Pretty good
Its faster paced than Gemcraft and has new features, but it doesn't play as well as the first one on Newgrounds. It has many new rules and a new look, neither of which I truely enjoy. I'm sorry but I didn't have as much fun as Gemcraft.
Reviews for "GemCraft 0"
- -
Really interesting game! I never played the first, but I was really entertained by this. The skill level ups are greatly varied, and I spent a good little while trying to decide which ones to work on depending on the situation. The colored gems had really useful effects (though I found poison to be the most powerful by far) that were all quite different from each other. The menu style, the different goals, the various enemies, all great factors in this game. You give the player a ton of different options as to how they'll play the game. Even small things like enemy statistics when clicked on, or showing what type of enemy is approaching in the next wave, all of it adds to the different kinds of strategies one could use.
The major flaw I found in it was that it can sometimes be too difficult to gather up a good amount of mana quickly. That is, without grinding the earlier levels to max all of the upgrades. This was just my personal experience, however, and it's quite possible I simply had horrible strategies going into the game. I just got tired of attempting the same levels over and over again, only to lose to the last wave of giants that seem unfazed by my mid level towers and traps.
All in all, it's a wonderful game. I just wish I could have beaten it.
Cool...
I think this is a really great game. It's an awesome concept and it's really quite fun for the first few levels.
The only negative thing I can say is: it gets too difficult too fast. Once you get to a certain point in the game, it's near impossible to progress without playing previous maps over and over and over again. And that can be very frustrating. I feel the same goes for the original GemCraft (at the first "Epic Level").
And comparing this game with Episode One, this is definitely much more difficult, and slightly more fun. But mana seems to fill up much more slowly here... just an observation which might relate to the increased difficulty.
Anyway, the gameplay is great. I like the whole idea of the stat points and skills, and the combining gems thing is a cool concept. I really enjoy it.
Quantity cannot replace quality
The game is fun, and clearly a lot of work went in to it (if you count the work that went into the first gemcraft. There isn't a big difference except for the traps.)
I like the trap idea, however the basics of any well-thought-out game are lacking, in particular balance.
The game is very challenging, and since it's usually the last few waves that are deadly, repeating the same level over and over quickly gets annoying. I suggest that the special modes unlock sooner, so that leveling up is eased. On the other hand, repeating a level is more fun when you haven't done it for a while... so this isn't necessarily the right solution to fix the learning curve.
The gems are extremely unbalanced:
A poison trap will deal at least twice as much damage as any other trap or tower of the same level.
Slow and mana-steal have their uses.
Armour reduction would be useful if only it worked (probability of reducing armour is too small)
Splash damage simply doesn't work, even when the enemies are piled on top of each other. (which automatically makes chain hit a better choice) You might want to check if it's a bug.
The abilities are also unbalanced. Replenish is mathematically superior to tower builder, armour, forge and flexible pool. The limits based on level fix this to some extent.
The levels are well balanced (although it gets hard very quickly)
Overall, a frustrating but addictive game.
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.