A Little on Gyromancer

Puzzle Quest has been one of our favorite games. Jen and I will play it a lot against each other and solo on the quests in the game. So I was quite excited about Gyromancer, a game that also mixes puzzle and RPG together. It's also put out as a collaboration of Square Enix (the people behind the Final Fantasy series) and PopCap Games (the people behind Bejeweled, Zuma, and many other addicting puzzle games).

The game came out on Wednesday, and we've been playing it a bit. It's been fun, but disappointing. The fun comes out of the puzzle and RPG blend, as well as the interesting game mechanic that is making us reprogram our brains from the pattern recognition used in Puzzle Quest to looking for new patterns of items to match required by Gyromancer. Rather than swapping gems to make matches, in Gyromancer, you rotate a quartet of gems to make sets of 3 or more. So far, I'm digging it.

However, the disappointing things are getting to me. First off, there is no player vs. player mode. That makes it really lame for us as a couple to play the game. Secondly, a second person can't go through the game at the same time as another. If you try, it will erase the game of the other person who is already playing. So we can't even play individually. We have to share the same saved game. Really lame. One other disappointment is that the game so far is exceptionally easy. We have not yet lost a single battle. In fact, most of the time, we won't even take damage in a battle. I'm waiting for the difficulty level to ramp up, but right now it's just a mental exercise, not a challenge like Puzzle Quest can be. I'll reserve harsh judgement for later.