Old school turn-based squad tactical game released in 2000.
Why buy it? If you haven't seen this game before, well, it's not as famous as Jagged Alliance or Incubation, but it was very good at the given time. It costs little and there are coupons up to 90% - almost to cost of a sip of water.

Pro: Good tactics of a small squad (3-5 members) based on fair balance and well-made short maps. Note that it's a close combat game, there is no gauss rifle to solve the problem from distance. You'll need to count every shot and use cold steel in every fight. It feels like survival games like resident evil 2&3, but with the turn-based battle system.

Cons: in the year 2014 RE2-styled product look awful. Gorky 17 is playable, but some of the new gamers might have their eyes bleed from the first sight. The story, especially the basic one (English version), is vague at its best, and klükva in general. AI is not that good, some of us will overcome this game easily.

All in all, it's a fair 7.5/10 in my line. I'd give it more, but the good balance was made out of killed realism.

PS: It almost hit 15 years age mark! That means you can run it on a very dull config! But, no matter how good is your CPU and GPU, there will be 640x480 resolution and damn large pixels. It runs on Win7 with no trouble at all, just pick the right stroke on video config before starting the game.

PS for Russians: The game contains the right translation (Made by Snowball studio - not Goblin's Gorky18). So you have two games in one: for NATO or for good old Specnaz since translation made a big difference in all dialogs in-game.

Gorky 17 is many things. Old, unwieldy, highly difficult in terms of resource management and has terrible voice acting and a story with more lose ends than answered questions.

Gorky 17 is one more thing, which is absolutely uniquely awesome: A short tactical-RPG-scavenging-post-apocalyptic-horror-trip to the late nineties.

Worth every penny and with an easy to apply workaround able to scale to almost any resolution on Win10.

The game is not bad, but the gameplay spoils everything.

Playing status: finished the game

Gorky 17 is a blend of RPG, turn-based strategy, and adventure games. In it, you'll play as a group of soldiers, trying to survive in a place full of monsters. Before you read further, I would like to clarify that I'm not good at turn-based strategy games, so this review will mostly be intended for people who are new or have a similar skill level as me.

Pros:
- Various weapons to use at the enemies
- Leveling up weapons to increase their damage
- Various enemies with different attack patterns and resistances

Cons:
- Sometimes it's hard to know where to go next
- Pressing the alt-tab button will ruin the graphics
- Unable to undo moves

Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

Yes.
If you like turn-based strategy games with resource limitations, buy this game at a sale.

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Despite the outdated visuals, everything still looks great. The realistic-looking environment depicts the abandoned area very well and the display of low-poly characters in top-down view helps to cover the lack of details of the models. The menu that is strapped at the bottom of the screen is also easy to understand and matches well with its military theme. As long as you don't mind with some things like the blurry main menu, you'll still be able to enjoy the visuals to their fullest.

All cutscenes are overlaid with the current screen, making it hard to watch it completely. I could only see like half of what's happening, although luckily, most cutscenes are only about a boss' appearance. It still ruins the immersion sometimes though, especially since the game is supposed to give a scary and mysterious feel.

The story is decent. It does a good job in the beginning, making you curious as to what is happening in the place you are in. The conflicts, whether external and internal, are also carried out in the right proportion to balance them out. It was fun seeing how Ovitz is always trying to break the ice whenever the group is facing something, Trantigne who always wants to go home, and Sullivan, the team leader, that tries to keep the group together. However, everything went down the drain in the ending. While it does wrap the mystery that you are eager to find out, it ends it abruptly - it's as if the ending is there to give room for a sequel, which has never come until now.

Gameplay
The game has a mix of adventure, RPG, and turn-based strategy elements. As an adventure game, you can explore the area, pick up items, and use them to other objects blocking your way like how it is in point-and-click games. However, sometimes it's hard to find where you are supposed to go. Some exits tend to be blocked until you interact with an object, which is not obvious enough if you are not looking for it. Some areas also require you to use specific items in your inventory to get optional items. While it's not as crucial as the first one, having more useful items is helpful in a game with limited resources like this one.

Resources are limited. You need to conserve your resources, whether ammo or health packs, to survive the game. Luckily, there is only a set number of battles, and since the game has the same enemies in each battle, you can keep on replaying battles until you are sure that you're not using too many resources. However, this also means that you have to be completely sure when you can use those devastating weapons since some battles can be hard to finish without them.

Combat
Combat in Gorky 17 is just like how you expect of turn-based strategy games - you'll play in a grid-like layout where you can command your characters to fight. Enemies are varied, and each has a different attack pattern, walking speed, and resistances. It's your job to figure out the most effective way to finish the fight, without using too much ammo and taking too much damage.

Various weapons are available for you to take on the enemies. Although you'll start with low-damaging weapons, more useful weapons will be obtained later on, albeit with limited ammo. Other weapons with no ammo will also be available, whether it's acting as a support to paralyze an enemy or a damage-dealer with a cooldown. Leveling up your weapons is also an option to increase the weapon's damage, allowing you to finish battles more efficiently.

