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Gaming: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Sun, 25 Mar 2007

Normally I'd open up a review with a haiku, but I'm pretty beat right now. Permit me to be brief and provide the Pulp-free version of a blog entry.

Yes yes, I'm taking some time to write up something, and also admitting that while caring for this amazing baby, I've found a few minutes here or there to play a game. Not much, but a little :) Permit my sleep-dep to ramble, and don't mind the total lack of structure please :)

Puzzle Quest is a new game for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS; it combines some elements of classic RPG's with a popular puzzle game in a smorgesbord of 2D fun. Interestingly, it works. There are really two or three kinds of RPGs .. the Japanese style (J-RPG) with its emphasis on story and console flavoring, and all the others where you have stats, item databases, and dungeon romping without a plot. Mixing with these formulas tends to annoy the faithful.. but this cuncoction is pretty darned slick. Peanut butter and chocolate.

RPG-wise its fairly simple -- you're a hero, you have to walk around an 'over world' doing quests. Standard issue. A dude in one city (blotch on the map) tells you to kill some monster in some other place (another blotch), so you wander on over and do your business. Theres a fair number of other things you can do to keep things interesting - shop for gear, build a castle, add a dungeon to your castle to capture folks to torture skills out of, and other such things. All is presented with a simple UI to get to the point, rather than hinder you with a lot of effort. Now, a lot of us play RPGs for all the effort but thats not what Puzzle Quest is about -- its a boiled down RPG for the sake of propelling you from encounter to encounter, and to provide a framework for spells and gear and such to make sense. Its like a boardgame version of an RPG, when you move your chit around picking up interesting abilities and gear, then go woop some ass. You don't go into any 3D-dungeons or the like.

Combat and research and such are all performed through variants of one puzzle game. Folks will be most familiar with it as Bejewelled, but that game certainly isn't the origin of that puzzle style. Anyway, while in those games the goal is simply to clear the board by matching alike pieces, in Puzzle Quest there is infinite depth built atop this base. Matching coloured gems removes them from the board and gives your character mana with which spells can be cast. Clear red gems to get red (fire) mana for instance. Clearing other items causes direct damage to the enemy, or gives you cash, or experience for levelling up. As you level up you get new abilities (depending on your class), and all this mana is used to fire off spells. For instance.. match 3 skulls to cause some damage directly to the enemy, or collect some (say) red and green mana and fire off an attack spell or effect.

The Warrior class for instance has abilities that turn this mana into direct attacks usually, or influence the board to effect it; ie: One ability clears a small region of the board (the squares around the target square), which can be handy so you can wait for a certain board layout and whammo it rather than working piece by piece. The Druid class is more healing oriented than direct damage, so spends its time manipulating the board, delaying the enemies moves, or healing itself. Where a Druid plods along doing slower damage to the enemy, or messing up his attacks, the Warrior is all about trying to pounce on the skull-blocks or do damage spells. Less survival in weird encounters, but everything moves along quickly. Fights are longer for the healer, but more 'under control' so gameplay feels different. Theres some depth to it .. not just the same thing over and over a la Bejewelled.. here you're working towards building sufficient mana types to fire off a spell or combo, while looking ahead to poach the pieces the enemy might need. Set yourself up with a multi-move set of combos, or work on building experience and gold for levelling up instead of going right for the enemy throat. Enemies vary in ability -- a spider can 'web' your character so you lose some turns, while a thief might steal some of your gold or do surprise attacks. All these many things occur on the game board. Cool stuff.

All in all, you're spending 90% of your time playing a Bejewelled-like game that works within the questing and adventuring framework familiar to J-RPGs. Nothing too serious, but pretty darned entertaining. Lots of cool items to buy and things to do.

And since each match is quick (5-20mins), you can play in the middle of the night between bouts of crying. Baby crying I mean. Usually, anyway ;)

I like it. I like serious RPGs usually, but I've not the time to read the back of the box of one these days. This hits the RPG and puzzle fetish in weird yet satisfyingly kinky ways.

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