Review by Cordia, Nov. 5, 2010The Fifth Gate was developed by Playfirst, a developer you will probably recognize without hearing the other games they have made. There is quite an extensive list of Playfirst Original Games, but I’m only going to name a few. Playfirst also developed: the Wedding Dash games, the Diner Dash games, Gemini Lost, Wandering Willows, and Love and Death: Bitten.
This one is hard to classify. I am going to steal a term from
Genkicoll and call it “Click Management” with plenty of time to breathe in between levels, but not so much during them. The Fifth Gate shares a lot of qualities with the much older game Magic Farm: Ultimate Flower. The two games are different enough to be interesting, but if you have played one, you should have a good feel for the other. For me, personally, as soon as I heard the comparison, I knew that I would love The Fifth Gate, and I do not regret buying this one as soon as it was released.
The story is pretty flimsy, so I am going to avoid it as much as possible- primarily because I have forgotten the hows and whys of what occurred in it. As I have mentioned in previous entries, the story is just less important to me than game play in the Time Management genre. Just to give a frame of reference, the player is in the role of a very sweet and good and not very smart fairy woman who wakes up to find that a witch has locked her in the witch’s garden. The witch is all goth and punk rock, and she is very surly. Man, the art in this game deserved better writing. Anyway, I can’t remember the names of any of the characters. The witch might have been Morrowyn? I will, therefore, refer to them as “the witch” and “the girl” henceforth.
The witch is a failure when it comes to making potions and now she is demanding that the girl hand her a bunch of potions and work her way through the five gates of the garden or else the girl will be trapped there forever. The girl is a potion genius, but below average in critical thinking. Way, way below average. The girl, apparently unable to come up with a plan, decides that the witch’s decree is the only way to escape, so she agrees to the witch’s demands, which become increasingly, well, demanding as time passes.
This game starts off pretty frantic, which is (I think) the intended pace of the game, but try not to get discouraged by the first few demands. Each of the 5 garden areas come with a number of quests, which I am calling demands. The demands all have expiration dates “Do this in five days, or else!” which is a neat tool to give the game some replay value. It turns out that “Or else!” means “Or I will sit here patiently and wait until you
are finished with my demands!” The witch is so hardcore. The difference is that the witch only awards a silver medal for finishing the demands past the time limit, and gold for finishing within it.
The game play is the part that has me hooked, so let’s get on with that aspect already! There are three main screens to contend with while playing; the gardening screen, the preparation screen, and the potion screen. The potion and preparation screens are completely untimed. These screens provide tools to improve the garden and a place to deal with inventory. The inventory is gained when the timed gardening day begins. The player has total control over when to start the day, and here is a special little tip: Do not start the day without refilling the water. This turns out to be a bit easier to remember than it is in Magic Farm, because if the water is low, a notice pops up when the
player tries to engage the day of gardening and asks if the player really intends to try to sustain their plants with such a freakishly low amount of water. I know it is a helpful pop up, but I always feel like I am being scolded, and that makes me resentful. (It sounds like this game’s programming and I should seek counseling, huh? … or maybe it’s just that
I should seek counseling of some type.)
The gardening segment lasts the game’s interpretation of a “day” which seems to be right around a minute. I think it varies, but I will update this when I have some time to check my facts. During this period, the game becomes an absolute click-fest. Click to water the plants. Click the blossoms to collect them. Click the pests to keep them from killing the plants. Curse and click madly when a pest or lack of water kills a plant. Scream and curse when a poisonous pest is clicked and the cursor freezes for three precious seconds. Click anyway, to no effect. Repeat these last two steps an exhausting number of times. Cheer when the day ends and hope the blossoms are enough to meet the witch’s demands. Wish the girl would make a potion to force the witch to
release her and then give the witch another potion to make her nice and kind and not rebellious and horrible.
I actually really enjoyed this game, despite the sarcasm about the story. I loved trying to get the gorgeously drawn flowers, keeping the plants alive and safe from bugs, and then making some hilariously named potions.
And I’m going to have to get back to the good part tomorrow, sadly.
It’s tomorrow!
As the game progresses, more tools and upgrades are made available to help deal with the increasingly difficult gardens. Just when I felt overwhelmed, the game would introduce something new to help relieve the pressure. Upgrades, plants, potions and water are all purchased at the preparation screen, and the upgrades will do things like increase the amount of water that may be stored, or increase the storage size, allowing more flowers to be retrieved during the day. There are also helpful plants to purchase. These plants do not contribute to the blossoms being collected, but they have various special abilities to aid
the player. Some of them are very situational, but there are a few that are almost essential all the time. I will not spoil the fun of finding out in the course of the game by explaining what the abilities are, but they will help immensely.
The potion screen completes the three main screens, and is where potions can be made and sold. The way this screen functions is one of my few real quibbles with the game play of The Fifth Gate. There are eventually two full rows of potions, but the only bottles that are visible are the potions that have been learned at any given point in the game. Clicking on one of the bottles will fill it with as many ingredients as are available in the current inventory. There is no other way to add ingredients, so if the goal is to collect X amount of blue flowers, the inventory can get pretty overfull, because none of the potions using the blue flowers can be clicked. Once the flowers are in a bottle, there is no way to retrieve them. They will sit in that bottle all the live-long day.
When a potion is completed, it will send a smaller version of the bottle to a shelf on the right side of the screen, and the player can either save the potion or sell it. One great thing about this area is that if the witch is demanding five of a certain type of potion, there will be an indicator next to the shelf for that potion to remind the player that it is being gathered for the quest. The flowers can be sold if the inventory is overflowing, but it is always more profitable to
sell the potions, and since money is essential to having access to the various upgrades and better defenses, it is sometimes a hard call to make.
Another issue is that the gold coins do not follow from one garden to the next. I find it logical that the upgrades and special plants do not carry to the next garden, but the coins are a little irritating. The reasoning for this probably has to do with balancing the game, but I wish they had found another way to ensure the balance.
You probably will not like this game if:
- You are not a fan of clicking a lot.
- You did not enjoy Magic Farm: Ultimate Flower
- You find fantasy references to fairies and magic to be morally objectionable.
- You are looking for a fulfilling and well-written story.
Too Long; Did Not Read: Overall, it is a fun game and one that I will be replaying often, so it was a fantastic purchase for me. The graphics are excellent, the story is atrociously written, and the game play is click-tastic. It is a pretty lengthy game with plenty of replay value and strategy involved. I recommend this one to anyone who is even a little bit interested in the game.
Have you guys played The Fifth Gate? What do you think of it? Did I miss anything major? Do you know of any other games with a similar setup?
