Gem Wizards Tactics Review
DISCLAIMER: I received this game for free from the developer. I don’t think that fact affects my opinion of the game, but it would be irresponsible of me not to tell you.
In one of my first reviews, I wrote about Wargroove and how much I enjoyed turn-based strategy games in spite of my almost complete lack of competency with them. It’s been almost two years since that review and neither my fondness nor my inability has changed much. In that time, a game called Gem Wizards Tactics caught my eye because of its frankly bizarre factions. It’s been quite some time since I was last in charge of a military campaign, so I was lucky that Gem Wizards Tactics released this past week.
Gem Wizards Tactics is a tactical strategy game set in the developer’s Gem Wizards universe, a whimsical fantasy world where warring factions wield the power of magical gems. Gem Wizards Tactics primarily focuses on the conflict between the eco-friendly Potatoes and the ever-greedy Business Demons, while the stuffy phalanx of the Azure Order waits in the wings. Unlike most other games in the strategy genre, players won’t win a match of Gem Wizard Tactics by simply eliminating all of their opponent’s forces. Instead, players must capture strategically important castles and eliminate specific enemies. To do this, players will harness the mystic gems to cast powerful spells, calling lightning from the sky, conjuring monsters of living ice, and changing the land beneath their feet.
The aspect of Gem Wizards Tactics that first drew me to it is unquestionably one of the best features: the strange and unique factions. Presented as the game’s protagonists and the first faction players are put in control of, the Potatoes are a race of sentient vegetables living in an agrarian society. As farmers, their mechanics revolve around manipulating weather and growing and harvesting plants. In addition, their botanical nature gives their units a higher average defense than other factions. Opposing them are the Business Demons, a corporation of infernal industrialists that gain power through environmental exploitation. They grow in power as they pave the natural landscape over with roads or bore holes for resources. They’re also the main faction that can unleash destructive fires and fight through them. Something that really tickled me was the leader of the Business Demons, a CEO who uses predatory loans to gain power and improve his soldiers. I liked the themes of both of these factions, they were well designed and expressed themselves in their mechanics. The third faction, the Azure Order, struggles to live up to its lore. Supposedly masters of ice magic and enemy displacement, less then half of their units do either of those and only one does both. Perplexingly, they even have the only non-Business Demon unit capable of setting fires, which seems pretty antagonistic to their icy tendencies.
Like the Azure Order’s thematic disconnects, Gem Wizards Tactics has a number of peculiarities and frustrations. The thing I noticed first was that, in spite of a story-heavy introduction video when the game first starts, there is little story to be found. There is a campaign mode, but that has no story attached to it, instead serving as a sort of gauntlet of matches. Players can lose, gain, and improve units across these matches and each victory contributes to a liberation percentage, but these maintained stats are the only thing separating the campaign from playing a handful of matches back to back. I would have loved more story because I have so many questions: If each faction has one of the seven gems of power, why can’t I use them in a match? If the Business Demons not only have one of the seven gems but also the eighth and most powerful Omni-Gem, why don’t they possess additional powers? What are the small gems I can stockpile to fuel spells if they aren’t the seven gems? Why is the leader of the Azure Order riding a massive insect while his subordinates ride horses? Why is the grim reaper a potato? There are strange lore fragments that may answer these questions, but players only receive these when retrieving small gems on the map, and even then only randomly. At this point I’ve played 20 matches of Gem Wizards Tactics and I only have eight of these odd lore parcels. And these eight aren’t exactly enlightening or coherent. Some are comics, some are short fiction, and at least one is just sales copy for the game. I’m positive the developer has answers to these questions because he’s developed a whole universe setting, but it’s so sparse and enigmatic I can’t really dive in and enjoy myself.
Perhaps I would know more of the story from the odd gem data lore tidbits if I had more fun playing it. I should preface this portion of the review by saying that I’m bad at Gem Wizards Tactics even by my normal standard of strategic games. That said, while each unit has interesting and well designed mechanics, no faction really feels like a coherent group. A great example of this is the turtlepult unit. A turtle with a catapult strapped to its back, the turtlepult is somehow part of the Potatoes faction and it’s thematic mismatch is equal to its mechanical incoherence. Another Potato unit, the roll guard, is able to do a special attack if it is moved by “bump” style movement. The turtlepult has two different movement abilities, neither of which are bumps. There are no other Potato units that benefit from any kind of movement abilities other than the roll guard, so the turtlepult having these abilities feels wasted and unorganized. These inconsistencies exist across all three factions, but the turtlepult feels like the exemplar of this frustration. If I had to guess, I would say that the developer included abilities like these to accommodate units players can recruit from other factions, but that mechanic only serves to blur the lines between factions and make the asymmetrical mechanics less useful and less interesting.
Gem Wizards Tactics seems like it should have released in early access for at least a little while, because, while there is a solid game at its core, there are enough rough edges that need to be sanded down. In spite of my issues, I still like the game’s setting and theme so I want to see this game live up to its potential. The developer has said on Twitter that a proper story mode is coming so I have confidence other additions will be made such as additional factions, more accessible lore, and maybe even multiplayer will be on the horizon for Gem Wizards Tactics. But at this stage, I think $15 is just too much to ask.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking
