Second Impression (update to my first impression) :

I've been looking for another good "Puzzle Quest" style game. Up to this point, the only types of those games that I did like were the actual Puzzle Quest series. Puzzle Kingdoms, Dungeon Hearts, and Legend of Fae were almost good, but not good enough in comparison to the quality of the PQ series. I loved Runespell: Overture, but that involves cards instead of gems. I've been looking forward to Gyromancer for a while and had it held up in my backlog for even longer. I definitely enjoyed it at first, though the latter half of the game may turn off some people. And like PQ, it does feel good to earn you wins through a bit a strategy, but I found alot of "close calls" came out in my favor purely due to the luck of the way gems dropped on the board.

Instead of swapping adjacent gems horizontally or vertically, you swap them with a rotation tool of sorts. While unique, it does feel rather annoying when you have an easy match, but can match gems because they are in a odd corner, to the left of your cursor, or stuck near locked gems that can't be moved. This is part of the game design of course, but in the later levels especially, you often feel like you may not have what you need to match gems to prevent damage to you or attack the enemy. Only the player gets to make the gem swaps, but over time and also depending on which gems you swap, the enemy's ability meter will increase until they activate and morph a gem into a timed attack gem on the board or cause a status effect to one or both monsters. You then have a limited amount of turns to use that morphed gem in a match and remove it before it causes damage to your monster. This generally requires strategy and a bit of luck. My other complaint is that the game does appear to want you to potentially replay completed levels, as some paths of a stage are not cleared until after you beat it, which also mean you can't complete all the stage challenges in one run.

One annoyance in gameplay I have is that you don't get enough items. In the start of the game, you get a few, but I never felt like I needed them. Once I got into the 3rd part of the world map, rounds were harder and there were so many situations where I could have used a Magic Mirror to rotate gems counter-clockwise or a Magick Key to unlock a locked gem, but couldn't because I only had one left that I wanted to save or had none at all. Items are found in chests and not in any store, but it almost feel like luck to get them because chests are found on certain parts of the level trail and you can't see the entire trail to know where to go. You have to assume where your route will take you.

Another irritant is that it seems like you will probably need to grind to play the later half of the game succesfully. When my monsters were around level 20+, I started seeing monsters at level 50 plus. Thankfully, some older levels will have paths you couldn't get to before, but can now, but it also feels like a pretty articial way of extending the game more than it needed to be.

Gyromancer seems pretty good from the few hours I played. It doesn't keep my interest long enough which each sitting for me to have long play sessions like I did with PQ. The need to grind and backtrack put me off a bit - I don't mind it in certain games, but I don't really care for it here. That could be part of the reason it isn't well known, since this can get fairly difficult for casuals. This is probably the next best thing to the Puzzle Quest series from what I played, outside of Runespell: Overture.

Second Impression (update to my first impression) : I've been looking for another good "Puzzle Quest" style game. Up to this point, the only types of those games that I did like were the actual Puzzle Quest series. Puzzle Kingdoms, Dungeon Hearts, and Legend of Fae were almost good, but not good enough in comparison to the quality of the PQ series. I loved Runespell: Overture, but that involves cards instead of gems. I've been looking forward to Gyromancer for a while and had it held up in my backlog for even longer. I definitely enjoyed it at first, though the latter half of the game may turn off some people. And like PQ, it does feel good to earn you wins through a bit a strategy, but I found alot of "close calls" came out in my favor purely due to the luck of the way gems dropped on the board. Instead of swapping adjacent gems horizontally or vertically, you swap them with a rotation tool of sorts. While unique, it does feel rather annoying when you have an easy match, but can match gems because they are in a odd corner, to the left of your cursor, or stuck near locked gems that can't be moved. This is part of the game design of course, but in the later levels especially, you often feel like you may not have what you need to match gems to prevent damage to you or attack the enemy. Only the player gets to make the gem swaps, but over time and also depending on which gems you swap, the enemy's ability meter will increase until they activate and morph a gem into a timed attack gem on the board or cause a status effect to one or both monsters. You then have a limited amount of turns to use that morphed gem in a match and remove it before it causes damage to your monster. This generally requires strategy and a bit of luck. My other complaint is that the game does appear to want you to potentially replay completed levels, as some paths of a stage are not cleared until after you beat it, which also mean you can't complete all the stage challenges in one run. One annoyance in gameplay I have is that you don't get enough items. In the start of the game, you get a few, but I never felt like I needed them. Once I got into the 3rd part of the world map, rounds were harder and there were so many situations where I could have used a Magic Mirror to rotate gems counter-clockwise or a Magick Key to unlock a locked gem, but couldn't because I only had one left that I wanted to save or had none at all. Items are found in chests and not in any store, but it almost feel like luck to get them because chests are found on certain parts of the level trail and you can't see the entire trail to know where to go. You have to assume where your route will take you. Another irritant is that it seems like you will probably need to grind to play the later half of the game succesfully. When my monsters were around level 20+, I started seeing monsters at level 50 plus. Thankfully, some older levels will have paths you couldn't get to before, but can now, but it also feels like a pretty articial way of extending the game more than it needed to be. Gyromancer seems pretty good from the few hours I played. It doesn't keep my interest long enough which each sitting for me to have long play sessions like I did with PQ. The need to grind and backtrack put me off a bit - I don't mind it in certain games, but I don't really care for it here. That could be part of the reason it isn't well known, since this can get fairly difficult for casuals. This is probably the next best thing to the Puzzle Quest series from what I played, outside of Runespell: Overture.