Gemcraft 2: Chasing Shadows - Review

[Vaelorian]

This post has been revised after further gameplay. Original post overwritten.

 

Gemcraft 2: Chasing Shadows is the long awaited sequal to Gemcraft: Labyrinth. It introduces several important changes:

 

Firstly, gem types cannot be unlocked anymore; instead, once you aquire the skill for the gem type you will permanently have it available in all of your stages. This means that your options are extremely limited early on.

 

This also means that any gem types that are locked for premium users only (such as the extremely powerful chain hit gem type) are only available to free users in some of the stages, and available to payers on all stages. Considering the fact that the chain hit gems were quite over-powered in Labyrinth, one wouldn't need to be too much of a cynic to see that it's direct power buying.

 

In the spirit of buying power, Endurance mode is available to payers only - like in Labyrinth. And, like in Labyrinth, it turns the entire game into a freaking joke; the amount of experience, shadow cores and talisman fragments (more on those later) you obtain from Endurance are quite frankly absurd even early on. I compared my save with a friend's simply for curiosity's sake and found that, at the same stage, he was fully twenty levels ahead of me.

 

Now, Shadow Cores (which I mentioned last paragraph) are a currency you get for various actions in the game; destroying a talisman fragment awards you with fragments, killing apparations, spectres and shadows gives you fragments and you can find them in various destructibles on the game maps. You can also get a small amount of fragments from normal mobs.

Unfortunately, they have no actual use other than limit the amount of fun you are allowed to have; one of their two uses is to upgrade talisman fragments, but the cost for that is next to nothing. The other use is to apply battle modifiers - which were free in Labyrinth and every prior version of Gemcraft.

 

Modifiers make the stage harder and award more experience. Since Gemcraft only records your highest experience value, modifiers are vital to increase your level later on in the game. Modifiers are also very fun, and beating a stage with multiple modifiers is very satisfying. Locking the modifiers behind a paywall that requires farming to get through (there is no option to pay real money for cores) strikes me as missing the forest for the trees.

 

Even now, I fail to see the reason behind the currency; it's not even a "Free to Play" element because there are no microtransactions in the game. There is no attempt at psychological pummeling to extort more money - it's just pointless delay of your fun. I am told that cores are plentiful in the late-game, but from my experience there are not too many for free users up to level 100.

 

I should mention that the old modifiers of "Type X Only" are no longer in the game; there are such things as "X domination" but they do not alter the standard waves. Rather, they add additional waves of that type.

 

I mentioned talisman fragments multiple times now, so I better explain what they are: talisman fragments are permanent additions to your stats. You can only equip a few of them at a time, and they can be upgraded. Unfortunately, their rarity has a huge variance (to give you a general idea, the a core dropped at stage one can be anything between 1-20).

Talisman fragments aren't vital, but they are certainly useful. A bit of additional starting mana may not sound that important, but it can possibly allow you to upgrade one of your battle modifiers for a higher experience multiplier.

 

Worthy of note is that talisman fragments have specific modifiers; you can get almost any stat in the game (bonus damage, bonus mana, faster mana shard harversting etc). So even if you get a high-rarity fragment it won't necessarily have the right statistics.

 

Speaking of additional starting mana, let's talk about skills. Leaving unspent skillpoints is a core mechanic in Gemcraft 2, because each unspent skillpoint gives you 7 additional mana. And you need this mana, because unlike Labyrinth there is no skill to get more. Your skills are capped by your level - every ten levels, you can increase your skills' level by one. Every three skill levels, your skills get a bonus upgrade. Sometimes, it's only that bonus upgrade that you're searching for (for example, even early on you'll be using dual-color gems because they have a rather substantial bonus to their damage - and the True Colors upgrade only increases dual gem bonus every three levels).

This means that you can end up in a situation where your skills only actually improve every thirty levels (like the aforementioned scenario), and you'll quickly have hundreds of unspend skillpoints.

 

Early in this review I mentioned spells and gem enchantments, and now is a good time to expand on this: you get three spells and three types of gem enchantments that each do different things. The gem enchantments even have different effects depending on whether a gem is in a tower or a trap (but they do nothing in an amplifier).

I have to say that they seem to be missing some of the basic safeguards against abuse you'd have expected them to have had. For example, there is a gem enchantment that makes a gem hit dozens of times each second, each hit triggering the special power. One would expect this to be limited in some way to stop the player from stripping a monster of thousands of armor in one second, or from leaching thuosands of mana - but the game's not only alright with it, it's also a main mechanic.

