Gyromancer is the new RPG puzzle game born from the cooperation of the foremost puzzle game developers and the foremost RPG developers. Square-Enix and Popcap joined forces to create a puzzle RPG, seemingly aimed at the massive audience that the Puzzle Quest franchise has gathered. In this game, players play the part of Rivel, a summoner who has lived for countless years thanks to his magic. The Duke and his family have been murdered by a rebel faction, and it’s your job to track them through the wilderness and bring them to justice. To do this, Rivel must summon his monsters against the monsters in the forest, building his strength, and clearing a path to the rebels. Monster fights are where the puzzle comes in. Match gems in the puzzle to collect power, and send damage to the enemy. Knock all the hitpoints from a monster, and it’s defeated. Explore the maps to discover new summons (of which Rivel can only have three at a time equipped) and treasure.
Each level is a map of paths that lead to treasures, fights, and new summons.
Pursuit
The puzzle mechanics are engaging and fun. Like Puzzle Quest, there are several different colored gems, and your job is to make matches. This is done by choosing four adjacent stones at a time, and twisting them clockwise (you need a special, rare item to make a counterclockwise turn). Not every move has to make a match, but the game encourages the player to make as many matches as possible with the moves. This is accomplished two ways—first, attacks aren’t made by building up power then choosing to expend it. Instead, as soon as enough power has been built, the attacks drop automatically. Both fighters build up a little power in each attack every turn, but if you make an “idle spin”—a turn in which no match is made—the enemy still gets power while you don’t. After a few levels, the monsters start getting double power from your idle spins. The player can affect this further by following the affinities of the creatures. Making a match in his creature’s color builds bonus power, while making one in the enemy’s color stops it from building power that turn. Second, there is a meter at the bottom of the screen that increases with each match, and resets when you make an idle turn. keeping this meter high increases damage delt, and points earned.
The attacks push automatically when the bars fill.
Doing well in the puzzle sends damage to the enemy creature.
It took awhile for me to really see the puzzle. In many gem matching puzzles, I find that it takes a little while before my brain really starts to recognize the puzzle in its elemental context. I found that it took a particularly long time—several hours—before I was really able to just look at the puzzle and pick out the possible moves. So, the learning curve for the puzzle itself was a bit high, but it was also very rewarding once it finally clicked. Up until that point it was helpful that the game gives some hints as to where the possible moves are by changing the color of the loop.
The most striking difference between this game and other notable games in the genre is that in Gyromancer, the opponents do not get to make any moves. The puzzle is solo. All of your attacks are based on doing well in the puzzle, while doing poorly in the puzzle results in attacks from the enemies. This makes the puzzles feel very little like a “battle”. There are a few times that the player goes up against NPCs instead of just creatures, but even then, the opponents never get to interact with the puzzle. This also means that there is no way for a multi-player aspect to exist.
The game is easy to pick up and play at will, without requiring a huge time investment per sitting. One can stop and save between battles, and return to right where they left off, and other than the health lost by the creatures during the fight there is no penalty for quitting a battle if you need to stop.
The RPG elements are lacking. The game looks and feels very much like it should be an RPG, but if you are expecting any real RPG elements you will be let down. The character advancement is entirely linear. There are no choices to be made, and there aren’t even any stats to differentiate the aspects of the character’s skill. There is no equipment to find or buy that increases the abilities of the character, in fact the only thing that there is to spend your GIL on is switching out the equipped summons. All of the creatures in your stable level up at the same rate you do, whether you use them or not, so there isn’t any “party selection” strategy either. The only thing that even resembles an RPG mechanic is the element system, whereby some creatures gain advantages over others based on their affiliation. This mechanic is odd, however, because it is unbalanced. The advantage is always the same. If one creature’s element has power over the other, they get more defense and attack points, but the elements are not all created equal. Some are strong against three while weak against one, some are strong against two while weak against three, and so-forth.
The story doesn’t really make much sense, especially the background of the protagonist. Perhaps it’s just the high expectations I have for Square-Enix games, but the plot here seems tacked on. Rivel’s story seems silly. He’s supposedly the most powerful summoner in the land, yet, at the beginning of the game, he can only summon two creatures. He triples that before the end of the first non-tutorial level. Also, there are sorcerers he meets in the wilderness who are a lot more powerful than he was at the beginning of the game. Why they decided to go against the tradition of making the protagonist a “promising novice” is beyond me.
The story doesn't make much sense.
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