Every gamer has that game they will defend beyond reason. It is hardly ever the same, and the origins of their devotion differ from one brilliant play-through to one amazing birthday. No matter the reason, the chosen game lives on through its champion and is occasionally so fanatically defended that sense leaves the situation entirely.
Gemfire is my game. That simplistic Koei turn-based strategy game is so like its contemporaries that it is so rarely mentioned that a co-worker once accused me of making the game up. My coding skills must be a mystery to my conscious self.
Gemfire is very similar to most of Koei’s SNES releases, but was released for several platforms: NES, DOS, MSX, Genesis and finally the SNES. It was as if Koei was searching for the best presentation for the game. The more likely scenario is that it was a simple enough game released to capitalize on the success of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series.
The game fits in with Koei’s Uncharted Waters games in that it steps away from their habit of rehashing Chinese and Japanese history and focuses on more Western concepts. Unlike Uncharted Waters, Gemfire does not focus on sailing but rather on battlefield mechanics and managing resources for each province over a series of seasons and years but in a fantasy way. Evil king Eselred controls the island of Ishmeria through the power of his crown known as Gemfire. The gems of the crown house powerful wizards and one ridiculously over-powered dragon. His daughter Robyn feels that destroying the crown is the only way to bring peace to the island, but in doing so she scatters the gems across warring factions. Some families are more fortunate than others and score 2 wizards rather than 1 horribly underpowered one.
The game play, though simplistic, is very engaging. Ishmeria is controlled by a series of factions, each with an interconnecting story, motivation, and a desire to resist attack even if they only have a band of skeletons to do their fighting. Every province ruler follows a family head, often referred to as Prince or Princess. Their stories never made much sense to me but I gathered that they all hated this Eselred fellow, and I did too when I realized that he got to keep his dragon. The dragon has a ridiculous area of attack and although only having 160 hit points, it takes most of the units on the map to force it to surrender. During this time the dragon is moving around to rear-assault your weakest units and making the process of taking him down that much more difficult. A rear-assault by a dragon…
Each family member generates different stats. Some have great influence over their people and because of this are better suited to producing food, others are skilled in combat and decrease the damage units take and increase damage dealt. A careful study of each province leader reveals a series of unexplained symbols supposedly identifying each stat. The strengths and weaknesses of each leader are best obtained through trial and error since some people are unskilled in all areas and deserve to just chill in the home province until they are needed to occupy a territory way at the bottom of the map.
The stats are important though, and remain the same. The player then has to work within the set parameters, to a point. Gemfire’s main issue is that the stats are applicable until the troop count reaches 999. Then the troops often vastly out number the opposing side in a battle and tend to storm through. The only stat that seems to remain functional is the one concerning how much damage is taken. 999 troops break down into over 200 troops per unit in a 4 human unit system. The 5th unit can either be the wizard, who must rest for 3 months after every appearance on the field, or a hired 5th unit. The game can be played without hiring a monster 5th unit, which is recommended if you are trying to maintain a high agriculture and loyalty stat.
The hired 5th units will rampage if they are not used. I’ve tracked this and it seems that a unit remaining in one province for over 6 months will flee the province or take to rampaging. It took 4 back-to-back Ork rampages to convince me that I can just wait for my wizard to recover before I attack again. The hired units are not as strong, but are often useful early on when provinces are still developing.
The game does not have set difficulty levels but different families result in different strategies. There are playable families that lack a wizard 5th unit and therefore must rely on hired units until they can take out another family. So far I have yet to finish a game in this way as the families lacking 5th units are the most vulnerable on the map. Others are isolated to a very exposed corner. completing a game that starts with one exposed province is difficult, hampered further by the game's random events.
Looking back, I think the random events are what keep me coming back to the game. Some events are less random, like floods in the flood plain every summer, the volcano causing earthquakes at the bottom left of the map, and snow damaging the northern regions. The most annoying, and terrifying, seasonal occurrence is the plague. Every turn of the season a flying scythe-wielding skeleton soars over Ishmeria with a haunting smile and empty sockets seeking out the most prosperous provinces in the game. He makes a few odd passes over the island, then bam! Every province you were attempting to develop is hit with a plague that devastates the loyalty stat, the crops, and kills off a portion of the troops in the province. I know the plague is there to restore balance but he never seems to hit Eselred. I figured that Eselred is secretly controlling the Black Death to thwart plans to overthrow him.
There are other more random occurrences as well. They respond to how high the loyalty stat is. High loyalty yields a higher chance for good events like really nice water dragons coming to fight for you or brownies tilling your fields. My favorite is the fairy who marches soldiers to you. She often does this to a completely safe agriculture-based province. It is still a nice gesture but man she gets stuck in a rut. In one month I had her march into the same province 3 times, each time bringing one hundred troops.
Lower loyalty, in turn, increases the risk of banshees, doom riders, tornadoes, and things that enjoy destroying your agriculture and loyalty numbers. The banshees though are one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen in a game. Every negative event is set off by this ear-piercing chord and flashes up a stock scene of what is happening. The Banshee is an old woman dressed in burlap, her head thrown back in a mournful wail. Her hair is white and ratty, her form malnourished. She cries when a person on the map is going to die. A lot of the times she is wrong, but when she is right it can be an instant death to anyone on the map. When she showed up I would often stop playing. Her occurrence is so infrequent that she would send chills up my spine.
The game is definitely flawed and easily manipulated to yield a favorable outcome, but that doesn’t kill my enjoyment of it. Fantasy plots bewitched me, made me imagine a deeper story for every faction. I go back to this game every now and then, trying to beat a campaign as quickly as I can, or go through without using 5th units. I know now that I am not the only one so deeply in love with this game. Gemfire has a large community that has hacked the ROM of the game so the provinces are individual families. I have yet to try this mode but look forward to giving it a shot. I always felt there should be more variety in the game, but no matter how short and unvaried the game play, nothing can keep me from it.
Games that invoke such an emotional response from me, especially the games that terrified me, are the ones that I return to with fanatical devotion. Late nights hearing my father play Resident Evil left me with a deep fear of zombies in my closet, and the jarring chord of Gemfire left me wondering if there were banshees waiting to scream for the death of a relative. Unlikely, but fear has strange powers. Here it has made me a devout Gemfire fan. It is ridiculous that I was ever afraid of it, but then again those shambling blocky figures in Resident Evil are laughable.
