Gems of War - Puzzle RPG Reviews

It's a great match game - Played others like it in the past that were simple and then started to get really complicated to play - Glad to have found another one that doesn't make you jump through a lot of hoops to get anywhere.

Recommended, it is a very good game well supported by the developers. Game updates frequently and bugs are glitches are fixed rapidly. Very nice casual puzzle game with lots of variety. You can play it on Steam with PC and you can also play the same account on a smart phone, either Android or iOS. The battles are completely random after a certain point and this makes some people like it while others hate it. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with random, it is just ... well, random. Deal with it and try to have fun, is all you can do. In most cases you win, sometimes you lose. Is there anybody who always wins in blackjack or poker? No, obviously not, you've got to lose occasionally. Do you get mad when you lose? Sure. Does it make you stop playing? No, not really. So, just get over it. There are some bad boards when you will lose no matter what you do. The main idea is to minimize these instances. Which is achieved through strategic development of your kingdoms, the cards, various stones that give the cards certain powers and through your guild. The game does not have a real time PvP, all battles are against AI. I would love to see some real time PvP action at some point. You do have to login on a daily basis although you can miss a day here and there, no big deal. But usually, it is no problem as you can do it from your phone while riding a bus, for example, or waiting for something. I'd say it is a very nice time killer when you have nothing better to do.

I have played "Puzzle Quest" as handheld for hours, and still consider it as one of the best Match-3-games - mainly because it combines RPG-Elements with Match-3. Afterwards, however, I was spoilt for any other Match-3-game, such as "Bejeweled", because they all were...yeah.. boring. Then I stumbled over "Gems of War." And while the "story"-mode is not as good as at it was with "Puzzle Quest", "questing" in "Gems of War" is an enjoyable thing so far, too. "Gems of War" is free to play - but (of course) you can spend a lot of money for in-game purchases. If you have played "Puzzle Quest" then you remember that your character could use spells (what in most other games are "Power Ups"). In "Gems of War" you technically "recruit" units, represented by cards. Oh boy, the cards are a chapter on its own. Aside from the fact that each card can be levelled up by using "Souls", you can improve the rarity (if you have e.g. 6 "white" cards of the same type you can sacrifice 5, to get a card of the same type, but with a "green" rarity), rarity also influences how "high" the card can level, and then there are 3 unlockable "passives" for each card which use certain gems which drop in game. Or you can buy them. Buying stuff for real money starts at 4,99 and can go up until 99 bucks. It's the quick way to get cards from a higher rarity as from the "normal" keys (the normal keys drop pretty much all the time). But - if you like to play Match 3 games a lot, and if you are used to some kind of "grinding" : the game gives you the opportunity to get some nice cards without spending a single penny. First of all, when you do the "kingdom-quests" often enough you get an epic follower. Some of those are "meh" (at least for me), some of those turned out to be REALLY useful. The most useful to me is atm Tyri. Not because she does damage. Not because she is a meat-shield. It's because she has a 20% chance of giving you a treasure-map when she uses her special ability. Now, treasure maps are used for a Mini-game called "Treasure hunting" - one map equals one try. The goal is to get as many extra turns as possible, to "merge" coins and boxes into MORE coins and bigger boxes. Because those boxes give you gems, honor and better keys. While Gem-keys and VIP-keys give you the best chances for epic and legendary and mysterious units you can get a bunch of epic and legendaries from "Glory"-chests as well. I cannot confirm, however, that you NEED to spend money to proceed in the game. For the sole Questing-content it should be enough to know how the game works, to mix your team (so not every card uses the exact same color of Mana), and to level your cards up. You can join a guild (or form a one-man-guild) to unlock keys for gold (you get gold by playing games/treasure hunts). To me the key to win the game is that you learn how to manipulate the grid. There are many cards out there who allow you to e.g. turn a specific color into another color. If you learn how to use that you can give yourself a lot of extra-turns against your opponent to do damage or to load the spells of your units. Or you can use a goblin - because goblins give you usually one extra-turn after they used their ability. Just like "Puzzle Quest", though, you sometimes have the feeling that the game just hates you. The grid seems always to fall for the enemie's favor, not for yours. That is why I usually go with me trying to manipulate the grid or something else that gives me extra-turns. I haven't done that much PvP. First I was afraid it would be pretty much like Hearthstone - you waiting endlessly for your turn because your opponent takes AGES to decide what (s)he wants to do. "Gems of War" uses "asynchrone" PvP, which means you can "attack" other players, but they get played by the A.I - so PvP pretty much feels like playing PvE. I can see why this is not very appealing to some people - for me it's fine, though I am pretty sure I would have lost often if I had battled the actual player, not the A.I. taking control over the Player's team. One thing I'd like to mention: the artwork of the cards is "nice", but not "exceptionally good". The style reminds often enough of a certain MMORPG by a company which name is a synonyme for "Snowstorm" - sometimes the creatures look like they were directly "borrowed" from there (looking at you, Dragonmoth!). Some "flavor-texts" are EXTREMELY nerdy (though I have gotten all jokes so far). I do not say it's "bad". It's just nothing "OHMIGAAAAWD that is SO KEEEWL!" . Another little slip-in: "Gems of War" has TONS of things I did not mention yet. You can play a "Class". You can level that "Class". Your character can be a part of the team and be equipped with a weapon - or you can leave yourself out of the team, instead putting another unit in. There are weekly events, for PvE and PvP. There is another Mini Game, called Arena. There is "Armor" for your character. You can "boost" your kingdom. All in all I'd say: if you like Match-3-Games try if "Gems of War" is something for you. Since it's free to play you'll just waste some time, no money, if you don't like it. But if you do like it - beware: it can get you hooked SO easily (*mumbles* Just--one---more---match)

A fun little game, with lots of cards to collect. The game system is easy to grasp, but the strategic component makes it interesting. A good game to pass time.

