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»Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
"Welcome to Bejeweled done right."
I'll admit I wasn’t expecting a whole lot when I picked up this game. I figured it’d just be a Bejeweled clone with a few gimmicks thrown in to make it seem new and interesting. It took about ten minutes of playing for the game to prove me wrong. Puzzle quest offers a great mixture of puzzle game and RPG elements, proving to be one of the most addictive, and unexpectedly fun, DS games yet.
The "battles" play similarly to Bejeweled; you have a grid filled with seven different types of objects and you have to swap adjacent objects to match three, four, or five in a row, eliminating them from the grid. That’s where the similarities end, however. The seven objects, instead of various jewels, are red, blue, green, and yellow gems, skulls, stars, and coins.
The goal of each battle is, of course, to reduce your opponent’s HP to zero. This is done by casting spells and eliminating skulls. You and an opponent take turns lining up objects or casting spells. Getting four or five in a row nets you an extra turn. Each object does something different when eliminated. The gems add to your mana reserves of that color, which are used for casting spells. Skulls damage your opponent, coins add to your money reserve, and stars add to your experience points. Sometimes a wild card will appear on the board. These can be used as a substitute for any of the gems and increases the amount of mana you get by the multiplier on the card.
There are seven stats: Fire (red), Earth (green), Water (blue), and Wind (yellow) Mastery, Battle, Cunning and Morale. Mastery mostly affects the amount of mana you get from gems, Battle affects the amount of damage done from skulls, Cunning affects gold and experience gained after battle as well as the effect of wild cards, and Morale affects your HP total. Each stat also increases the chance of getting an extra turn when you match three of its corresponding object (Cunning affects gold and Morale affects stars in this regard) as well as the chance of a wild card appearing when you do the same, though neither is ever high enough that you can really count on it happening. Each time you level up, you get four stat points. Each stat takes a different amount of points to increase depending on your class, one, two, or three. Stat increases can also be bought with gold once you’ve built up your citadel in the story mode.
There are four different classes to choose from, each with different spell selections and stats. The classes are: Druid, Knight, Warrior, and Wizard. I can’t go into too much detail on those, since I’ve only played the Wizard, but from my understanding, Druids tend to focus on defensive spellcasting; Knights are more well-rounded, with spells geared toward collecting exp; Warriors are good at dealing direct damage, and Wizards are all about using spells of any kind, though they exceed in fire- and earth-based spells.
Most of the action happens in the game’s story mode. The game places your character in a typical fantasy setting, in service of your queen. You go around doing quests (most of which involve battling something), collecting gold, exp, and sometimes items that can help you in battle when equipped. As you play, you may also find some companions that are willing to travel with you and help you out in battle.
One of the more ingenious aspects of the game is your citadel. The citadel starts off completely useless, but once you buy buildings, it becomes endlessly useful. Once you’ve paid for a siege workshop for your citadel, you can siege cities that are open to you, which will create a citadel for you there as well as allow you to collect gold from it each month. Once you’ve built a dungeon, you can "capture" most enemies you’ve already defeated three times; if you’ve built a mage tower, you can learn spells from them. Building a stable lets you use certain captured monsters as mounts, which gives you a seventh spell depending on the mount (normally you’re only allowed six) as well as increase one of your stats and, if you’ve trained it enough, pass by enemies on the world map. Building a forge allows you to use runes to create weapons and armor. Building a temple allows you to pay money to increase your stats. Towers decrease the chance that a city you’ve captured will revolt; a vault will increase the money you recieve from those cities by 50%. Finally, you can build statues which increase your Morale stat by five.
The other two single player modes are Instant Action and Choose Opponent; the former pitting you against a random enemy that matches your level, the latter letting you choose from the multitude of enemies that are found throughout the game. These modes are good for testing out a new spell or piece of equipment, or just practicing in general.
The AI tends to be frustrating. It seems like the computer can see above the board, which allows it to plan further ahead than a human player would be able to. You may find yourself ready to throw your DS at a wall when it gets four turns in a row, then casts a spell that incapacitates you for three more. To balance that, however, the computer is generally very poor at forming strategies, and they also have less spells to choose from. Your enemies may get a few good spells or pieces of equipment from time to time, it won’t be nearly enough to match the full arsenal you’ll have at your disposal.
The graphics are standard puzzle game fare. Very little is actually animated; story scenes involve two portraits and text. The character and enemy illustrations are very well done, however, and nothing is really unpleasant to look at. The music is beautiful, though you can tell it wasn’t created for the DS speakers. Sometimes the music will crackle, or even stutter a bit, which can be frustrating. Wearing headphones, however, eliminates this problem. There are only a few tracks, but they never seem to get annoying or repetitive.
Multiplayer is, of course, where this game shines. It’s not much more than one would expect; your single player character vs. your friend’s. Unfortunately, it can get boring if the level difference is too great. Even though tactics and luck are a huge factor, higher level characters have a huge advantage that can’t be ignored.
All in all, this is a great game, and easily the most addictive one I’ve played in some time. I actually had to have a friend hide my DS so I could write this review. It’s a great title for all RPG fans or puzzle game fans, and I highly recommend it. You might want to get a rag though, since your other DS games are gonna be collecting some dust.
Article by: Flying Bovine
Posted on: May. 29th, 2007 |
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Review Recap |
| Gameplay |
| Incredible, addictive, fun. What more needs to be said? |
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Graphics |
| Not bad, but nothing to write home about. But who needs good graphics for a puzzle game? |
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Sound |
| The music is great, but has problems playing on the DS speakers. Headphones are an easy fix, though. |
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Replay Value |
| Assuming you’re able to put it down, there’s always more to do when you pick it back up. |
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