Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (DS) Review
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords was an under the radar release if there ever was one. It took the industry by surprise and managed to get massive critical acclaim from loads of high profile places upon its hidden release, yet somehow the game still manages to elude thousands of Nintendo DS owners. This is very unfortunate because Puzzle Quest is the best puzzle game on the console.
Puzzle Quest is a puzzle and role-playing hybrid that requires a large amount of strategy to be played well. The fusion of the different genres has been done exceptionally well and the end result is a new type of game that would actually confuse never-before-gamers as to the difference between a puzzle and RPG game. They are that tightly woven.
As the name implies, this is primarily a puzzle game. RPG fans are warned now that absolutely every task in the game is done through puzzles: battles, capturing monsters, training mounts, learning spells, seizing cities, item crafting the entire lot.
You begin the game by creating a hero using one of only two save slots. Your choices for a hero include their profession (which determines how you will play, so choose well), their gender, a matching avatar or image and finally you get to spend some skill points, which I will talk about later.
Once a character has been created you have three primary modes of play: quest, instant action and multiplayer. You can use your hero in all three modes and all the experience and gold you earn is and saved to your file no matter which mode you play. It is well designed, and the ability to purchase items from shops in the instant action mode is very convenient. Since the strength of your opponents in the quest mode is determined by your hero’s strength, there is no issue with becoming too strong for the main quest if you enjoy playing instant action and multiplayer a lot.
Quest mode is the primary type of play. A world map acts as a hub and a user interface for accepting quests, buying items, listening to rumours and so forth, through the use of cities and dungeons. When you are given a choice to make, the game will tell you to move to a location on the map as the way of expressing your decision. You will manage your inventory at the map screen, and from here you can also visit your Citadel. This is a place where you can make buildings like a dungeon or temple that allows you to capture enemies and spend gold on skill points respectively.
Random enemies will spawn along roads between locations, which either need to be defeated or avoided if you are to proceed past them. To avoid an enemy you need to be riding a captured mount with a level higher than that of the enemy. The map will serve as your primary way of managing your hero, finding companions, doing quests and learning about the game.
The rest of your time will be spent staring at the battle grid. It is where you will determine your success for different tasks; mainly battles. The gameplay here is very similar to Bejewelled. The battle grid is filled with different kinds of gems, and your objective is to line up three or more gems of the same type. You do this by swapping two gems that are next to each other, and only if the particular swap will line up gems. When you line up similar gems they disappear and the gems above them fall to fill their space, with random gems filling in the empty space at the top.
In a battle, you and your opponent will take turns eliminating gems from the battle grid. You can take an extra turn if you get four or more gems in a row, or by using certain spells. There are four types of magic that are represented by four coloured gems: red for fire, green for earth, blue for water and yellow for wind. Lining up these will fill your reserves for each respective mana type, allowing you to cast spells. Also on the board are skulls, wildcards (can be any of the coloured gems), experience stars and gold.
To win a battle you must completely deplete your opponent’s Health Points. Skulls are the most direct way to do this as they deal damage when lined up, but depending on your hero’s profession the most effective way of winning can be very different. While a warrior character is best lining up skulls, a wizard should collect mana until they have enough to cast spells that deal damage. Each class, including that of your opponent, have distinctly different approaches that alter gameplay significantly.
If you lose a battle, the game is very forgiving. Typically a lost battle presents a message along the lines of “the bat chased you out the cave, but you can go back in”. You still receive all the benefits from the gold and experience point stars collected during a lost battle and receive no genuine penalties. Rarely does the game actually progress from a defeat, but you will be left with the same reward items, and are allowed to continue down the same road.
Experience stars and gold coins are not as useless as they first seem. As the game progresses you will see them grow in importance. Forcing your opponent to collect coins instead of mana can be important, Knights rely heavily on experience stars and there is a boss who gets an extra turn each time he collects coins. A great deal of strategy usually comes from how many of these pieces are on the battle grid.