Battles tend to pit you against a lot of enemies at once. It can take a lot of tries before you can get the result that you want, especially since you have to finish the fight effectively. However, boss fights tend to be very easy. Most bosses can be stun-locked until they die, which acts more of a breather than a challenge. Although I don't mind having bosses like this, some people might find them to be disappointing.

Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 17.7h. To be honest, I had trouble finishing the battles, mostly because I wasn't sure how to finish the fight without taking too much damage. I also admit that strategy games with limited resources don't mix well with me, as that would mean that I had to restart all fights until I got satisfied. I ended up having more resources than I need, but with no way of knowing whether I had enough resources to finish the game, I couldn't stop trying to finish the fights effectively, especially since I always took a lot of damage on my first attempt.

Problems
First, the cutscenes aren't showing properly. Second, alt-tabbing will ruin the graphics, forcing you to restart the game. Lastly, you can't undo your characters' moves. I couldn't count how many times I moved a character by accident when I wanted to select another character.

The resource limitation in this game is kinda a mixed bag for me. For one, I liked how that you need to conserve your ammo, trying to finish the battles effectively. On the other hand, it can be tiring to restart the fights over and over until you are satisfied, especially when you have to finish the difficult fights. The early game also makes it worse since your character will miss their shots, and a single missed shot will always mean wasted ammo. Luckily, you can increase your characters' accuracy later on, and the new weapons that don't require ammo help me to conserve ammo. Although I didn't have fun at the early game, most turn-based strategy veterans will like the difficulty and challenges. Battles will also be easier and more manageable at the latter half of the game, to the point that you can finish battles by stun-locking most enemies.

+ Surprisingly detailed environment set-pieces
+ Moderately intriguing & engaging plot
+ Environments encourage exploration
+ Can use environment during combat (i.e. exploding barrels)
+ Level of detail in character models (particularly enemy mobs) seem admirable for year of release (though extremely dated by modern standards)
+ Passable, non-invasive ambient soundtrack

- Weak RPG elements that are poorly fleshed-out
- Mediocre dialogue writing


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Russia decides to bomb Poland... er, I mean one of its glorious soviet era secret cities built in Poland and the Western world doesn't take it lightly. NATO sends the whole army of four soldiers into the city and loses contact with them. Then they send another three - a Canadian, a Pole and a French. Sounds like a good mix for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke.

Instead, as player finds out, it is a beginning of a sinister story set in a devastated city which has been abandoned by human beings... but strange creatures lurk in the shadows and player faces them constantly in turn based combat. With exception of the end game and some silly boss fights, the game offers a challenge and you will often count every bullet as they are hard to come by. The graphic and art design are amazing when it comes to surroundings, the creatures, however, are of mixed quality. During the gameplay there is a very atmospheric music which fits the mood perfectly, although one could wish for more tracks.

Overall, the game is great if you enjoy gloomy settings and even more so if you are a fan of tactical games. For five euro it's a must-buy, so get it on Steam sales at least. Get it and play it!

This is my firs review and english isn't my first language. So about the game. First of all i dont care about graphics so my review will be positive.
Gorky 17 is the game in which you must to think in every battle and especially in begining you must save ammo as much as you can. I saved too much and in the end had plenty of ammo. And you must to choose the best route how to complete stage.
I liked how the surroundings of maps was drawed and i liked the story and characters too.
So buy this if you like turn based strategy, rpg and dont care about graphics. I spent 21 hour to complete the gameaming . On my non gaming laptop works perfectly.

Love this game. Rewards you every moment and a nice little plot. Gives a nostalgic trip to the nineties and looks nice enough too. Though it does face some issues with modern graphics like aliasing, transparent cutscenes and stuff but overall its great.

P.S. Never Alt-Tab or face the consequences!
P.P.S. The GOG version might be better optimized I think. Dont know, I don't have it.

The game itself is fine. Old, quite old, but fine. Good music and audio surprisingly but not so great graphics with turn based squad combat. So far I can't figure out if it's entirely linear or not, but otherwise it reminds me of Fallout 1 a little bit.

The reason I absolutely don't recommend is because I have never actually played this steam version. I had to hunt all over to find an actually working copy. Steam seems to be in the habit of selling broken crap to people and being stingy about refunds. It's a TERRIBLE business practice and reflects extremely poorly on Steam. Seriously go to GOG or hell pirate the thing if you want a copy that works. Don't give your money to steam it's Russian roulette whether your leased not owned copy of a game even works. Some people get this game working fine. Others manage to fix it somehow. Then a bunch of others never get to play it because it's just utterly broken.

They have done worse though. Deadlock is still on steam store despite the fact it literally cannot work on newer machines and by newer I mean post Windows 7. Steam, stop selling broken crap. This game only gives me please insert CD error at best. I have found no fix for it except not using steam for it.

Was looking forward to this but could not get graphics to work under any include options. All kinds of glitches and
buggered up graphics. Forums are full of "don't expect this to work out of the box". Give me a break. If it doesn't work
out of the box then don't sell it on Steam. I am so disappointed in Steam re the crap they are allowing on their site.