Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
First off, Puzzle Quest is coming to Xbox Live Arcade later this year. That's a great move, and I think the game will be a huge hit.Second, I finished the DS version of Puzzle Quest last week, and I wanted to give you some final impressions of the full game.
To begin with, this is the best "puzzle-type" game I've ever played. Nothing else is even close, at least for me. And with a few changes to the upcoming PC and XBLA versions, I think it could go down as a classic.
Fundamentally, there's only one element in Puzzle Quest that I'd consider less than ideal: balance. On average difficulty, my character became quite overpowered by the last third of the game, which was fun at first, but then I realized that I wasn't losing battles anymore.
In the early game, there were wild swings in combat when the opponent would match gems or cast spells to give them extra turns. I thought it was a much more interesting representation of combat than most "real combat" games I'd played.
Those kinds of wild momentum swings were taken out of the game when my character became so powerful. So there was no aggravation or disbelief when my opponent took three or four turns in a row, which had been excruciating when we were more evenly matched.
The way the game is structured, that's a real problem, because some of the coolest play elements--capturing runes, crafting runes into powerful items, capturing enemies, training mounts--become superfluous. So the game is still extremely fun, but with better balance, all those RPG-type elements would become much, much more important, and the game would be even better.
It also seemed like the nature of the quests, after a while, ceased to have any real meaning, because there were very few choices involved. It's asking a lot to want a plot that branches in more places, but it would be a huge improvement.
The last element I'd like to see modified would be combat itself--not because it isn't good (it is), but it would be great to see different boards or different rules instead of the same field and rules every time. Your opponents do have access to different spells, which is one kind of variation, but it would be better still with more play fields and different sets of rules.
Those are some ambitious changes. I'm not sure how long they would take, or if they're even worth pursuing, but this game could really be a Hall of Fame entry with some more meat on its bones.
Should you play it in its current state? Hell, yes. It's a terrific game. The artwork is excellent, the music is outstanding, the game design is generally very strong, the puzzle element for combat is an excellent idea, and the designers clearly understand fun. It's also the perfect game to pick up and play for 15-20 minutes at a time, which makes it both fun and convenient.
Here's one more note: there's another game being developed by Infinite Interactive with somewhat similar game mechanics called Galactrix.
That's right--outer space.
You can see more about it here, and if these guys keep extending the game mechanics, I think the potential for these kinds of games is unlimited.
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