Spells are a very well conceived and creative part of Puzzle Quest. Each spell requires you to have a certain amount if mana to cast it, and usually these requirements involve more than one type of mana. This heavy dependence on mana and spell requirements is where the game gets most of its strategy element. The spells themselves differ quite significantly, considering it is a puzzle game. You can heal yourself, drain your opponent’s HP or mana, alter or destroy gems, deal extra damage and more. The spells are well thought out, and both their name and mana requirements relate to their actual effect. For example, a Druid spell called Evaporate will turn all blue water gems into yellow wind gems, and the catapult’s Besiege skill that randomly destroys nine gems in a 3×3 block. Using spells and the battle grid together well takes some real strategy and planning, particularly on bosses, where you will probably spend a long time thinking about tactics and what gems to swap.
Working in the background while you battle will be your hero’s skill points for: earth mastery, fire mastery, water mastery, air mastery, battle, cunning and morale. These skills will affect the benefits you receive from lining gems. For instance, fire mastery gives you extra fire mana and a higher chance to generate a random extra turn or wildcard when lining up red fire gems. The Battle skill is similar, but relates to skulls and damage dealt to your opponent. Each time your character gains enough experience points to grow a level, you get to spend skill points, much like any RPG. After purchasing a temple for your Citadel, you can also purchase skill points with gold.
Bonuses can be applied to skill points by using companions and equipment. Equipment can be bought from cities, won in quests, or created using runes. At your disposal is the typical line-up of armour and weapons that are as appropriately named as the spells are. Equipment can also have unique features, such as a helmet that replenishes 15 HP if you line up five or more similar gems. The companions tend to have narrow roles in game play, for example your first companion likes to hunt undead, and having him around will deal 10 HP damage at the beginning of a battle to any undead character. Companions generally tie in with the story and side quests of the game, and sometimes they will even speak with each other.
The story is told through basic dialogue screens. You will have two avatars for the two people conversing, matching speech bubbles, and a backdrop behind the avatars. This presentation is simple but does not ruin the experience. But what does is the writing. The story itself might be interesting enough to follow if it wasn’t for this plain and emotionless writing.
There is plenty to do within the quest mode. Beyond simply completing quests to finish the story, there are side quests with rewards (from battling unique enemies, finding unique items or befriending new companions), searching ruins for runes, crafting items from runes and sieging cities for gold. It is possible to capture monsters after building a dungeon in your Citadel, after which you can then build a stable to train the monsters into mounts, or a mage tower to learn spells off them.
The puzzles relating to these different tasks are different variations of the regular battle rules. For example, to capture a monster you have to play a grid with a finite amount of gems, and your goal is to empty the screen of all gems without leaving any or running out of moves (think Bejeweled 2 puzzle mode). Others aren’t quite as unique Training mounts, for example, is a regular battle but with an added time limit for each move.
The game is extremely long and has a lot of content and replayability. The instant action and multiplayer modes of play are both as their name imply. Instant action allows you to quickly play against a random or chosen enemy, while multiplayer allows you to play against a friend. Unfortunately there is no online integration at all, and to add insult to injury there is no single-pack multiplayer either. This means both players will need their own copy of the game for multiplayer.
This low level of production value extends into the overall presentation of the game. The DS screen is simply too small, and the developer has not utilised every pixel on the screen to make the playing grid as large as possible. The end result is a game where the battle grid is tiny and green and yellow gems are easily mistaken for each other. Someone with the publishers must have been extremely unimpressed as well, since the screen shots on the back of the DS box are actually from the PSP version of Puzzle Quest! To top it all off, the game has locked up on me several times and I swear the computer AI cheats.
The audio is in a better state than the graphics thankfully, but it won’t blow you away either. The major problem with the music is that there isn’t enough of it. If you are going to play this game as long as it will last you then the music will become extremely repetitive.
These flaws lend themselves to the fact Puzzle Quest was such a low profile game before being released – an unpleasant fact of life. We should be thankful however that both the developer and publisher had the balls to make this game and get it to the shelves. It is an absolute blessing for the Nintendo DS, the ideal home for a game that can be so easily enjoyed in short and daylong sittings.
This games entertainment value is huge. It provides such a massive amount of addiction, depth and length that it demands to be taken seriously. Puzzle Quest is a top-notch game because it has it where every gamer agrees it counts: gameplay. Despite its lack of polish, it easily sits at the top of DS puzzlers, which says a lot. It is not a fast paced multiplayer game but a slow, well-designed single player strategic puzzle RPG. It is a very original game thanks to its hybrid of genres, and has a level of depth almost every puzzle game lacks. A must buy by all accounts.
