First Impressions

Hi! It’s been close to a week since I’ve started playing the early release of PQ3 and I’d like to just drop my thoughts. I will try my best to tag any spoilers story related.

Background → I played PQ1 quite a bit bit during its PSP days but never got around to play PQ2. Definitely the most broken iteration of PQ1 (1st turn final boss kill as an example) but it certainly had its charm with all the content it provided. Have been playing Gems of War for just under a year now.

Story → I’ve just gotten myself to chapter 10 and I do enjoy how the story is coming along. The word choices are perfect and it gives the cast some great attitude.

Gameplay → It’s an active 3-match game. The moment you do your first match, you have about 2s to keep on matching on the board. As the game says, planning before you first match is key!

Feedback/Personal opinions → Just from my experience, here are currently 4 items that I’d like to discuss.

  1. Critical hits / Chance based abilities.
    Having luck play into a game where planning is emphasized, doesn’t seem to suit up very well. I cannot count the amount of times an enemy has made me lose due to that 10% critical chance. Similarly, I cannot count the amount of times my 10% barrier gear has saved my butt either. I plan and play around neither of these happening so when it occurs, it never sits well with me. Both PQ1 and GoW have chance implemented into its gameplay, but I never found it enough to make or break a battle. I’m not sure if removing critical hits and favoring the player more is better than keeping it, but making our abilities and chances at 100% instead. Perhaps the late game will show more of this.

  2. Chests.
    Considering this is a Free-to-Play game, I think this feature needs to be implemented. If this growth style was implemented in PQ1, you wouldn’t even play the game anymore. GoW, IMO is very generous with providing you ways to improving with guild providing you tons of keys to open your chests.

    1] Salvage should have a chance to return the key for the chest you are opening.
    
    2] Some mitigation or indication to let you know your inventory is full. You cannot open the 
        chest if your inventory is full. There isn't an alarm letting you know this is happening until 
        you try to open the chest. Perhaps a quick menu to popup, letting you salvage your items 
        in the chest opening window?
    
  3. Party Mode
    By far a shocker in how fun having a party to pound down a group of baddies is. I have 2 things to say about party mode.

    1] Changing it so we all hit the same enemy instead. Make the enemy stronger but need 
         everyone attack the same enemy.  I think it changes the dynamics of applying debuffs to 
         enemies even more useful. Might make Perma-Stun too strong now but there isn't 
         stopping a stun immune enemy is it?
    
    2] Resurrection. I think everyone is finding out dying and losing all your resources is rough! 
        Perhaps just a 1 turn barrier, keeping your mana but only allowing 1 resurrection max per 
        party member is the balance that is needed
    
  4. Power Creep
    Story mode is getting quite difficult for most players but if we started getting equipment from story to make us super powerful/on par with the enemy, doesn’t that remove the challenge of the game? The flip side is I don’t think everyone wants the game to be this brutally hard either. Player base retention will go out the window for sure. Personally, I am fighting enemies that deal 55% extra damage to me but I’ve figured out my own strategy to keep me a float to keep on advancing (Necromancer lvl 33, 352 gear score. 2* Hand of Evil + Mask of Terror + Cold snap. A more heavy damage focused build) I will say it is getting kind of annoying needing to wait for a correct starting board to even stand a chance, but afterwards, having to play the board correctly is fun and exciting.

     1] Provide the store with some more slots where gear is 100% to show up. I'm aware this 
         goes into the pay to win idea but if you really want to advance quickly, that is your decision. 
         I think a lot of us have found work arounds with what we are given and are okay with 
        advancing. In fact seems like there are people who have finished the story despite having 
        huge disadvantages.
    
      2] Free gears provided should lean more towards heavy defense and should have a level cap 
          on when you can no longer wear them. Call them story gear perhaps just to allow the 
          player to enjoy the game overall, but once you get out of story mode and grind out 
          dungeons, hopefully you have found a good replacement by then.
    

Overall, I am enjoying how the game plays being an early release. Perhaps when I get out of the story mode and start focusing on other things, more items to discuss will show up!

Good luck with your board matching and chest opening!

  • Tunaboat

Thank you for your feedback. <3