Not sure how common it is, but I got stuck during the animation, where it wasn’t playing, after buying from a merchant. The game did allow me to exit back to the map, instead, but the animation wasn’t playing and normally you can’t exit at all, so this could be a soft-lock issue, if the animation won’t play and it doesn’t let us exit.
Bug already reported here, but cross-posting for visibility.
Explore map locking during animations - Bug Reports - Gems of War | Forums
I’m trying to test if I can repeat the bug, but if anyone else encounters it, share it on the post so we can try to work out the cause.