher renowned for delivering quality titles spanning PC, console, and mobile platforms.

At its core, Crown Gambit masterfully intertwines a gripping narrative with strategic deck-building mechanics, creating a unique hybrid that delivers both the depth of tactical gameplay and the emotional resonance of a visual novel. While it proudly wears its RPG influences on its sleeve, offering satisfying progression and combat systems, the game maintains a strong focus on its storytelling roots, though perhaps I'm revealing too much too soon, as we've only just begun to scratch the surface of what this experience has to offer.

At the start of the game, you are presented with four distinct difficulty settings, each catering to different playstyles and levels of commitment. Novice, the easiest setting, is designed for casual enjoyment; bosses have reduced health pools, your character benefits from increased survivability and damage output, and the party fully heals after every encounter, ensuring a smooth, low-pressure experience.

For those seeking a balanced challenge, the soldier setting levels the playing field: neither you nor your foes receive stat adjustments, and instead of full recovery, characters regain only a moderate amount of health between battles, demanding more strategic resource management.

Meanwhile, the Knight and Paladin difficulties dial the intensity to punishing heights, evoking the brutal, trial-by-fire ethos of Elden Ring bosses that become towering threats with bloated health bars and devastating attacks, while post-battle recovery is nearly nonexistent. These latter options cater to those who thrive on relentless adversity, rewarding persistence with hard-fought victories that feel truly earned.

Once a difficulty is chosen, you're thrust into an immersive cutscene that unveils the game's world and lore. The narration carries a gritty, almost unpolished quality, less a rehearsed performance and more like a weathered storyteller recounting events from memory. This raw, unfiltered delivery stands in stark contrast to the slick, overproduced voice acting common in many modern narratives, offering a uniquely authentic tone that immediately sets Crown Gambit apart.

Following the story, you're told about the kingdom of Meodred and how the gods saw fit to grant mortals gifts in the form of artifacts. They granted powers and abilities to the chosen; however, man's heart is a greedy and petty thing, falling prey to what these artifacts can offer and ineffectively bringing the kingdom to a state of conflict and some really not-so-shiny times.

After the epic cutscene, you're taken straight into a tutorial on battle mechanics. The first character you get to meet is Hael. The first encounter doesn't really tell you to do things so much as to do something; rather, it lets you do anything, even ending the turn without having made a move.

Should you decide to do this, they force the characters to do something without much context behind it, sporting an ominous look and two two-worded sentences simply stating, "Vanish abominations". With this change in the character, he activates a skill simply titled Ancestral Grace; whipping out the map, Hael seems to be a cleric sporting a mace.

Having personally experienced both scenarios, using the provided cards and simply ending my turn without utilizing them, I found that the outcome was the same: the characters woke up, realizing it was either a dream or a recurring vision. After progressing through the dialogue, you're introduced to the rest of the group, including Aliza, a character shrouded in mystery whose past choices have shaped her into who she is today.

Next is Rollo, a rugged man clad in knightly armor. He is friendly but skilled in sword fighting. The group further explains to you about other characters, such as the prince, the king, and the high paladins, while also noting that the three companions you fight alongside are rookies in their respective fields.

Crown Gambit's gameplay adheres to this rhythm, weaving narrative and strategy together while offering you optional deep dives into the world's lore through expanded dialogue and collectible fragments. The true test, however, lies in the battles, dynamic, tactical clashes where every decision carries weight, and the line between victory and defeat hinges on careful planning and adaptability.

As for dialogue and story, this is interesting depending on which of the three is part of the conversation; you can respond as either character on the playable side of the narrative, with them giving more than one option for responding, given the dialogue.

The game's story is dark, featuring moments of questionable actions from characters with titles you wouldn't expect them to have, such as a character of the Paladin variety killing innocents to keep the "secrets of this mission"; however, it is set on a goal that it achieves quite well.

The story is epic, and the characters' opinions and backgrounds are solid points that make this visual experience worth playing. The game doesn't have groundbreaking mechanics, and it certainly doesn't do anything differently; it gives you exactly what it's selling, an experience in the story it's telling, while keeping things fresh by doing the deck-building battles.

Crown Gambit's characters and enemies are unique, sometimes grotesquely beautiful in design, and the color tones set the mood for a truly engaging book feel. The game's graphics, again, are what you'd expect from a visual novel-type RPG, with brilliantly designed characters with their tones and features adding to the game's feel. Right off the bat, you will see when meeting a new character on the road or talking to an old one, there is more beneath the surface, just by the way their eyes are drawn or the look of their demeanor.

Although all paper doll-style characters portray emotions quite well in the context of the dialogue. On that topic of dialogue, I completely understand the visual novel concept of gaming, normally pure reading; however, with today's modern games, it's not unheard of to have a voice-over artist or two to just fill in some of the game's longer reading parts, especially with NPC dialogues.

The game's combat is basic, but fun. The card-building is epic. The designs on the cards tickle a gothic craving I didn't know I had personally. I'm gaming with cards. It's unique. Each card does an appointed job with no lags, glitches, or issues.

Combat is turn-based and based on the movement points available to each separate character, depending on what that character can do, such as moving from one tile to the next, performing a basic attack, or performing powered attacks, which are through the cards used. The characters also have skill trees, which offer characters unique cards and skills, making combat spicier and far from boring.

Overall, Crown Gambit is a fun game, and the story is thrilling. I would have liked to see more voice-over, not through the game, but at specific parts. The game's story is generally good, with subjects that make you consider their moral stance. It's not groundbreaking, but it's solid, with a well-written story that appeals to both veteran and new players in the narrative adventure genre.