 

Spells are pretty much what you'd expect - you select a spell, you click on the area you want to cast on, and the spell is cast. Both the spells and gem enchantments work like shrines in that they don't cost any mana, but require a charge-up time before you can cast them.

 

Enemy variety isn't too inspired; almost all the enemies from the Labyrinth are back in some shape or other, with one addition: the spectre. This flying unit has a purple color and it wants your gems!... It's a shame it has very little hitpoints, no armor and slow speed. At least up to level 100 anyway.

Shadows have a few "bullshit" abilities, such as the ability to move through pause (but not through opening the options menu). If they aren't spawned yet, they will gain armor if you pause (but won't spawn).

Thankfully, they don't have too much hitpoints, and the armor tearing gem with the attackspeed enchantment takes care of them quicker than you can blink. They are a huge nuisence if you don't believe the attackspeed enchantment triggers gem effects, though.

 

Over-all, Gemcraft 2: Chasing Shadows is not a great game. It's not terrible, but it does not do justice to the old titles. Between mechanics that you just don't expect (such as shadows moving through pauses but not through options menu or attackspeed gems triggering effects dozens of times a second) and unrecorded things (for example, what are gem wasps? The game never tells you!)  it just isn't as well-made as the Labyrinth.

 

It's not a bad game, though; it's a 6/10. The gameplay became a bit more involving with gem enchantments and spells, and with the removal of battle amulets you no longer have to go through a checkbox to gain the most experience, but over-all it's just not as good as Labyrinth and not worth your money nearly as much. If you have too much disposable income, feel free to go nuts I guess.

[Stoden]

I have played the Gemcraft series for quite some time now, and I was very excited when GC2 was finally released. I agree with some of the points that you made but I disagree with your overall opinion of the game. I've been playing GC2 for a bit and I don't see any of the problems that you have. Grinding is a work-for-reward system, always has been and always will be, it's necessary in a game such as this. Endurance is incredibly difficult at lower levels, which means the player will have to get quite a bit of game time before they can take advantage of the mass amounts of EXP that comes from finishing an endurance level. I have an excess of Shadow Cores because I don't use them on every level, which is the obvious solution for not having enough. I have never intentionally tried to get the talismans, and the ones that I do have aren't very good; yet I'm still doing great in each new level i play, only failing every now and then. I'm alright with only having limited gems in each level because it adds a bit of difficulty to the game, rather than just being able to unlock the best gems and finishing it with no problem. I have never had a problem with the shadows, cause I'm able to build my gems up before it gets there. I give GC2 8/10 and I think you should replay it with an open mind, rather than comparing it so much to the former games in the series.

[Vaelorian]

Y'know, I have a feeling you didn't get the gist of my review, so let me put it here a bit more plainly for you:

GC2:CS has two main problems, with a third that could potentially appear later on.

 

The bad: level modifiers cost shadow cores.

In previous gemcraft games, you could heap on all the modifiers you wanted. The only payment was the difficulty in the level, and the reward was the experience multiplier and the satisfaction you had from beating the level with said modifiers.

Now, you have to grind to be allowed to access those modifiers. This doesn't add to the challenge. This makes it so you have to grind to be allowed to have some challenge in your game. The payment is time and the reward is the challenge.

 

A rather jarring shift of focus here, don't you agree? From "Have as much fun as you want, but you only get rewarded if you manage it" to "You can only have a bit of fun if you are willing to grind enough cores for it".

This doesn't require comparrison to the original to look bad; any single-player only game that asks me to grind in order to have fun has it's priorities set wrong.

 

The outright horrible: shadows move while the game is paused.

[CaptainObvious]I'm going to let you in on a well-kept secret here: the pause mechanic was originally designed to respect the player's schedule and time, and allow the game to fit in when the player wanted it to.

With this shocking revelation in mind, we can now very easily deduce that a single-player only game that punishes the player for use of the pause mechanic is not a very good game. In fact, we can clearly see that it's a terrible game with the wrong ideas in mind.[/CaptainObvious] Even if this was the ONLY problem GC2 had, I wouldn't have rated it over a 4/10.

 

There is no possible logical explanation for this. It doesn't do anything other than punish a player who has to go away from his computer for a while. This is not some competitive strategy game in which the players can plan while the game is paused (and even in those games, a pause is sometimes allowed).

Again, this doesn't need comparing to the original. It's just a terrible, horrible, atrocious mechanic that shouldn't be placed in ANY game.

 

The potentially bad: certain gem colors' skills are locked for payers only.

This isn't new, and was done before, but what is new is that we can't unlock different gem colors anymore. So why is this a problem? Well, if we have two gem colors on a level... Say, orange and red, and we are playing for free then we might have a slight problem.

