Bite-sized Review:
Commander Quest

By Chris Picone, 10 April, 2025

First, a quick apology to the developers: I had intended to release this review when the game released, but I got addicted and couldn't stop playing.  I enjoy most deckbuilders and card battlers so I assumed I'd enjoy Commander Quest but there was just something about it that had me hooked from the start. 

Aesthetics

Not sure how to describe the visuals.. the battles look like maybe they were designed for mobile?  Except they're not bad, even on a much larger PC screen. I don't know, it's just a vibe.  The UI is nice and clean and it's immediately clear what all the figures are and there are plenty of nice combat animations. For the sort of game this is, where the focus is on the gameplay, I've got to say that Commander Quest looks better than most of card battlers out there.  Also, the music's great - epic fantasy tunes that get particularly intense during boss battles. 

Gameplay

There are two races - human and dwarf - and four commanders with three skills each to unlock, and each of these has a hefty impact on your play style.  The races share these commanders and skills, which I feel is a bit of a lost opportunity, but the races have their own decks and each race's commander does receive a different set of starting relics at least so there's still plenty of variety.  The decks start relatively simply, and focused, which means although your starting cards are fairly weak, they're very stable and it's easy to start building synergy immediately. For example, the humans start with lots of militia and militia archers, and it's simple enough to find cards and relics that boost anything that says "militia." Having said that, you're thrown some curveballs pretty early too. You pick up new cards every time you win a battle and after some non-combat events, usually selecting from three options, and you will find there are also lots of tribal humans and ghosts, and those paths can be very tempting too - probably better, except you're off to a delayed start trying to build a new deck within your deck. Similarly, the dwarves have booze and resource mechanics that you can build strategies around. There's also a ton of non-creature cards - supply, base, and tactics, that give you long- or short-term benefits. The battles are the core of the game and they're played by using your mana (you normally get 3 per turn) to play whatever cards you can afford, placing your creatures in deployment zones across usually multiple available paths. The opponent does the same and then the game plays out as an auto-battler for a few seconds, which means speed and timing really matter. If your creatures get to the end they hit your opponent, dealing but also taking damage. Your opponent, of course, is doing the same to you, so while trying to attack him you also need to defend yourself almost like a tower defence game.  As you progress through the game you unlock new cards, usually more powerful (cool stuff like catapults, griffins, owlbears), and is also great for adding variety for future playthroughs, but does affect your synergy by diluting your selection pool. Commander Quest does feature some roguelike elements; the map progression I found good, with nice balance between combat and other, but the meta-progression across games I found ridiculously slow and even after beating the game a few times I was barely able to unlock anything.

Verdict

Although Commander Quest isn't perfect, it's both friendly for new players and complex enough for veteran deck builders, has plenty of card variety, as well as a good range of level biomes, battle layouts, enemies, and bosses to face. You really need to consider strategy on multiple levels - how you build your deck, how you play out your turns, and how you adapt to constantly changing level design and enemy tactics. It's one of those games where there's a lot more going on under the hood than is immediately apparent, and exploring some of those weird synergies and interactions between mechanics can be very rewarding.  I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Links: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2697930/Commander_Quest/