Gyromancer

An odd teamup of Popcap and Square Enix trying their own hand at Puzzle Quest gameplay. Maybe they would have had something more successful if it weren't for the odd design decisions [list] [*] You have to pay currency any time you swap monsters on your team. This discourages experimentation and it doesn't help that a lot of the monsters are bottom-tier useless in your hands due to slow play styles or only countering one specific enemy type. [*] Currency does not buy items. No on Xbox 360 they wanted to get you to buy a DLC pack with 10 of each item. No such DLC exists on PC, so the items you find in chests are seemingly all you get. Chests also don't respawn on any map I explored, so there's a finite amount for a normal playthrough. I'm fine with it limiting the number of times I can 'meat nuke' a boss, but the magic mirror is way too important especially after the halfway point... [*] Said halfway point introduces a new mechanic, every twist you do that doesn't result in a match counts as you having twisted twice. It was way too easy without this mechanic, but after it's brought in it feels like a lot of the fun has been scrubbed from the game. If the enemy places an attack in the bottom-left corner (by default you can only twist clockwise), it's almost impossible to remove it in time. Instead gameplay devolves into saving your own attacks to camp the enemy's, which contributes to severely limiting which monsters are viable. [*] The story feels like an awful stageplay. Laska could have been written out entirely and most maps boil down to 'chase after this person then split apart so you can chase down someone else'. The mastermind was pathetic and they don't even bother to scroll the credits when you beat him. Instead you get some more party chatter then back to the map. [/list]