Puzzle Quest is the most addictive game I have played in YEARS! BUY this is you like PUZZLE games or RPGS.
Puzzle Quest is probably the most addictive game I have played in YEARS!
If you like any puzzle games - this is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
I you like any RPG (with character customisation) - this is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
If you like both then this is an ESSENTIAL PURCHASE.
Be warned. On the PSP, I was playing this on the train to and from work, at work, in front of the TV, in bed... this game is like video game crack. Once you are hooked you will keep going back.
Essentially the game is typical fantasy fare - you are a hero and need to save the world. You battle all manner of monsters and warriors in a quest to destroy a greater evil (or become it). All the battles take place sing a 'match 3+ games' style game where players take turns to move one piece. Match 4 games and you get another go. Simple eh?
Now add in some tactical play:
Match skull gems to cause damage to your enemy.
Match coins to gain gold to purchase new items etc in towns.
Match purple stars to gain XP - you can level up.
Match Red, Blue, Green or Yellow to give you Mana to power spells.
So you start by choosing a class that will make a difference as to you abilities and spells. This is so much fun finding out and after spending over 100 hours on several campaigns I will not ruin the fun for you, but essentially it works like this:
One spell you acquire might be STUN. This takes 6 green mana and 5 red mana to cast. this means that in a battle you need to destroy 6 green gems and 5 red before you can use it. What does it do? STUN inflicts 5 points of damage on the enemy (who will have from 50 to 365 hit point) and causes them to miss 1 turn.
The really cool thing is that most spells give you bonuses for extra mana, so Stun adds an additional point of damage for each 8 red mana in your reserve (it doesn't use the extra mana to cast it just empowers the spell without draining). This will encourage you to sometimes hoard your mana to make your spells more devastating.
Another cool things is that as you go up in level, you can focus your growth in Fire (red), Earth, Water, Air Magic. This will start making your spells more powerful, giving you a % chance of anorther turn when matching relevant gems, and even increasing your starting reserves of those colours. Similar effects happen when you empower your Battle, Cunning or Morale skills.
At this point I am shoudl apologise for sounding like a late night infomercial...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
some enemies you will fight a lot of. Like an Orc. upon the 5th fight, you can attempt to capture an enemy and you need to solve a puzzle and delete all gems. some are very easy to quite hard. Once you have captured an enemy you can learn it's signature spells (web for Spiders, Rend for Wyverns, etc). To learn these spells you need to own a castle...
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
To own a castle you need to SIEGE it - which is a regular battle against a castle. These can be hard. But when you are victorious you are awarded with a regular nominal income, a temple (to buy additonal experience levels), a training section (to increase the power of your mount and the benefits it gives to you) and a wizards tower (to learn magic spells from your captured foe. With the exception of the Temple which just uses straight coinage everything else has a variant version of the regular puzzle quest game to complete. Some of the powerful enemy spells are EXTREMELY hard to learn but so REWARDING to own.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
In town, you can purchase Weapons, Armour, Accesories for your hero. These will give your hero other benefits - like a powerful sword that gives you +1 damage whenever you cause 3 or more points or armour that ignores the 1st point of damage every hit.
There are so many items that you will never own them all.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
Later on in the game you can start searching for mythic runes that enable you to create your own weapons with magical properties. To date I have found about 40 runes. Divided into 3 types, I can create a range of combos... in fact I can create about 12,000 different items from the combinations!!!
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
Another really cool thing is the story line. The dialogue is great, the characters are well rounded if a little cliched and there were several times I actually laughed out loud from what Grom the Ogre said or the little Goblin merchant. Some of the characters you meet will actually join your quest and then you gain additional powers from them being with, e.g. Darkhunter the Elf is an hunter of undead. When he is with you, all undead lose 10hp from their starting total. These are not game deciders - a big bug on the PSP was that none of the companion powers worked and I still completed the game several times - but they are cool little features.
Got it on PSP or DS - why bother?
the graphics are really lush and looking great. It is amazing how much better it actually looks on HDTV! The PSP looked great compared to the DS but this really is a nice looking game.
One problem you would frequently encounter on the PSP was slow down from big chains. No surprise here that the X360 handles it fine.
The sound is this game is awesome. There is a harp tune that I could listen to on repeat for hours and drift off to sleep with. There are essentially 6 theme tunes but they fit the action 100% of the time. After a few hours you will know them inside out but you never get bored of them. The sound effects are decent enough - they do exactly what is needed. It's a shame they didn't take the opportunity to really add some more speech but this is a minor issue.
I guess my biggest reasons why you should buy this game from XBLA is that:
• IT is by far the best version of an already great game
• If you are hardcore fan of this game you have run out of people to play - 5 people got this game after playing my copy (people of all ages and sex). XBLA version allows you to play aginst people online.
• Chances are if you are reading this on BlackCats (the only place this review is) and you have played it on PSP or DS, you most likely downloaded it for free. Here is a chance to give some money back to the developers. Sure MS will get some but the team have created an truly awesome game here and we should show them love for it.
Finally, why are you still reading this? Go and download this game. This is a game that will get your wife, mum, dad, granma, sister, dog playing videogames. I could keep typing on about all the cool features of this game but you just need to buy it and play it for yourselves. Look, if you are not addicted after 2-3 hours then I will give you the $15 back! ;-)