The problem is that orange gems have very low damage, and red gems have their skill locked for payers only (because it is the best skill, after all). In such a scenario, the free player would have the choice of going with a gem that has a much weaker special than intended or a gem that has virtually no damage.

I have not encountered such a level at the time of writing, but it could very well be that one exists.

 

I highlighted the most important parts of my post in red for your convenience. Please try to form an argument that specifically targets my first two points, rather than nit-picking against my own nit-picking of the game.

 

Will I listen to your advice and play the game "with an open mind"? Yes, IF the first two problems are fixed.

[Stoden]

I've seen that mid to late game the player makes more Shadow Cores than they spend, at least in my case, and all my friends that play the game. Spend some every few levels, earn 20-60 every level. That's all I have to say regarding that, I just don't see it as a problem. The shadows move while the game is paused, but I don't think that they can spawn while the game is paused, I don't see a situation happening where the shadow spawns and then the player immediately has to pause the game and leave without having time to kill it first. If something like that were to happen then it's not like the whole game is ruined forever, just redo the level and move on. I don't see the gem skills being a problem either, it's $5 for premium, this game has been in development for years, it's a small price to pay for the creator taking the time to develop GC2. I understood your review just fine, I just disagree, and I wanted to share my opinion with you so we both get a better understanding of the others point of view. The sarcastic attitude was unnecessary and disrespectful, maybe in your next reply you could be a little more civilized while explaining the new reasons you're going to create to justify saying that GC2 is still a bad game.

[Vaelorian]

Alright, less sarcasm, more numbers. Because everyone loves numbers.

 

-Even if I calculate by 300 cores every hour, you'd need over an hour to get enough cores for a single stage with modifiers, considering the fact that there's nine modifiers and each costs 27 multiplied by the difficulty settings (first is 1, second is 2, guess third difficulty is 3 or 4?).

Assuming it's 3, getting four modifiers at the highest level is 324. That's just over an hour of grinding for one stage with less than half the possible modifiers, and there's dozens of stages.

 

-While shadows do not seem to spawn while the game is paused, they do gain armor the entire time leading up to when they spawn - which is to say, start a stage and pause the game for a while, get to the shadow and it'll have hundreds (or thousands) more armor than what it would have had if you didn't. I made an experiment just for the sake of this post. A shadow that spawned on the same stage in the same level had 800 armor in the try without a pause, and 1,300 armor with a long pause.

 

IF the shadow didn't gain armor during the pause then it raises the worrying notion that shadows spawn with a random amount of armor that varies in several hundreds, which is a worrying notion itself, but I don't believe it.

 

Sadly, however, it's not even "I killed the shadow, I can pause now" because the number of shadows appears to not be set. Just to be sure, I played the same wizard tower level I mentioned above (field K4) three more times. My results were: first two tries had one shadow, third try had two.

Attempting field F2 on "Glaring" difficulty (just to see what it's all about) gave me the following results: first try, one shadow, second try, none.

 

You don't need me to tell you that this is messed up; even on levels without a guaranteed shadow it's a risk to pause the game, because if you happen to have a shadow incoming then it'll have lots more armor, and you will likely die (unless you're using poison\armor tearing, which are not available in some of the levels).

 

-I'll just drop the point about the skills being locked, because I haven't encountered such a field yet. Instead, I've noticed a field that's only available for payers. I guess it's not as big a problem because of the core limitations on modifiers, though.

 

-I don't believe 5$ is much either, and I'd have already payed for the premium version even if it would've cost twice as much - not because the game has been in development for years, but rather because it would have been fun. Hell, I wouldn't mind spending three times as much if it'd make those problems go away, but it won't.

 

You and I both know that if a company makes a game you don't like, you don't support them by buying it because it's not fun. And GC2 isn't fun because it punishes you for pausing, gates it's actually fun content behind grinding rather than make the grinding itself be fun (which it clearly could have done) and because it has a random number of shadows in it's levels (which wouldn't have been a problem if shadows didn't move and get stronger during pauses, even before they spawned).

[Stoden]

Alright, I get what you're saying now. Thanks for not being so sarcastic this time, I appreciate having a debate where both sides keep their attitudes purely objective. I see your points now and I agree that they are definitely problems. To be honest I'm not that far into GC2, so I guess I didn't have as much information as I should have to enter this debate to begin with. I've unlocked around 12 of the hextiles so far, haven't even unlocked amplifiers yet. I am enjoying the game though, compared to the people I know I'm very forgiving of the bad parts of games, I suppose that's why I'm able to look past these problems. Not to say that you can't look past problems, but just an example to explain why I would rate the game so high despite these obvious flaws.

