When comparing Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows vs Defense Grid: The Awakening, the Slant community recommends Defense Grid: The Awakening for most people. In the question“What are the best PC Tower Defense games?” Defense Grid: The Awakening is ranked 5th while Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows is ranked 6th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Addictive, in-depth gameplay based on combining gems that provide different traits to your towers
The main mechanic of the game is using gems that provide properties like splash damage, poison, chain lightning, etc to your towers in different combinations. Add to that the fact that there are 7 levels for each gem, you have to manage your mana, there are multiple difficulty levels that change the amount of experience you gain, there are multiple kinds of spells, 25 passive skills and talisman fragments among other variables that you have to balance and you end up with an impressive amount of choice and depth.
Pro More than 140 levels
With so many levels to play in the game will last a good while. Each map is varied and with that makes for an experience that does not get tiring either.
Pro Very nice voice acting
Pro Looks beautiful
Pro Checkpoints in levels
Checkpoints allow for partial level rewind so beginning parts of levels don't need to be played over and over to get to difficult parts.
Pro Can really build some crazy mazes in later levels
Early on you are limited in placement, but in later levels you can and need to build your own mazes to really direct the enemies. There are lots of options/routes/ways to build those mazes so it really opens up a lot of replayability to try and beat your friends scores by tweaking your mazes for maximum points.
Cons
Con Can seem too heavily luck based
Hit damage is luck based meaning that it is up to the game at points as to how much damage is given making for a bit of an imbalance when winning in just a few strikes in one game and then having to do many hits in another.
Con Eventually starts running poorly
Con During early missions you are very limited in tower placements
It gets better though and you can really build some crazy mazes.