Gems of War - Puzzle RPG

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.

Garbage game, garbage boomer community full of hatred and horde mentality, greedy, ungrateful asshole developers that I've kept alive in this lockdown crisis with my hard earned money. Highly not recommended.

The core gameplay is a mix between MMOs with different resources to grind/purchase (bad) and the earlier Puzzle Quest series. If you finished both Puzzle Quest games, this is a decent game. If you haven't, pick up Puzzle Quest 2 instead.

Candy crush type of game meets battle magic card game. It just gives another level of fun. I quite like it. If you don't have a lot of time to spend gaming, yet have a moment of idleness to fill, this game hits the bill. The menus are logical and the tutorial compact yet tells you all you need to know to play the game. I like the incentives in the game as well, in the form of keys and more in order to win yourself some better cards. Besides a card game, alot of thinking ahead comes into play and some strategy.

A very fun but very poorly balanced game. I want to cover four quick points.

Lack of balance part 1 - the reason for nearly all negative reviews here (and a workaround!)

Lack of balance part 2 - the fun is strictly capped

Monetization - you can, but don't need to and I wouldn't want to

Overall - Great game.

Good, casual, fun game. However, after you've invested a couple of hours into it the enemies start getting stronger and stronger and it becomes more of a trial and error. Tedious.

The only way to make it fun again is to make the purchases - buy the gems, the gold and purchase stuff. Upgrade your army so that you can finally make some progress again. Rinse & Repeat.

So in the end it's not really free unless you're okay with a few hours only.

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.

The most enjoyable casual mobile game i have played in recent memory. Its a mix of rpg and match-3 gameplay, there are multiple classes, alot of creatures to create a squad out of (a squad being 4 characters, can include your hero but it aint forced), u can earn the premium currency quite easily with the help of a guild, yes its imbalanced, but the game is centered around making imbalanced squads and combos

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 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)

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.

Fun free-to-play game that doesn't pressure you into spending any money! The actual match-3 part is very slick and well done, and it makes you think several moves ahead. Another great feature is that you can link your game to the Android/iOS app so you can progress on the go! Recommended.

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.

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.

This game WAS a good game. Then the devs changed the UI.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, except the new UI is SO bad that it LITERALLY and ACTUALLY makes me PHYSICALLY ill. No joke. I LITERALLY can't play this game any more because the new UI is SO bad that it ACTUALLY LITERALLY makes me PHYSICALLY ill.

The devs have said they have absolutely no intention of changing the UI away from this new design. They have some VERY small and VERY minor modifications planned to increase "readability" and things like that, but EVERYTHING they've shown so far will not, in ANY way, fix the fact that I LITERALLY and ACTUALLY get PHYSICALLY sick from playing this game.

The worst part? There was ABSOLUTELY no reason to change the UI. The old UI was GREAT! It was functional, nice looking, and very easy to use. It was perfect. But instead of working on new content or improved gameplay the devs decided to spend a TON of time and money COMPLETELY overhauling a system that was already completely fine and good into something that ACTUALLY LITERALLY makes me PHYSICALLY ill.

So yeah, can't play anymore and I HIGHLY recommend you don't either. Of all the game's I've ever given a bad reivew to, this is, BY FAR, the one I'm giving my worst reivew to.

DO NO PLAY/DOWNLOAD THIS GAME!

This is a beautiful game for me. No need P2W, good events, weekly updates. Really good. Really.

But the biggest problem of this game is developer's cheating. They forgot the main slogan for this kind of games: "We are on your side". Here they are on computer side. And this is really boring as I should admit. Ton's and ton's same battles, ton's and ton's defeats. "No pain, no gain" maybe? I don't know.

Your connection has timed out. Please Retry.
Your connection has timed out. Please Retry.
Your connection has timed out. Please Retry.
Your connection has timed out. Please Retry.

Be prepared for these error messages along with many other error messages!

Game is good but crippled by the fact that the game requires constant access to servers! and the only way out is to close the application using Task Manager. You may have won an epic battle that has taken 30 minutes, but if your connection times out at the end of a battle it just doesn't matter and the victory will be for nought.

505 or Infinity Plus 2 sort your servers or you will lose players!

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.

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.

I mean, the artists must have been 12 year olds, but moving the formula halfway between original Puzzle Quest and later card based systems like Marvel Puzzle Quest has made creating an effective team very enticing and satisfying. Systems are simple but deep, and crafting is well streamlined. Each kind of upgrade only requires one kind of thing. It's either souls, cards, or traitstones, and you gather those things all the time.

Guilds have simple goals, PvP is honestly PvC using another player's stats, and there are TONS of missions with rewards. There is always something to do and you almost always can find something that will give you another reward. This is the best version of an already amazing mashup of two genres.