One of the few outstanding cross-platform/genre games online. Originated by the crew who brought you the "Puzzle Quest" series before splitting up, with Infinite Interactive (now Infinity + 2) keeping the art and content and storylines of the PQ series, while D3 got to keep the PQ series lable for their off-shoot online cross-genre games. GoW has gorgeously rendered art, humorous and interesting storylines, fun match-3/ccg/mmorpg gaming (one of the first to have a game with this kind of cross-genre), and biggest of all - an awesome rewards system. You don't HAVE to pay for anything, unless you want to acquire powerful weapons, armor, and troops only gotten through cash purchase, but which are not absolutely necessary to play the game, on your own quests, or PvP online and Arena. Best advice - remember that patience pays off.

Gems of War is addicting. I try and play everyday. I sometimes lose track of time when playing. Try it you'll like it. What have you got to lose its free to play.

This is a fun and addicting game. I've been able to join one of the top guilds, which makes the game a lot better. Very good community and everybody seems to be very helpful. The forums are very active and informative and the devs are active and quick to get bugs fixed. Very much worth checking out. I love that I can switch from PC to mobile version as well.

The best "Puzzle Quest" since the original, made by those same developers! Featuring new content weekly and developers that are very engaged with their players. To get the most out of the game, find a good guild ASAP and check out the official forums. My hours played is much higher than what you see here, since I usually play on iOS. (You can use the same account across the PC, iOS, and Android versions.)

I saw this game on my friend's profile and saw that he has over 200 hours logged on it. I checked Gems of War out on it's store page and thought that it seemed pretty lame. One day out of sheer boredom I decided to download it and give it a try. I have my roots playing Magic the Gathering back in college with my friends. Since then, I've always been search for a game on PC that was as much fun and as addicting as that was. I've tried Hearthstone, Shadowverse, and many others. None come close to Gems of War. The others have their high points and aren't bad games but the fact that Gems of War has a guild system makes the grind that much easier. If you're looking for fancy graphics, you won't find them here but overall the game is very well done. Best of all, it's free. Give it a try, you'll end up gettting as addicted as I am.

A very fun but very poorly balanced game. I want to cover four quick points. [h1]Lack of balance part 1 - the reason for nearly all negative reviews here (and a workaround!)[/h1] In Gems of War the primary gameplay is broken down into games you either play against AI created teams in a variety of scenarios, or in games you play against real teams created by other players that the AI controls. The balance for the AI created teams is a bit messed up. It starts out trivially easy but scales up incredibly rapidly and caps at around level 50. The problem is that you'll soon find yourself unable to effectively compete against the AI teams. At this point it seems lots of people decide it's either go pay-to-win or call it quits. There's a much better solution. Go play PvP. PvP will pair you against more fairly matched teams. You'll get better rewards and be able to continue leveling up your cards and team. Since the AI team scaling stops at level 50, by the time you come back to it - it'll be a cake walk. It's counter intuitive but yeah. Start by playing against AI teams and then after that do PvP until you're ready to face the AI... [h1]Lack of balance part 2 - the fun is strictly capped[/h1] The cards in the game are in no way balanced or is there any major attempt to balance them. Rarer cards tend to do everything less rare cards do... and more... and better. The problem is that this strictly caps the room for creative team design. You are left to take your best/rarest cards, add a mana generator (turning gems of a certain color into the one your 'win card(s)' need), and that's pretty much going to crush any other team you could make. This is really fun at first when you're regularly finding more rarer cards and your decks are constantly shifting and changing in new and interesting ways. But as you start to collect most of the top cards - the fun starts to stop. Suddenly there's not much to look forward to, and since less rare cards tend to just be worse in every possible way there's not really any sort of room for creative team design. [h1]Monetization - you can, but don't need to and I wouldn't want to[/h1] The major 'grab' in this game is chasing the carrot of rarer cards. With real money you can buy these cards - or at least keys to chests that give you a very high chance of getting them. However, everything relevant that you can buy you can earn through regular play as well. I actually find this a bit frustrating. I'd love to toss the developers a few dollars since I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game, but just about everything you can buy is going to just decrease the hours of enjoyment you can have with the game. A recurring problem with free to play games that don't just focus on aesthetics purchases. [h1]Overall - Great game.[/h1] Overall yeah, give it a go. It's by a wide margin the most fun I've had in this sort of game and there's hundreds of hours of entertainment in this game for those that enjoy the fundamental gameplay.