4cr Review – Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Whoever came up with the idea of mixing Bejewled and a traditional D&D RPG should be given a freaking medal. Puzzle Quest is a brilliant fusion of the two genres, and it is an absolute must-own for fans of either.

Puzzle Quest begins just like any other role-playing game — you choose a character class, type in your name, and sit back for an opening conversation between the protagonist and the Queen. Suddenly, you’re plunged into a puzzle game. If you’ve played Bejewled, you’ll be right at home here. Move a jewel in a certain direction and try to line up three or more like pieces. Matching four nets you an extra turn, five earns both a turn and a wildcard piece.

The twist is that matching pieces actually causes things to happen. Matching skulls does damage to your opponent. Purple stars net experience points. Gold fattens your wallet. Matching like colored jewels builds up your mana in that color. Once you have enough mana, you can unleash spells that have various effects on the game. It’s addictive, and it works really well. It’s kind of amazing that nobody has thought of doing this before.

Just like in any other RPG, you gain experience and level up skills that give you the edge in battle. You travel from town to town and take on quests. The story and writing aren’t horribly bad, but they are incredibly basic. Though, when was the last time you played a puzzle game for the storyline? It isn’t a huge issue. Still, I’d like to see some actual effort in a future sequel. Just because it is essentially a puzzle game with RPG elements doesn’t mean that it can’t have a well-written, serious storyline.

Despite making the transition from PC to DS, Puzzle Quest looks fantastic. I never had any trouble seeing the text or the interface on the small screens. The artwork has a fairly generic manga-like style to it. It looks clean and suits the game well enough though. The controls are entirely stylus-based, but they work well. I never had any issues with control. The interface and menus are easy to navigate, which is very important for a stylus-only game.

A common complaint is that the AI is really hard. The complaints actually got so bad that one of the developers had to come forward and swear that the AI doesn’t cheat. The complaints do have some merit ““ the opponent AI is really, really tough. There are times where I was pretty sure that I could get up and make a sandwich by the time their turn was over. The player never quite gets as lucky as the AI. The AI difficulty actually hurts this game in two different ways. First, it will frustrate you in the beginning. You will lose at least once on nearly every quest for the first few hours of the game. Fortunately, you don’t get punished for losing a match. It’s also a problem later on, where you vastly outmatch the opponents. The AI remains just as smart, but you will eventually have such powerful spells that it won’t matter. It is worth noting, however, that the difficulty is adjustable at any point in the game.

Puzzle Quest clearly didn’t spend quite enough time in development. There are numerous glitches throughout the game. None of these are game breaking, but the occasional graphics “seizures” can get fairly irritating. Another month or two of bug testing could have cured this. This isn’t even the most competitive quarter of the year. Why didn’t the developers get the time they deserved?

Puzzle Quest has probably been the most addictive game that I’ve played all year. I don’t lose sleep over many games, but I played this late into the night on a couple of occasions. Like I said earlier, fans of puzzle games or RPGs will find a lot to love here. If you do try it, tell your friends about it. Puzzle Quest is relying on word-of-mouth advertising alone, which is a shame as it could become the casual game franchise to look out for.

Score – 9/10

Official Website
PC Demo
4cr Interview – Infinite Interactive, Puzzle Quest DS