[lofarok]

Well, I can farm 5000 shadow cores in one hour, if I want. But I don't want, as I get like 1000 shadow cores from the big monsters. I guess better players can make much more. Have you seen T7 stage? And no, I'm doing that without premium.

 

Second, if you have a shadow on the field, click on Options instead of the Pause. That's all. Problem solved.

 

I think you should play first - I mean, really play and understand the mechanics and come up with solutions.

[Vaelorian]

Still don't see a point to the cores; If you get five thousand an hour, then they have no actual value other than reducing the amount of fun at the start of the game - which is extremely counter-productive, since a new game has only a few hours\minutes to grab one's attention before he wanders over to the next distraction on the road to the grave.

 

The options menu pause thing is not exactly well documented. Thanks for sharing that it actually works (I would've never thought to try it, frankly, because I figured that since the shadows move through one kind of pause they'd move through the other as well).

This still isn't a point in the game's favor, though; it's just punishing older\slower players for no actual reason.

 

And, of course, there is the issue of the random number of shadows per stage. It is possible that they become easy later on, I won't deny, but if that is the case then what's the point of having random shadows in the first place? If they don't, wouldn't it be more balanced to keep them on specific stages, or added by a modifier (like Labyrinth)?

Because an extra shadow can make a stage more difficult (at least early on) but can't make a stage give more experience (which means that, if you heaped modifiers on a stage so that you can just barely make it, every time a shadow spawns you'll simply reload, wasting your time).

 

I'll play a bit further (until I reach wizard level 100) and return with my impressions. Do keep in mind, though, that a game that gets better several hours in is still very difficult to recommend, because it could've been good from the get-go. Especially if what keeps it from getting better is random boss monster spawns and pointless feature gating.

[lofarok]

Well, if you see a shadow coming, build 3-4 towers next to your orb, and put some low grade gems in them, with Flying priority.

These will hunt down the shadow projectiles easily. Afaik the first shadows don't spawn, so they won't hurt you anymore. You just have to kill the monsters, and kill the shadow at the end of the battle.

 

You can use an Armortearing gem + Beam enhancement to smash any armor in a matter of seconds. Bolt enhancement is good too to pierce through armor. And/Or Critical hit gem can easily deal with the armor.

 

I think the game has just plenty of possible solutions on everything. But a real guide would fill a book.

 

Updates are coming frequently, I think it will be well-balanced in a few weeks time. Don't forget the whole game is made by one man! No beta testing or anything was possible.

[Vaelorian]

I've played Gemcraft long enough (since the early stages of the first one) to know how to deal with shadows.

That said, getting to level 100 will take me a bit of time because of real life and my DotA 2 addiction.

 

As for "no beta testing was possible"... Sorry, but that's just not true. You can always give the game to some of your friends, fans, family or whatever for beta testing. Hell, he could've given it to subscribers of the last game to beta test. I assure you that there would be enough people that would provide feedback.

At the very worst case scenario he should've played it himself for a few hours to see that everything was working properly, and that the game was fun in it's initial 3-4 hour period.

 

He didn't, because he constantly over-estimated his ability to get work done (if you read on the development blog, there were numerous missed release dates - from "to be released in 2013" to "April 5, 2014") and did not account for beta testing from the begining.

 

What he should've done was speculate on when he'd have the game ready. Take a date two months later (at the very least) and give that as the official release date. Any time he would have had left after the game was done would've gone toward beta testing, additional polish, balancing, bug-fixing etc, and if he wouldn't have the game done in time (as was indeed the case) then it would seem like much less of a delay than it did now.

[lofarok]

Then I don't really see your real problem.

Lots of players already finished the game. Without premium.

This means the game is fine, works fine, can be beaten without being supernatural.

Only the new mechanics can create new situations and need to be learned.

And in some of the latest updates the later stages were made significantly easier.

 

Off:

Well, a contract with Armorgames or any company can easily restrict any kind of real beta testing. Flash games can be easily decompiled and published on other sites, or even other platforms. Do you remember when Kingdom Rush was stolen?

And if you spend 2-3 years from your life to develop a game, you would never ever give it out to even a friend. Any of them can have trojans or worms on their computer, giving easy access to the files.

[Vaelorian]

I don't like flamebait; "you don't have to be supernatural to finish the game" is definitely flamebait in my book, especially after I consistently said I want more difficulty in the game in the form of modifiers.

If you would like to discuss the game, think about what you post before you do. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave.

 

I will still play the game until level 100, and post my revised impressions in the original post.

-Edit- Revised review is up.