
Gyromancer Review
Needle Gnat, I choose you!Gyromancer is a beautiful variant of "Bejeweled Twist," a PopCap game where players move gems four at a time in a clockwise motion to match three or more in a row by color. The same rule applies to Gyromancer, but the overarching story adds a bit of excitement to get to the next puzzle/battle. You see, you take on the role of Rivel the umm… Magician? No- Beast Master? To go into dark, enchanted forests full of monsters to… eh…. Oh! You fight monsters using the three monsters you bring along with you as you battle your way to… Never, mind. It wasn't important anyway. The story is poorly told and when the story is the main focus of Gyromancer, it is presented with a pair of static drawings communicating with faint white text and silence. All of the game's characters refer to events that the audience doesn't know about and more than half of the time the "story" only applies to the current level, as in "Why Rivel is killing Centipedes in this section of the dark forest." The story is a complete mess, but at least it comes with some nice ambient music.
This active puzzle-combat works well in the demo as a tennis-like back and forth between your race to match your monster's gem colors and attack gems, while trying to destroy the enemy's attack gems that harm your brute after so many turns have passed. It's fun, fast and frantic to the point where I jumped to buy Gyromancer. Pokemon meets Bejeweled! How could that not suck? Well, after the third level, Gyromancer introduces a new rule that sticks through the remainder of the game: "Idle Twists." An Idle Twist is any move you make that does not result in gems being matched, which results in the harsh penalty of filling a large section of the bad monster's attack bars. This quickly becomes an issue since there is not always a matching move available on the board, or sometimes the only twist you can make that will result in a match are gems of the enemy monster's type! This quickly turned from a strategic fast-paced back-and-forth between you and the AI into a slow methodic slog as you carefully study the board to find any twist that won't result in your monster being butchered. Thanks for (not) telling me about this important game mechanic in the first-level demo, Square Enix!
-Arnold B. Carreiro
C Ranking
Developed by Square Enix & PopCap Games
Published by Square Enix
ESRB: T for Teen
The Arnold B. Carreiro Rating System
A - Awesome! Why haven't you bought this yet? Go! GameStop doensn't close for another 2 hours!
B - Great game! It'll be something fun to play for a good while. It's better than
most games, but shy of perfection for some reason. You should check it out!
C - Meh. It's not a BAD game, nor is it good. Enjoyment may be limited to a certain
audience though. Perhaps some aspects of the title are great while others are
bogged down by bad design/gameplay/etc.
D - Not too great... Too much of the game lacks polish to be appreciated to the
general gaming public, but there might be enough here for someone to enjoy. Maybe...
F - A complete train wreck. Vampire Rain is the last "F" game I've ever played. The
bargain bin is too good for an "F" game.