Puzzle Quest

Title: Puzzle Quest
Platform Played On: Nintendo DS, PSP, iPhone
Release Date: March 20, 2007
Date Played: 2007, Spring 2012
Time Played: 5 hours
Completed (Y/N): No
Score: 2/5


Opinion:
Puzzle Quest interested me from the day it came out. I first played it a bit on the Nintendo DS, then on the PSP, and finally on the iPhone. I would pick it up about once a year, but every single time I ended up putting it down. Now 5 years, and many attempts later. I can say for sure that Puzzle Quest is not for me.

Puzzle Quest combines the addictive gameplay of a match 3 game (such as Bejeweled), and sprinkles some RPG on top. While most of the gameplay takes place on a match 3 board rest of the game consists of traveling on a overworld map, and conversing with NPCs via chat bubbles. There is an overarching story dealing with the threat to the kingdoms and you of course are their only salvation.

The RPG elements are present in every aspect of Puzzle Quest. You start of by choosing a character class, which impacts your stats and dictates which spells you have. The battle board has pieces that can be used to earn experience, other pieces (skulls) are used for dealing damage and the rest of the colored pieces are the different types of mana. You earn spells through leveling or items/creatures, and each spell needs one or more types of mana to cast. You earn said mana by matching gems. For example matching 3 blue gems will get you 3 blue mana. Generally the more badass the spell the more it will cost to cast. You can travel to shops to buy new equipment (or sell the old), and Inns to gather rumors.

Now that Puzzle Quest's mechanics are clear I am going to get straight to the point. Puzzle Quest sucks. The idea is original, it is very cool and interesting; however every single time I pick it up I end up at the same spot by the name of boredom a few hours into it. The game mechanics are unnecessarily complicated and are not descriptive enough. The stat screen is filled with arbitrary numbers that mean very little, which makes it extremely hard to tell if dumping 5 points into "Battle" stat actually increases your damage a lot or just a little. While there is the main quest line, which is alright but does very little to keep you interested, and the side quests (which there are a ton of) are just plain dumb. They are not interesting in any way, not in concept, nor by their gameplay. The map usage is very minimal, and the NPC conversations do not feel even remotely interesting. On top of all this Puzzle Quest's AI is brutal, and not in a fun way either. The AI straight up cheats. I have had numerous occasions where it would make moves building 5+ chains of match 4 using tiles that arent even on the screen yet.

Basically Puzzle Quest sucks at the feedback loop. Things that you do are not exciting and the reward is basically nonexistent. As soon as the novelty of a match 3 RPG is gone there is absolutely nothing interesting or fun in Puzzle Quest. Moreover I find it's gameplay very frustrating. I think its a great idea, but not a good implementation of that idea. It is way too repetitive, with little to no incentive and quite frankly a very boring run of the mill story. I have yet to give Puzzle Quest 2 or Puzzle Quest Galactrix a try, perhaps they address my issues with this one.

Bottom line... Puzzle Quest... is not for me...