Developed by Keith Burgun Games and published by RedDeerGames Gem Wizards Tactics is an action strategy game that has a couple of flaws. I am a massive fan of Final Fantasy Tactics and they set quite a high bar in this genre. Gem Wizards Tactics has had a good attempt at the genre and there are a few things it gets right as it has some interesting ideas but for me, there are some niggling flaws which are a bit of a turnoff. The graphics are quite simple but far from ugly and some of the characters look amusing.
There is a story mode but the whole thing is just bizarre. You play as Derby Pocket, a naïve grunt who works for an evil company. He believes he is trying to help the locals of this planet which seems to be potato people when in reality his company is trying to move out the locals so they can harvest the gems of the planet. He doesn’t realise this other agenda and it leaves him having to fight the locals for their land. I would say there is more to the story but when Derby finally realises he is the bad guy and turns on the evil company and helps the locals the story mode ends. It’s an introduction to the character but that’s it nothing more.
Other than the tiny story mode, there is the actual campaign mode called the Potato campaign which is independent of the story mode it seems. Here you play with the leader Andromeda collecting troops and completing missions. But the mission is always the same and that is you have to capture the flags. The menu operation in the campaign is downright ugly and confusing. Every time you complete a mission and you rescue some troops you are taken back to the campaign screen but you are not given any guidance on how to assemble your troops, how to open any loot and how to equip your party. It should be so simple to do this but they have made a mess of this and it just ends up a frustrating debacle.
The actual combat is where Gem Wizard Tactics is at its best but even here there are a couple of annoying elements to it. All the battles take place on these hexagonal planes with different obstacles and terrain. Each of your characters has unique skills and some of them are interesting. You have moves that push and force enemies of the hexagonal plane for instant death, moves that jump over enemies to infiltrate them and wide-area attack moves. Unfortunately in most of the games I have played I don’t know what the skills are for each character and I have to guess. There is a more information button which is supposed to explain things like what the skills do but the button doesn’t work. There is a button to end your turn but unlike other games of this genre usually, when you press to end your turn if you haven’t moved all your characters you get a prompt to say are you sure you want to end your turn as you haven’t used all your moves. Not here, if you accidentally clip the end turn button that’s it the turn is ended and your go is skipped and that has happened a few times much to my frustration.
You would think on the campaign screen as you assemble your party you can check the skill moves there…. Well, you thought wrong. If you can navigate the labyrinth of this menu to get to the change squad button which is harder than the combat at times. You can only add and remove party members but not see what their skills are. You can see their strength and defence but that’s it. The caravan menu where you can open loot, buy from the market and equip your party is a challenge itself. Nothing is explained on how you do any of this and just moving about the menu is annoying enough. You can use the market to buy equipment and facilities providing you can navigate to them which is the hardest part.
There is also a separate missions mode which is like a custom exhibition match. Here is where you can play random ranked matches of varying difficulty or you can play a custom mission with personalised settings if you just want to jump into a battle. On the main menu is also some objectives/quests you can complete to increase your mastery and as it says you can unlock new stuff but I don’t know what I have unlocked or where I can see it. But there are new quests every day which is nice.
Conclusion
Gem Wizards Tactics for me feels like a half-decent PC game that has struggled to be remade for a console. It’s quite clear that a mouse would make all the menu navigation a lot easier. It would also help explain what all the skills are if you hovered over them. But the clunky controls, impossible menu navigation and weirdly short story mode made me lose interest in this game pretty quickly.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox Series S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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