Review: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (NDS)

The online flash game Bejeweled became somewhat of an internet fascination a few years ago. Millions of people wiled away hours on the game, reminiscent of that time not so long ago when Tetris swept the world. Giving Puzzle Quest a cursory glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking this a new version of that addictive little flash game. However, not only does Puzzle Quest come from an entirely different developer, it also mashes its addictive puzzle play with another highly addictive genre, the RPG. The result is a game that Gamestyle is sure will keep players distracted on long train journeys, so much so they’ll probably miss their stop.

For the most part, Puzzle Quest plays like its inspiration. Games take place on an 8*8 board adorned with icons of various colours, the idea being to match at least three correlating colours in order to clear those tiles from the board, which frees up space for more coloured tiles to appear. The twist that is made however is linking this simple play mechanic with a rather meaty RPG element, including a quite decent plot.

Essentially, your goal is not only to math as many colours as possible on the board, but to use the combinations to damage an opponent in a turn based battle. Every time you play the actual puzzle in the game you’ll be squaring off against a foe, hoping to do damage to them. The easiest (and we use the term loosely) way to do so is to simply line up three or more “Skull” tiles, which serve no other purpose to do damage to your opponent. Tiles of other colours, however, are used for other purposes. For example, tiles of one specific colour, when lined up correctly, imbue the player with that colour of “mana.” This can then be used to cast the various spells you will learn through the games titular quest. These spells range from simple damage and status changes to quite devastating tactical advantages, if used with proper planning. The remaining two tile types, money and purple experience tiles, are used to gain extra cash in the main adventure, while the experience orbs allow you to level up slightly faster and upgrade your characters stats, though most money and experience is gained from completing quests or defeating enemies.

What this Puzzle/RPG mesh manages to do is to give you an actual reason to play what is essentially a fun but shallow experience over and over again, whether it be against zombies or evil warlords, giving an actual point to the puzzle adds quite a bit to the game, even if it is a simple focal point for your frustration. Now instead of blaming the “computer” for being a cheating pile of circuits, you can blame the vampire bat for defeating you five times in a row. Get used to this as even on the lowest difficulty setting against the weakest creature, puzzle quest can be a right pain in the proverbial. It’s easy to spot simple three colour alignments, but the trick is to look for chances to get a large combination of tiles through planning. You can be assured the A.I. characters will be doing the same, as several times Gamestyle has watched as a simple rat has managed to take three turns by setting up a 4 tile combo, followed swiftly by another before finally using a spell that stunned us for another. The urge to complain that the game for being unfair is strong, but usually it’s your own inability to spot the right tiles to move that proves your downfall. You can immediately start another battle with any creature that defeats you with no punishment for doing so, saving a lot of lost time as these matches can take up to fifteen minutes to complete, if not longer. Luckily the RPG story allows you to buy spells, equipment, and other such things to help you to complete your quest.

Puzzle Quest does a good job of conveying itself on the DS’s two screens. The actual play taking place on the bottom screen, with tiles moved and spells activated with the stylus, while the top screen displays any information relevant to the match. The dual screen controls also work similarly on the game’s map screen where movement to other areas takes place. However, due to the DS’s small screen size, everything can seem a little cramped as the game tries to display as much as it can, game boards, menus, spells etc. on the bottom screen. This has some affect on the controls, as it sometimes feels a little clunky trying to pick the right tile to move, but aside from this there are no other issues that come to mind with the scheme.

Everything else about Puzzle Quest, however, is well executed. The story, gameplay, sound and everything else do a good job of keeping you interested in the game. Yet no amount of storytelling will keep players whose interest usually lies outside of puzzle or RPG games. It’s an interesting idea taking both of these two distinctively different genres are brought together, and for the most part they work. A few minor niggles don’t spoil our enjoyment of Puzzle Quest and it is most definitely one of the most addictive games on Nintendo’s handheld wonder.

Rating: 8 / 10

Words by Garry Webber