location: community college
soundtrack: In Our Bedroom After The War by Stars
eating: Chewy Spree and Red Bull
soundtrack: In Our Bedroom After The War by Stars
eating: Chewy Spree and Red Bull
🕗 Total time played (approx.): 1145+
🏆 Completion: Played through the Campaign with all classes and pretty much done everything the game has to offer.
REVIEW:
"Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords" is a captivating blend of match-3 gameplay and RPG elements, offering a truly addictive experience that's pretty much akin to virtual crack, lol.
The game's core mechanic involves matching colored gems on a grid, with each match affecting your RPG adventure by allowing you to cast spells, attack enemies, and gather crucial resources. The strategic depth of deciding between a big match or saving gems for a game-changing spell adds layers of complexity to the already addictive puzzle mechanics. As you progress through the game's quests, you'll encounter a variety of foes, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. Winning battles rewards you with experience points and loot, essential for leveling up your character and acquiring new abilities. This integration of RPG elements gives much more purpose to the puzzle gameplay, making every match feel like a step towards becoming a more formidable hero. However, it's important to note that the game is not without its fair share of flaws. One notable issue is the sometimes frustrating behavior of the AI. It often appears that the AI has more luck than skill, leading to moments of exasperation when it seems to get the perfect matches just a bit too frequently. This can occasionally create a sense of unfairness and imbalance, detracting from an otherwise enjoyable experience. Visually, the game's fantasy-themed graphics are charming, if not overly flashy, and the accompanying music and sound effects add to the atmosphere.
In conclusion, "Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords" is a game that successfully marries match-3 puzzle mechanics with RPG elements. Its addictive nature will have you hooked, constantly striving to level up and discover new spells. However, be prepared for occasional frustrations with the AI's seemingly fortuitous luck. Despite this drawback, if you're a fan of either genre or simply looking for a game that's easy to pick up but hard to put down, this is definitely worth your time. Just keep in mind the occasional bouts of frustration as you embark on this addictive puzzle RPG adventure.
⭐ Rating: 3/5
🏆 Completion: Played through the Campaign with all classes and pretty much done everything the game has to offer.
REVIEW:
"Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords" is a captivating blend of match-3 gameplay and RPG elements, offering a truly addictive experience that's pretty much akin to virtual crack, lol.
The game's core mechanic involves matching colored gems on a grid, with each match affecting your RPG adventure by allowing you to cast spells, attack enemies, and gather crucial resources. The strategic depth of deciding between a big match or saving gems for a game-changing spell adds layers of complexity to the already addictive puzzle mechanics. As you progress through the game's quests, you'll encounter a variety of foes, each with unique strengths and weaknesses. Winning battles rewards you with experience points and loot, essential for leveling up your character and acquiring new abilities. This integration of RPG elements gives much more purpose to the puzzle gameplay, making every match feel like a step towards becoming a more formidable hero. However, it's important to note that the game is not without its fair share of flaws. One notable issue is the sometimes frustrating behavior of the AI. It often appears that the AI has more luck than skill, leading to moments of exasperation when it seems to get the perfect matches just a bit too frequently. This can occasionally create a sense of unfairness and imbalance, detracting from an otherwise enjoyable experience. Visually, the game's fantasy-themed graphics are charming, if not overly flashy, and the accompanying music and sound effects add to the atmosphere.
In conclusion, "Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords" is a game that successfully marries match-3 puzzle mechanics with RPG elements. Its addictive nature will have you hooked, constantly striving to level up and discover new spells. However, be prepared for occasional frustrations with the AI's seemingly fortuitous luck. Despite this drawback, if you're a fan of either genre or simply looking for a game that's easy to pick up but hard to put down, this is definitely worth your time. Just keep in mind the occasional bouts of frustration as you embark on this addictive puzzle RPG adventure.
⭐ Rating: 3/5
It's kind of fun at first but it's a long slog, the story is just blah, blah, blah and I swear the computer is cheating at times and getting outrageous combos. It's addicting but realized I was never going to finish it so I cut myself off. I liked this better than the Galactix ones
text by Alex Felix
★★☆☆
“TETHERED TO THE WALL OVER YOUR TOILET.”
I have played Bejeweled maybe twice, ever, in my history as somebody who plays videogames. I would have played it more than just the two times, except it didn’t really hold my attention, insofar as I’m not the kind of person who needs colored gems or whatever else to fiddle around with while I’m doing other very important things with a computer. It demands too much of my attention; it asks too little. To this end, certainly, I am not a “casual gamer.†I very well may be the opposite of that, although I’d have no way of knowing, because any and all monikers thus far ascribed to people who occupy such a status are horrifically embarrassing and you can’t very well be “hardcore†on your own terms, now, can you?
