im not even a quater of the way through
BUT OH MY GOD i love this game
Reviews for "GemCraft"
law abiding hell demons
amazingly enough all of the demonic hell-ditchers stay on the road
OMG!!!
BEST GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED!!!
Finally, a tower defense game with some finesse!
Every now and then, someone makes a game that's actually deep and well-balanced. It doesn't happen often. Entire genres can rise and be fun and sell a million copies without such a game occurring.
This is easily the best tower defense game I have ever played. I'm not sure it will ever be this good again. The reason is the incredible ammount of depth packed into the game. I don't know where to begin describing the ridiculous number of reward schedules built into the game and the different the ways they fit together, but you can't just breeze through the game oing one thing.
I thought gem-matching was critical until I discovered that it was cheaper to just spawn them whole. Then I couldn't progress, until I noticed how powerful gem-bombs could be when you put some skill points into it. Then I went back and got glowing frames in the first few stages, only to discover that that shelling the enemy into oblivion is too costly in the later stages. The first epic stage Boss kicked my ass over and over again until I learned the foresight to max my Mana Pool early and the patience not to build anything during the last few waves. And when you finally start maxing those top-teir skills, everything else fades into the background as you focus on building a ludicrous arsenal of grade 7 gems. From that point on, it's pure Tower Defense, but the route there is delightfully diverse.
My one complaint was that the most interesting play mechanic (matching gems) goes under-used, since you can buy gems cheaper than you can make them. Don't think of this game as a hybrid between gem-matching Puzzle Game and Tower Defense. Instead, think of the gem combos as a way of optimizing your inventory. It's a means of buffering and condensing your offensive power into a few key towers.
There's also some Amulets, which are pretty much like achievements, except they boost your score, which helps you level up, which means that if you want to learn the techniques you'll need to survive some of the tougher stages in the middle, you'll need to spend a few rounds doing stupid bullshit like building towers you have no intention of using, or using the hotkeys to create and combine a bunch of low-grade gems and gem-bomb them all in the corner, once you're confident your REAL defenses can handle the mobs. So, it's kinda stupid, but it's a layer of the complexity. Remove it and the whole game might fail.
Basically what this game does is give you plenty of options, and then force you to experiment with them, since the optimal technique changes as you level up. I happily invite sequals and rip-offs, because I think there's so much diversity here, further experimentation couldn't dammage the overall quality.
I've played a lot of defense games. Some were fun right off the bat, but got boring once you discovered the "best tower." Others used gimicks to impose challenge artifically. There's none of that here. Oh, sure, there's a few annoyances. Lime looks almost exactly the same as Green. All your best gems might be Red, and then you get a wave of Red enemies. Ctrl+Combine Gems is pretty much pointless unless you're going for an Amulet, in which case it takes all the effort out of it. But the game a whole is so great, I'll gladly work around these problems as I continue to play.
I'm only about 2/3 of the way through, but I can't immagine there being any way for them to screw up the endgame. I mean, the final level could turn out to be some kinda Xeno Tactic bullshit where you need to pick the exact best combination in order to win, but even if they pull that, I'd forgive 'em. The middle of the game is just that good.
(And long!)
2 Hours of Fun.
I played this game for two hours tonight at least. I got to the first glowing stage before giving up after my second try. Great game. Well made. Very little lag at all and it flowed smoothly. Nice story and nice take on the game with not using "lives." I don't review much, but I felt that this game truely deserved the 10 and the review.
Armor Games have been my favorite.