awesome game
people just comment around about making the game easer...make it balanceb but lol. i mean, i was just ok here, i looked a bit off when i started but after i got the hang of it and really starte to understand the game i got really easy...i'd be annoied coz it was toeasy if wasant the multiple game modes. awesome!
can't wait to play the 3rd one!
Excellent but needs some improvement
There are tons of tower defense games out there. *Tons.* None of them, however, are nearly as innovative or addictive as GemCraft. I mean really - I *love* this game. With over half a dozen game modes unlocked of dozens of levels (wizard levels, not game levels!), it's massively replayable. With traps, shrines, and bombs in addition to towers, you can adapt your playstyle to each level, battle mode, and skill specialties... and that's where things begin to get a little... bleh.
Leveling up is great. Instead of mindlessly grinding your way through each battle, you have something awesome to look forward to (plus the amulets, although those aren't nearly as exciting since, you know, they don't do anything), but the skill system makes no sense. On the surface, it seems awesome, and it is! But at the same time, it isn't. This makes sense, just bear with me for a second.
Every time you level up, you get five skill points. The first rank of every skill costs five points - so one level-up, one rank in a skill - to begin with. The ranks then gradually get cheaper, and then become more expensive again. This is the first thing that doesn't make sense. Why are we changing the cost of skills, exactly? If you wanted to encourage players to max their skills by making the first rank the least efficient, I could accept that. But then they get expensive again, so this is clearly not the case.
Secondly, each rank in a skill gradually gets less effective, which means that once you reach a certain point, skills are just no longer worth the points needed for the next rank. Let's take a look at Focus (X% higher initial mana at the beginning of each battle) as an example:
Points / Rank / Effect / Bonus per point
(5) 1 [48%] 9.6%
(4) 2 [84%] 9%
(3) 3 [114%] 10%
(2) 4 [138%] 12%
(2) 5 [159%] 10.5%
(2) 6 [171%] 6%
(3) 7 [183%] 4%
(4) 8 [195%] 3%
(5) 9 [204%] 2.2%
(6) 10 [210%] 1%
So rank 4 is the most efficient, rank 6 is more than 50% less efficient than rank 1, and everything after that is just horrible. Granted, having a large amount of mana to begin with is very helpful, but when you can also spend points to reduce the cost of everything, maxing this skill (or any other, for that matter), just isn't worth it. Thus, skills become an irritating mathematical min-max mini-game that could have easily been avoided by implementing a system that actually makes sense.
Also, it would be lovely if every skill and amulet was actually available on NG. I was a little miffed when I noticed that wasn't the case. Sure, you want to advertise Armor Games, but my game is saved to NG already and I don't want to start over at level 1!
In the end, despite its shortcomings, it's still a great game. I would love for these issues to be fixed in the next version/chapter/whatever, but it will be enjoyable either way.
Needs Balancing
Skill allocation definitely plays a bigger role in this version. That's a plus.
However, once you hit level 14 or so, experience options become limited, and the next stages are too difficult to defeat. This would be better if the skills were opened up at lower levels, or the other missions were available. At level 15, its easy to get stuck because the mobs become too strong, but there aren't any experience routes left.
Wrong!
Gemcraft was a nice strategy, well, more or less. But this one is a genuine puzzle! And I hate puzzles!
good game
addicting and fun game