Like most KOEI offerings, Gemfire in an intricate fusion of resource management, diplomacy, and tactical combat. While that at least sounds engaging, Gemfire essentially boils down to staring at a static, heavily-pixilated map of a fictional kingdom for hours, hoping that the game will take pity on you and not ravage your holdings with plague. You farm, you pillage, you recruit, you invade your neighbors, and you tear down fences.
The story is vague and not terribly appealing: some warring families are trying to reunite pieces of a mystical what-not called the Gemfire, probably to save the world from a generic evil.
Like most KOEI offerings, Gemfire in an intricate fusion of resource management, diplomacy, and tactical combat. While that at least sounds engaging, Gemfire essentially boils down to staring at a static, heavily-pixilated map of a fictional kingdom for hours, hoping that the game will take pity on you and not ravage your holdings with plague. You farm, you pillage, you recruit, you invade your neighbors, and you tear down fences.
The story is vague and not terribly appealing: some warring families are trying to reunite pieces of a mystical what-not called the Gemfire, probably to save the world from a generic evil. While clearly inferior to KOEI’s flagship Romance of the Three Kingdoms saga, Gemfire is largely of the same vein; invest gold to increase
your farm output, and then send your harvested crops to market to, in turn, acquire gold. It might sound like running a virtual hamster wheel, but somehow, building your economy is a challenging and rewarding experience… in most KOEI outings, at least.
Still, the game maintains a charm of sorts, particularly for fans of old-school fantasy. The battle sequences, though plodding and rudimentary, do allow the player to wage war alongside such stalwart D&D favorites as Bugbears, Orcs, Skeletons, and Ogres. Though the battles are far from flawless, they do reward shrewd, analytical game-play, and storming across the battlefield with your legion of gargoyles can be pretty entertaining. Having to spend a half-dozen turns tearing apart your opponents’ fences can be less so.
