The gameplay is very good but you can tell a lot of progress has been made with the newer games. The first one has a life system. You start with 3-4 and earn 1 with every 50k you earn in the story. You can quit and continue later whenever you feel like it. There are around 25-35 puzzles. You start with the easiest difficulty. When you complete the puzzles, the story mode keeps your score and lives but resets the story mode with a higher difficulty level. There appear to be around 5 difficulty levels but you can’t select which to start with. I’ve done the first difficulty level and tried the first puzzle of the second difficulty level. There are already obstacles that are new. It seems like a clever way of dealing with the story mode. I would still have preferred a traditional save system because I can imagine the frustration of losing all your lives. The retry option was also weird. I pressed retry before losing, did the puzzle and I only got the choice to either retry again or go to the main menu. When I went to the main menu and continued with the story, I had to do the same puzzle again before continuing. There is a story btw but it’s really nothing to write home about. You get a text after completing a puzzle. It’s not like JQ4 and 5 where it’s more personal, involves characters and the story being about them. Here the devs tried to make the story about the jewels, the reason you’re playing puzzles and awakening statues in temples. It really felt like an excuse of a story. Honestly it feels like I’ve just scratched the surface even though I did complete the story mode once. I love the pure gameplay and look forward to the new gameplay elements they add to the higher difficulty modes but I have to leave it here for now. I still have 6 other JQ games to go through. I might come back to this once I’m done with the rest. JQ1 is a good start with the series and worth checking out if you’re a huge fan and are curious to see how it all started.