Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
Having had an account on the Neopets website since 2001, I was, not surprisingly, fairly excited to get my hands on my first real-world video game set in the Neopets universe. In short, my experience with the newest offering set in the magical world of Neopia wasn’t exactly what I had expected, but that is as much of a positive as it is a negative.
Based in three Neopian worlds: Shenkuu (think Japan or China), The Lost Desert (Egypt) and Mystery Island (Hawaii, or any other tropical island), the storyline of Neopets Puzzle Adventure follows your character (which is created through a simplistic process of naming, choosing a gender, species and color) on their journey through said trio or worlds on an impropmtu quest of sorts, to save not only the lands of Shenkuu, The Lost Desert and Mystery Island from mass destruction, but ultimately to save the whole of Neopia.
While that much of the storyline is fairly clear, its progression is downright disappointing. For those unfamiliar with the Neopets universe, the website often contains interactive, creative and engaging plots concerning wars between various Neopet species, the discovery of both lost and new worlds, the solving of ancient mysteries and so on. These stories are epic, grand, fulfilling, and every other positive adjective one can think of, normally spanning weeks or even months at a time, so I immediately assumed a game set in the universe of Neopets would contain a plot of the same caliber.
What I received instead was a rushed, jumbled grab-bag of random Neopet references including faeries, ancient molten demons, meteorites containing rock monsters that may or may not have fallen from the sky, flying air ships, desert tombs, and a cast of fairly unappealing characters (even though most are established characters that are presented in a more-appealing light on the game’s website).
From the word go, your character is placed in a world where virtually everyone within the whole of Shenkuu knows each other and in fact work with each other on the flying airship the Cyodrake’s Gaze. Upon your arrival, the city is attacked by creatures called rock monsters, causing you to take shelter on the Gaze and flee the city.
From there, any continuity remaining in the plot disappears and you will find yourself tracking down a kidnapped princess, freeing an “evil” faerie from her confines within a volcanic crater, defeating bandits who wish you ill-will and so on, all in the span of the three or so hours it takes you to complete the game.
Connecting all of these seemingly unrelated bits of the tale is the gameplay itself, which plays very much like the classic game of Reversi. As you travel around Neopia, you will encounter enemies, and must defeat them in this classic-puzzle-game-with-a-twist before being allowed to move on. In this way, the game is very similar to Puzzle Quest, in that combat itself is through puzzles and not battles, and in the fact that your chosen Neopet will travel around a simplistic picture of the Neopian landscape, tapping on “hot spots” in order to enter your next battle.
Once in a battle, you are assigned a set of blue tokens, while your opponent controls a red set. Gameplay is on an 8×8 grid, and tends to start with some sort of pattern of tokens already placed on the grid to push gameplay immediately forward. Your goal is to change every red token into a blue one, by surrounding all red tokens with your own, thereby flipping them, or turning them into blue ones. That is, if one line on the grid contained 6 red tokens with one blue token at the far right, you would want to complete the line with one last blue token on the left side, thereby turning all six red tokens in between to blue.
Likewise, you are allowed to turn tokens in both vertical and horizontal directions as well, adding an arguably infinite amount of strategy to the title, as you can and must look ahead to see where the best location for placing your token is, in the hopes of flipping the most tokens possible in the shortest amount of moves. Once the game board is full, the battle is over and a winner is declared based on who controls the most tokens at the time.
In all of those respects, the title retains the gameplay that has made Reversi so famous and loved over the years, but in an effort to make the gameplay unique, and more “Neopets friendly”, Petpets have been added to the mix, which give each player special powers.
At the beginning you can only equip one Petpet to your character at a time, but eventually may utilize up to five. These Petpets contain surprisingly awesome powers such as the Anubis (a small dog-like creature), which lets you convert any red token to blue, with said token causing chains back to any blue tokens you already have in the line, whether horizontal, diagonal or vertical.
Other Petpets offer variations on this same ability, such as being able to change two random tokens to blue, while even more Petpets grant you the ability to place multiple tokens at once, remove your enemy’s tokens from the board, or flip an entire row of tokens, whether you have a token in that line or not. And the abilities go on and on from there.
It’s these Petpet powers that helped me escape defeat on numerous occasions, and create a unique take on this traditional gameplay premise, making it far more entertaining than I had initially expected. Likewise, certain battles that take place on devastated and/or pillaged land will result in barriers being placed on the grid, adding even more variety, challenge, and strategy to the system.
To break the same pattern of “travel, battle, travel, battle”, various non-combat checkpoints, if you will, are added that play as Neopets themed versions of card matching, shape drawing and the block destroying game Collapse. While these additions are nice ways to break the monotony that might arise in long play sessions, they also seem rather forced and cheap, just like the game’s storyline.
However, if these games really do set your world ablaze, there is a convenient option to play any of the game’s modes in a free-play setting, outside of the story mode itself. There are also three difficulty levels to choose from for each, making the game playable by both children and adults.
Other extras include a multiplayer aspect that lets you customize battle against a friend in terms of which or how many Petpets can be included, the design of the game grid and so on, in addition to the code system implemented in the game that allows you to unlock codes (very much like Xbox 360 achievements) that can be redeemed on the Neopets website for great items like Neohome decorations, books, food, etc.
Throughout the entirety of the game, one major aspect does retain the Neopets aura, with that being the title’s graphics, which are presented in all of the bright colors and fantastical shapes one would expect from a game set in Neopia. Even though out-of-battle areas are presented mostly in 2D, the detail is retained by focusing in on one particular area, especially during the dialogue sequences, allowing the game to take on more of a realistic feel than it might otherwise.
Likewise, the fact that all dialogue is text-based is actually another positive. Not only is the vast majority of dialogue on the Neopets website also text-based, helping to link the two entities, but by being able to skip the multitude of text bubbles presented in the game by simply rapidly tapping on the touch screen, you are saving yourself from having to suffer through the game’s second-rate storyline.
All in all, Neopets Puzzle Adventure is one of those unique titles that is perfect for both veteran fans of the long-established Neopian universe, but also requires no previous experience with the website to be able to jump right in and play. And, in the end, even though the game’s shoddy storyline leaves much to be desired, the puzzle gameplay here is surprisingly satisfying, and keeps the title from being little more than a rental. In fact, it actually earns the game a recommendation from me, especially for those who are willing to look past its flaws.
Special thanks to Tina Casalino and Capcom for providing a copy of this title.