“Videogames are serious business,†is how the joke goes, I believe.
Puzzle Quest – a game which received no press whatsoever up until the day of its release presumably due to nobody caring and/or its having a development time of about three months – “is like Bejeweled, only as an RPG.†Any major gaming news outlet will tell you this in approximately six seconds, and then you’re in luck, because there is nothing else to be said about Puzzle Quest.
And yet this game is scoring eights and nines all over the place.
Puzzle Quest, you see, lets you level up. Funnily enough, the actual up-leveling here is probably the least interesting since Final Fantasy IV, wherein the player was told “Cecil gained a level!†and was then supplied with a bunch of numbers to evidence this; you weren’t really meant to pay attention to these numbers beyond the fact that they were going up, mind you – that’s an innovation we’re blessed with only in modern times. In Puzzle Quest, by comparison, you’re asked to personally select which numbers you’d like to go up, and then, in an act of appalling mockery, the game helpfully shows you the tiny, tiny fractions by which this will cause the other, actually “important†numbers to increase in kind.
(An example: say you choose to invest one point in “Fire Mastery†rather than “Air Mastery†or “Cunning†– this will in turn boost your “Fire Resistance†by a quarter of a percent, and give you an additional two percent chance of getting a free turn when you match “Fire Gems.†Numbers go up, but only barely.)
Yet I cannot stop playing Puzzle Quest. It is, objectively, a pretty good videogame. It takes an apathetic but not awful role-playing game framework and gives you Bejeweled in lieu of random battles. Bejeweled, for those not in the know, is a more or less traditional “puzzle†game whose gameplay centers around matching similar gems out of seven or eight distinct types in a crossword-puzzle grid. In Puzzle Quest, certain gems boost corresponding mana stockpiles, and other gems damage your opponent, and if you have enough of a given type of mana (blue, red, yellow, or green), you can choose to forego the gem-matching process entirely for one turn and cast a spell, instead.
It turned out better than it had to. Taking into account that the puzzle pieces fall Connect-Four style when those below them are matched and therefore removed from play, and the fact that your opponent gets a crack at the board for each time you do, you end up having to think pretty far in advance. I get the feeling that the developers had no idea just how workable of a game they were making, at times: it happens occasionally that there’s only one move you could make on your turn, and that’s going to set the evil Skeleton guy up for something huge on his turn, but – wait! You’ve got enough mana to cast the “Cure Poison†spell, and even though nobody’s poisoned, that’ll save you from having to make a move at all, and – when it works, it works.
The depressing thing about all of this, as should be abundantly clear by now, is that the game had to give me incentive to play it. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not the sort of guy who carries around Bejeweled in his DS (“Zoo Keeper,†actually, is the name of the DS iteration, for who knows what reason, although damned if it doesn’t have little animal faces in lieu of colored gems). I play and enjoy Puzzle Quest instead because it gives me that wonderful false sense of accomplishment when I make progress in the game and purchase new weapons with fake money that will be waiting for me the next time I turn the game on. I earned that fake money by doing the exact same thing during the first ten minutes I spent playing Puzzle Quest as I will do during the last ten minutes I spend playing Puzzle Quest. It is a gloriously transparent RPG, replete with a storyline that goes on too long and isn’t interesting to anybody.
(To be fair: when you get into a random battle with a monster whom you have already fought a certain number of times, you are given the option to “capture†it instead, which results in a sort of brain teaser-type puzzle rather than the ordinary “battle†setup, and these are more often than not a treat – “Look!” it begs you; designed rather than generated content; Eastern rather than Western game design – what are the implications?! The implications, apparently, are that your character ends up riding the rat you “captured” – because they do that in Warcraft, and rest assured that’d be mortifying enough if not for the stat boost)
Puzzle Quest should be tethered to the wall over your toilet. As a DS game, it will no doubt keep your brain sharp, and that’s hardly an aspect of your life where you want spontaneity, besides.
★★☆☆
“TETHERED TO THE WALL OVER YOUR TOILET.”
I have played Bejeweled maybe twice, ever, in my history as somebody who plays videogames. I would have played it more than just the two times, except it didn’t really hold my attention, insofar as I’m not the kind of person who needs colored gems or whatever else to fiddle around with while I’m doing other very important things with a computer. It demands too much of my attention; it asks too little. To this end, certainly, I am not a “casual gamer.†I very well may be the opposite of that, although I’d have no way of knowing, because any and all monikers thus far ascribed to people who occupy such a status are horrifically embarrassing and you can’t very well be “hardcore†on your own terms, now, can you?
