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»Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
"Who knew rats were so good at Bejeweled?"
D3 may have on their hands the very definition of video game crack with
their newest game, Puzzle Quest. It features the elements of both an
RPG and a Puzzle game. I would never have thought that this would be a
possibility before seeing it with my own eyes. As it stands, Puzzle
Quest may very well be the beginning to a brand new genre in gaming.
The puzzle element will instantly be familiar to anyone who’s played
Bejeweled before. However, instead of just simply lining up three,
four, and five-of-a-kind gems, you’ll also be lining up experience
bonuses, attack skulls, and gold that you can later buy equipment with.
I’ll explain that a bit later.
The way this system works is actually quite ingenious. Figure an RPG,
but instead of just going through menus and whatnot, you duke it out on
a grid of gems, skulls, gold and purple experience bonuses. One player
is chosen at random to go first. He will then try to match like colors
or items. Matching 4-of-a-kind will net you an extra turn. Matching 5-of-a-kind grants you an extra turn plus a wild card that can be used on
any of the colored gems, hopefully allowing you to get another 4 or 5-of-a-kind.
The gold and experience points are pretty self-explanatory, but what
about the gems and skulls? How do these features factor into an RPG
battle system? Well, the skulls are attacks. Lining up 3 skulls is
essentially an attack. Your attack strength is determined by your
character’s class. You’ll find that a lot has to do with your
character’s stats and class. More on that in a bit. As for the gems,
they aren’t so much gems as they are mana. Each character has 4
different mana reserves. Each represents an element: Earth = Green, Red
= Fire, Yellow = Air and Blue = Water. Clearing a line of a particular
color will add to your mana reserve that corresponds to it. As in any
RPG, mana is used to cast spells. Again your spells are determined by
your class and your stats.
Anyone who’s played Bejeweled knows that the game is over when you run
out of possible moves. In this game, that’s not the case. However, if
the grid dies, both players loose all of their mana reserves and the
battle grid is refilled with new random gems. This can both aid and
ruin your chances of success. There have been times where I was about
to win but the grid died after my turn only to set up the CPU with a
series of 10 4 or 5-in-a-row sets.
About those RPG elements we had touched on before, the single player
quest mode has you serving your queen as a knight. You will receive
quests by visiting her among other people. Quests highlighted in red
are the ones you need to complete to carry on in the game. Of course,
as with almost all RPGs, you’re going to need to do some of the other
quests just so you can level up and increase your health and mana
reserves.
Speaking of mana reserves, you will use your attained mana to cast a
multitude of spells, each one class dependant. For instance, the class
I chose to go through the game with was Druid. Druids have a particular
strength in both the Earth and Air elements, but are decent at using
the Water element and have an average Battle skill. They aren’t
particularly good at using Fire magic as that would be more destructive
than druidic. I started with the ability to use a healing spell which
comes in really handy early on in the game. Later, I gained access to a
spell that changes Blue gems into yellow ones. It’s fairly cheap and
can often lead to easy 4-of-a-kind combos. It becomes especially useful
when combined with a later spell I learned called Entangle, which
essentially binds my opponent for 1-3 turns (usually 2). Each class has
their own strengths and weaknesses and the higher your skill is in any
particular element or attribute, your chance for a free extra turn from
simply matching 3 gems goes up. It’s never so high that you can expect
to rack up a free turn every time. At higher levels, you can expect
something like 10-15% chance for an extra turn.
As you progress through the story, you will amass large sums of gold
which you can buy items that will increase stats or give you a higher
chance of landing an extra turn. You can also buy a stronghold and
outfit it with a dungeon, a forge, a mage tower, stables, and even a
siege division. Each of these will help your throughout the game.
Mounts you train from the stables will add an extra spell slot to your
in-game list. The forge will allow you to develop new magic items while
dungeons will allow you to take captives during the sieges on a city.
Once you conquer a city through a siege, you will gain monetary wealth
from the taxes you receive. Mage towers will allow you to learn spells
that your followers have. Casting said spells costs you double mana,
but often can be the difference between winning and losing.
Speaking of followers, you will run into different NPCs that will give
you a boost to certain ability just by having them tag along with you.
From what I’ve heard, the PSP version has some sort of glitch where you
don’t get all the bonuses from your allies. I really don’t know what
the deal is there, but I haven’t noticed a lack of fun from it so it
may be a non-issue.
Graphically, the game is semi-generic anime looking, but it works. I
actually get a Fire Emblem feeling from the look of the over world map.
The battle screen is as simple as you could imagine with nothing
causing you to say, “Wow!” The sound has the same feeling, but the
*Galining!* noise if clearing a 4 of a kind line or the *Fahzizit!* of
taking out a line of skulls will start to grow on you as you progress
through this endearing mishmash of puzzling and questing.
As you can see, there is a huge potential for multi-player in this
game. Thankfully, the developers have indeed added a fairly decent 2
player mode. I do have a problem with playing stronger or weaker
opponents, but it’s still a really cool mode. As much fun as it is, a
lot of the time, the game just comes down to pure luck.
If you like either RPGs or Puzzle games, pick this game up. I doubt
you’ll be dissatisfied. I just have one question…how does a savage
mindless rat manage to sit down and play a game of Othello with a
human? It boggles the mind, but if you’re not me, you probably won’t
think much about it.
Article by: Bloodspoor
Posted on: Apr. 3rd, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Simply amazing! Video game crack in it’s most evolved form. |
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Graphics |
| Blah, but it’s a good blah. There’s nothing that looks too good or too bad. Everything just fits, but even by PSP puzzle game standards, this one just doesn’t stand up to the vast visuals of Every Extend Extra or Lumines. |
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Sound |
| Not the best music, but it’s not intrusive and never makes me wish it were turned off. I have to commend a puzzle game with only a few tracks that don’t get annoying as you get to that 100 hour mark. |
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Replay Value |
| Once you start, you’ll likely crave more. I find myself closing my eyes and seeing matching lines of 4 and 5. It’s annoying, but it lets me know that the game is just great. |
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