Gilded

The thing about RPGs is that the developers often have to choose between providing the players with a great story or a hardcore set of gameplay mechanics. Since there are plenty of people in both factions, the obvious solution is some sort of compromise. Hence, you don’t have to be a hardcore player to get through the fights and experience the story, but you do have to learn some basic mechanics in order to survive.

Gilded is a retro RPG in which you are allowed to pick exactly how you want the game to feel. There are three different difficulty levels to choose from, depending on whether you want to ignore the combat entirely and just listen to the story, or really put your skills to the test whenever an enemy pops up. On top of all this, the game is designed to bring back memories from the NES era.

The story revolves around a character named Gregor, who goes on a quest to find a cure for a mysterious illness that has affected his sister. This quest requires him to find some allies along the way, and the journey becomes more convoluted later on when they stumble upon some interesting conundrums. Thus, by the end of the story you wonder about the concept of choice and destiny and whether anything we do matters at all.

As mentioned before, the game allows you to change the difficulty level to suit your skill level. On the lowest levels, you get special items that practically allow you to win any encounter instantly, so the battles are a non-issue. In case you are looking for a challenge, on the other hand, the harder difficulties require you to pay attention to your heroes and their abilities, as well as combine their strengths as efficiently as you can.

There are also a couple of puzzles you have to complete along the way, some of which are tougher than others. It’s also worth pointing out that there are times when the maps are actually mazes full of teleporters and narrow corridors, so the exploration component itself can be a puzzle as well. Lastly, the graphics are about as basic as you would expect from a retro title, but the artwork is on point most of the time.

In the end, the versatile difficulty level is what makes Gilded so accessible, even if this is merely a demo at this point. Hence, we can only hope that the story as a whole is good enough to be worth the trouble, and that more diverse enemies become part of the experience later on.