Cheese Cutting Tools

Use a cheese wire - simplest tool for the job, IME, IMHO. It's just a thin wire with handles. Wrap it around the cheese and pull.

Soft cheeses are best sliced using wire, which is easy to work with and avoids squishing the cheese. Hard cheeses, like Parmesan, are difficult to cut with a wire. These cheeses are often (as you say) scored and then split with a prying action. If the cheese is sufficiently dry, it will easily break apart in sections. You can do this with an ordinary knife, or use a specialized cheese knife such as these.

Gouda is kind of in a middle ground, being a semi-hard cheese. Some specimens may be too soft to pry apart, and others may be too hard to easily cut with a wire. That said, I would probably try the wire first (the prying apart method usually only works with very hard cheeses). The age of your cheese will give you a rough indication of how hard it is-- Gouda is usually aged anywhere from 1 month to 3 years.

Go online and take a look a cheese monger’s parm set if you’re serious about breaking down large wheels. They have a bunch of cheaper knives as well.