YMMV / Gemfire

• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Elgis, a prince of the Chrysalis family, bears an uncanny resemblance in the NES version to another heir to a fantasy kingdom throne — namely Siegbert, if his mother is Peri.
  • The NES sprite for Chylla, with her big hair and long boots, looks rather like Amethyst from Steven Universe — doubly hilarious considering Chylla's gem is an amethyst!
• Ho Yay: If a player-controlled princess wins the game, she rescues Princess Robyn and rides away from the tower with her in tow, exactly as a male prince would.
• Porting Disaster: Naturally it depends on who you ask but as Gemfire/Royal Blood has been ported to many, many platforms, which one is the better version and which one sucks is, to this day, a matter of some debate. Certainly some of the PC-based versions — hideous graphics, upsettingly bad music — definitely count.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: A rather bizarre example, but compare the theme that plays during the Winter season to...Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund FitzGerald.
• That One Level: Laying siege to Londre, province 22, is always a pain no matter how strong your army is, because the map gives enormous advantages to the defender in topography and castle design.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The inevitable reaction whenever a longtime player of one version gets to experience what another version is like.
• Woolseyism: See the entry under Meaningful Name on the main page. It's hard to disagree that the names of the wizards and wizardresses being changed from strangely banal (i.e., "Showers") to more evocative and enigmatic ("Pluvius" — Latin for "rainy") was a better choice for the English version.