“Videogames are serious business,†is how the joke goes, I believe.
Puzzle Quest – a game which received no press whatsoever up until the day of its release presumably due to nobody caring and/or its having a development time of about three months – “is like Bejeweled, only as an RPG.†Any major gaming news outlet will tell you this in approximately six seconds, and then you’re in luck, because there is nothing else to be said about Puzzle Quest.
And yet this game is scoring eights and nines all over the place.
Puzzle Quest, you see, lets you level up. Funnily enough, the actual up-leveling here is probably the least interesting since Final Fantasy IV, wherein the player was told “Cecil gained a level!†and was then supplied with a bunch of numbers to evidence this; you weren’t really meant to pay attention to these numbers beyond the fact that they were going up, mind you – that’s an innovation we’re blessed with only in modern times. In Puzzle Quest, by comparison, you’re asked to personally select which numbers you’d like to go up, and then, in an act of appalling mockery, the game helpfully shows you the tiny, tiny fractions by which this will cause the other, actually “important†numbers to increase in kind.
(An example: say you choose to invest one point in “Fire Mastery†rather than “Air Mastery†or “Cunning†– this will in turn boost your “Fire Resistance†by a quarter of a percent, and give you an additional two percent chance of getting a free turn when you match “Fire Gems.†Numbers go up, but only barely.)
Yet I cannot stop playing Puzzle Quest. It is, objectively, a pretty good videogame. It takes an apathetic but not awful role-playing game framework and gives you Bejeweled in lieu of random battles. Bejeweled, for those not in the know, is a more or less traditional “puzzle†game whose gameplay centers around matching similar gems out of seven or eight distinct types in a crossword-puzzle grid. In Puzzle Quest, certain gems boost corresponding mana stockpiles, and other gems damage your opponent, and if you have enough of a given type of mana (blue, red, yellow, or green), you can choose to forego the gem-matching process entirely for one turn and cast a spell, instead.
It turned out better than it had to. Taking into account that the puzzle pieces fall Connect-Four style when those below them are matched and therefore removed from play, and the fact that your opponent gets a crack at the board for each time you do, you end up having to think pretty far in advance. I get the feeling that the developers had no idea just how workable of a game they were making, at times: it happens occasionally that there’s only one move you could make on your turn, and that’s going to set the evil Skeleton guy up for something huge on his turn, but – wait! You’ve got enough mana to cast the “Cure Poison†spell, and even though nobody’s poisoned, that’ll save you from having to make a move at all, and – when it works, it works.
The depressing thing about all of this, as should be abundantly clear by now, is that the game had to give me incentive to play it. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not the sort of guy who carries around Bejeweled in his DS (“Zoo Keeper,†actually, is the name of the DS iteration, for who knows what reason, although damned if it doesn’t have little animal faces in lieu of colored gems). I play and enjoy Puzzle Quest instead because it gives me that wonderful false sense of accomplishment when I make progress in the game and purchase new weapons with fake money that will be waiting for me the next time I turn the game on. I earned that fake money by doing the exact same thing during the first ten minutes I spent playing Puzzle Quest as I will do during the last ten minutes I spend playing Puzzle Quest. It is a gloriously transparent RPG, replete with a storyline that goes on too long and isn’t interesting to anybody.
(To be fair: when you get into a random battle with a monster whom you have already fought a certain number of times, you are given the option to “capture†it instead, which results in a sort of brain teaser-type puzzle rather than the ordinary “battle†setup, and these are more often than not a treat – “Look!” it begs you; designed rather than generated content; Eastern rather than Western game design – what are the implications?! The implications, apparently, are that your character ends up riding the rat you “captured” – because they do that in Warcraft, and rest assured that’d be mortifying enough if not for the stat boost)
Puzzle Quest should be tethered to the wall over your toilet. As a DS game, it will no doubt keep your brain sharp, and that’s hardly an aspect of your life where you want spontaneity, besides.
This game is extremely unfair, somehow the enemy's AI always gets the 4 or 5 tile matches and knows when they're gonna show up from before they actually do. It's really frustrating because the game's concept is very cool, but at times it feels unplayable
When I played it was really good! Can't wait to try it again when I get it in steam!
A pretty cool mix of puzzle game and western RPG.
Incredible how much complexity they were able to add to the idea of a match 3 game. Had so much fun with this, although the end game got frustrating!
