Puzzle Quest Review of Awesomeness

Between Tekken Dark Resurrection on my PSP and Advance Wars on my DS, I haven’t really been diversifying my handheld game line up. Sure I buy games, only to sell them a week later cause either I beat it and there’s no reason to go back and play them again or the game just isn’t the type of game you’d play on the go. Puzzle Quest is one of those rare games that comes along every decade that when you play it you say “$#@!, why didn’t I think of that?!”

Essentially, the game is Bejeweled with a twist. There are RPG elements and you gain experience and have magic which you can unleash on your opponent. It combines my love of Final Fantasy and Bejeweled into a game so addicting you’d think it was outlawed by the government for being too damn fun. In case you haven’t played Bejeweled, give me your address so I can fetch the Video Game police on you for being such a twat. It’s like Tetris only you match colored balls, er, orbs in a row of 3. Get 4 in a row and you get another turn and 5 nets you a ‘wildcard’ which I never quit figured out what it does. I guess I could look it up, but the game was just too good to put down and by the time I did pry it out of my hands, I didn’t dare do anything that would make me want to return to it. There are 4 colored orbs, Red, Blue, Green and Yellow, by combing 3 or more of these in a row, it’s added to your mana reserve so you can cast spells. Each spell cost a different amount of mana to cast and the spells vary from attacking to healing and even changing the face of the board. What makes the game different than Bejeweled is that there are also skulls, gold and purple stars in the grids. Skulls attack your opponents life points, gold nets you money to buy equipment and the stars give you EXP so you can gain levels and increase your stats.

Puzzle Quest has a sandbox feel to it. In order to gain access to more areas you need to complete main quests, but you can also just walk around and fight bad guys if you so please and complete side quests for more money, experience and sometimes items. You can buy equipment or make your own by acquiring runes and mixing them together. As if there wasn’t enough to do, capturing towns is a possibility. It’s hard to do but if you beat the town at a game you gain 150 gold whenever you visit the town and it really adds up over time. (Conquering a town by playing Bejeweled sounds about as odd as playing a children’s card game to save the world. I’m looking at you, Yugioh)

The game isn’t perfect. The story is barely interesting. You, a knight, wizard, or whatever you choose to be at the beginning of the quest, (I chose a druid chick) are a servant to a queen. Her kingdom is being infested by undead and you have to protect it and get to the bottom of the mystery. (No meddling kids here) Also, some of the enemies are just plain impossible to beat. Well, perhaps not impossible, but beating them is more reliant on luck than actual skill, or at least that was my experience with the game, maybe you’re not as dense as I am.

Considering how cheap Puzzle Quest is (20 bucks) it should be a crime not to own this game. You’re getting your money’s worth and more some. Unless you hate fun and addicting games, there’s no logical excuse to not buy this game. (Unless you don’t own a DS, PSP, PS2 or wii. Seriously, if you don’t any of those then you can’t call yourself a gamer.)