Addictive, surprisingly deep, and a bit buggy.

User Rating: 8 | Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords DS
The Good
________

-the base Bejeweled style gameplay is pretty fun and addictive.

-putting a puzzle game in an rpg setting is just awesome!

-surprisingly in depth. I had no idea going in to this game how cool the crafting, mounts, capture, research spells, etc. aspect of the game was.

The Bad
_______

-For now reason whatsoever, you are penalized with 5 damage and your turn ending by making an illegal move. Making an illegal move gives you no sort of benefit at all so there is no reason to punish it. Assuming you know
the rules of the game and because you are playing on a small touch screen, the only way you can really do this is by an accidental misclick. It's punishing and frustrating for no reason.

-I'm sure some people could claim that I am ignoring my good fortune and focusing on the bad, but seriously, the computer is lucky. Sometimes, when you make a move, the pieces falling onto the top of the screen may match up with current pieces and you might get a bonus match or even two. On rare occasion, you might get a free turn in this manner. The computer on the other hand, will do this constantly, often creating long chains clearing half the screen and going on for numerous turns in a row. You might get lucky in this manner on very rare occasion, but expect your computer opponent to do it regularly. You WILL experience games where you have complete control over the game, opponent 3/4 dead, lots of mana, lots of health, and really close to victory, then the computer will take a turn that will combine a ridiculous amount of windfall combos and free turns and you will suddenly be dead without knowing what happened. You WILL curse and be tempted to throw your DS.

-The game has frozen up, crashed, or bugged out about 3-4 times in my playtime. This could be ignored if it were on PC, but seriously, this is DS. I have never had ANY DS game crash on me until this game. COME ON!

Summary
________

If you like puzzle and rpg, this is a very cool game experience unlike anything you have probably played before. It is sometimes frustrating and a bit buggy, but still worth your time.