What a sleeper hit of a game this is. This game pulled me in like nothing else for like three weeks straight.
I enjoyed the crap outta this game, its a really good puzzle game with a unique system.
Have been playing this game on my free time for the last 10 months. It is alot of fun! Very good implementation, though there is room for improvement. If you want to get a casual gamer deeper into gaming, this is a great place to start. Waiting for puzzle quest 2 for the DS.
Puzzle Quest é daqueles jogos que pegam duas ideias já manjadas e criam algo novo que dá muito certo.
Misturando um dos meus gêneros favoritos de quebra-cabeça com uma campanha e um sistema de RPG com roteiro e mecânicas próprias, Puzzle Quest cria uma experiência maravilhosa.
Misturando um dos meus gêneros favoritos de quebra-cabeça com uma campanha e um sistema de RPG com roteiro e mecânicas próprias, Puzzle Quest cria uma experiência maravilhosa.
I appreciate what it's going for, but it's just not for me
Story sucks, encounters suck, I don't care. Matching colors fun
Interesting concept, I just don't have that dog in me to finish the match 3 RPG.
A descoberta da existência desse jogo foi algo inexplicável em meados de 2011. Eu curti tanto que me deixou viciado por meses. Só não consegui terminá-lo na época, porque a dificuldade e RNG dos inimigos era difícil demais a partir de certa parte da história.
PS.: o meu carinho por esse jogo é tão grande que quando descobri a existência de uma espécie de remaster para o Nintendo Switch, eu fiz questão de comprar(!), para relembrar dessa joia rara.
PS.2: Candy Crush se fosse bom.
PS.: o meu carinho por esse jogo é tão grande que quando descobri a existência de uma espécie de remaster para o Nintendo Switch, eu fiz questão de comprar(!), para relembrar dessa joia rara.
This is a combination of a match 3 game (think Bejeweled or Candy Crush) with some RPG elements. You and the enemy AI take turns swapping tiles on the board, earning MP, XP, coines, or doing damage depending on the tile type. It's a neat concept, with surprisingly in-depth equipment and side quest mechanics. I enjoy these types of games, and while I did rather enjoy this game, I think I liked it more than it deserves. The core gameplay can be a bit frustrating, as in a typical match 3 game you want to set up good future moves for yourself. In this game, you actively don't want to do so, as that will only help your opponent next turn. It trades one type of strategy for another, but this is arguably less rewarding. The game is also very biased towards the enemies, who seem to get just the moves they need to gain an extra turn. It got so bad once that the game actually crashed from all the "extra turn" effects on screen. This game does actually have an in-depth story, but it didn't really do anything for me. Overall, a surprisingly fun puzzle game, but one that somewhat outstays its welcome.
Jogo perfeito pra passar o tempo, Sem duvidas o jogo mais legal desse estilo
in my first hour my knight named bisque defeated the rat king and i was irrevocably charmed
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a match-3 vs turn-based fantasy RPG hybrid. At first, it sounded like the weirdest, most likely to fail mesh of genres ever, but it's actually ingenious. You and your opponent take turns matching pieces on a match-three style board. Matching a certain color gives you mana of that color, and matching skulls deals damage to the enemy. Whoever runs out of life first, loses.
It's pretty strategic: being a class-based RPG, there are a lot of character skills that can be used during battle. Sometimes it's better to forgo immediate damage for a huge chunk of mana, and sometimes it's better to forgo mana for your own skills and focus on snatching mana your opponents need before they do. Plus, it gives the game a decent amount of replayability.
The quest itself is... the writing is not great, and reads off as amateurish. But the real issue is that the game is padded to an unbelievable extent. There's an unbelievable amount of fetch quests in the game, both as sidequests and as part of the main story. "Go kill a monster, then return and kill another". "Go fetch three to five things before we can go after the bad guy". "Go somewhere to get an item, and there will be a surprise ambush on the way like on those eight other quests". So on and so forth.
Especially if you complete all of the side content, it's possible to reach the level cap about halfway through the game, which means that for the other half, the game's combat stagnates. Equipment becomes similarly irrelevant. The RPG systems are only designed to support a game 20 hours shorter.
Which is a shame, because this is otherwise the best match-3 game I've ever played. I wish it didn't grossly overstay its welcome as it does, because with a better and shorter story, this could have been an even more unforgettable experience.
It's pretty strategic: being a class-based RPG, there are a lot of character skills that can be used during battle. Sometimes it's better to forgo immediate damage for a huge chunk of mana, and sometimes it's better to forgo mana for your own skills and focus on snatching mana your opponents need before they do. Plus, it gives the game a decent amount of replayability.
The quest itself is... the writing is not great, and reads off as amateurish. But the real issue is that the game is padded to an unbelievable extent. There's an unbelievable amount of fetch quests in the game, both as sidequests and as part of the main story. "Go kill a monster, then return and kill another". "Go fetch three to five things before we can go after the bad guy". "Go somewhere to get an item, and there will be a surprise ambush on the way like on those eight other quests". So on and so forth.
Especially if you complete all of the side content, it's possible to reach the level cap about halfway through the game, which means that for the other half, the game's combat stagnates. Equipment becomes similarly irrelevant. The RPG systems are only designed to support a game 20 hours shorter.
Which is a shame, because this is otherwise the best match-3 game I've ever played. I wish it didn't grossly overstay its welcome as it does, because with a better and shorter story, this could have been an even more unforgettable experience.
Demasiado RNG para mi body.
Pros:
- Su mezcla de géneros es de las más originales que ha dado la industria.
- Es muy profundo, albergando una tremebunda cantidad de contenido.
- Es prácticamente único en su propuesta.
Contras:
- El azar juega un papel excesivamente grande.
- Su apartado artístico es de las cosas más feas que he visto nunca.
- La IA parece adelantarse a las gemas nuevas que van a aparecer en el mapa, creando una dificultad muy mal medida.
Pros:
- Su mezcla de géneros es de las más originales que ha dado la industria.
- Es muy profundo, albergando una tremebunda cantidad de contenido.
- Es prácticamente único en su propuesta.
Contras:
- El azar juega un papel excesivamente grande.
- Su apartado artístico es de las cosas más feas que he visto nunca.
- La IA parece adelantarse a las gemas nuevas que van a aparecer en el mapa, creando una dificultad muy mal medida.
So I fancied playing this again after playing it on the DS at launch years ago. I saw it was £2.50 in a PSN sale so I went for it and boy has this aged badly.
Let's get the big part out the way, this is a port of the PS2 version. It's a low effort port at absolute best. The volume quality is so bad I played 90% of the game with my headphones on listening to music because it was sharp, crackly and fiddling with the settings did absolutely nothing.
The rest of the game is just way worse than I remember it. The battles are done using a match 3 type puzzle mode and I still love the idea but the computer is ridiculous constantly making perfect moves chaining things together to take multiple turns in a row. It's really frustrating yet despite that I would win almost every time. The balancing feels terrible.
Added to that is this is a pseudo RPG, you get level ups, equipment and skills. The level ups are so pointless for how little they effect your stats you may as well not bother, I was level 50 by the end of the game and did very little more damage than at level 1. Equipment is pretty much the same throughout the game, I just barely felt like I was making any real impact to my character.
The game is pretty long, like 30 hours? The problem is it's pretty much the same from start to end and some battles become long and tedious. The narrative just isn't that interesting and by the final boss I was just happy for it to be over.
Some games hold up really well through time, others, like this one should stay in the past through rose tinted glasses.
+ The idea is still great.
- Terrible port.
- Unbalanced fights.
- Boring equipment and progression system.
- Too long for it's mechanics.
Let's get the big part out the way, this is a port of the PS2 version. It's a low effort port at absolute best. The volume quality is so bad I played 90% of the game with my headphones on listening to music because it was sharp, crackly and fiddling with the settings did absolutely nothing.
The rest of the game is just way worse than I remember it. The battles are done using a match 3 type puzzle mode and I still love the idea but the computer is ridiculous constantly making perfect moves chaining things together to take multiple turns in a row. It's really frustrating yet despite that I would win almost every time. The balancing feels terrible.
Added to that is this is a pseudo RPG, you get level ups, equipment and skills. The level ups are so pointless for how little they effect your stats you may as well not bother, I was level 50 by the end of the game and did very little more damage than at level 1. Equipment is pretty much the same throughout the game, I just barely felt like I was making any real impact to my character.
The game is pretty long, like 30 hours? The problem is it's pretty much the same from start to end and some battles become long and tedious. The narrative just isn't that interesting and by the final boss I was just happy for it to be over.
Some games hold up really well through time, others, like this one should stay in the past through rose tinted glasses.
+ The idea is still great.
- Terrible port.
- Unbalanced fights.
- Boring equipment and progression system.
- Too long for it's mechanics.
Poorly randomized Bejeweled with too many filler fights. Did not live up to nostalgia and the final boss can go heck itself, no shame in cheating there.
Finally my two main interests combine; Bejeweled and murder.