Earlier this year, Puzzle Quest for the DS was a huge addiction for our staff. A few months later, I can say I’m addicted all over again but now on Xbox Live.
For those not familiar with Puzzle Quest (no excuse, go download that demo already!), I’ll start from the beginning.
You play one of the available four classes – Druid, Wizard, Warrior and Knight – on a quest to save the land from waves of undead enemies. Your character has a set of spells, gains experience and levels up, and is also able to equip a few items and a weapon. Aside from the main quest that advances the story, there are plenty of side quests that reward you with experience, items and gold. Typical RPG mechanics, right?
But this isn’t called Puzzle Quest for nothing. Encounters with an enemy place you face-to-face with a puzzle field as your battlefield. The puzzles are made of seven tiles: four colored gems (yellow, green, red and blue, each representing a type of mana), skulls (direct attack), gold and purple stars (experience).
You and your opponent take turns making matches, so the puzzle part plays like Bejeweled and any other “match three” puzzle. You gain the effects of the mana gems as you clear them, and when you have enough, you can cast the spells on your list.
The first noticeable change, aside from the display (no top screen, so each character appears on opposing sides of the puzzle field), is the detail in the artwork. Puzzle Quest already had fantastic art, but now it really shows, and little details are much more visible. I mean, honestly, I thought the skulls were jellyfish for a while when playing on the DS… Now there’s no mistakes about it, they’re skulls. And on a 50-inch TV, they are really big skulls.
You can also create four characters now, so you are able to experience all of the classes (the DS version was limited to two character slots only).
The gameplay is a lot faster as well. It was very strange to go back to the DS version and noticing how sluggish it feels in comparison. Sometimes you’re under attack and the enemy keeps making chains and more chains, casting one spell after the other, and you wonder what the hell just happened when you notice you are down 60 HP in a matter of seconds.
Everything else remains untouched, and why mess with something that was so great in the first place anyway? You still have your Citadel where you can forge items, research spells, improve your skills and train your mounts. The world map is the same, and it’s a fairly big place when you have to run errands from one end to the other. The random fights can get a bit tiresome when you have to walk a long way to your destination, but when your mount is high enough, it can help you avoid many encounters.
You have a good bunch of party members, each with a special ability to help you in certain battles. But if you do all the quests and get them all, you will have to leave one out – no room for everyone.
The last fight is indeed epic. It took me forever to beat Lord Bane, even though I was level 50 (but didn’t have my stats maxed). I was also used to my Knight on the DS and this time played a Druid, which was a big challenge against magic-resistant creatures (damn those Arboleths!).
As every other XBLA title, there are quite a few achievements to get, and the game makes your work for them too. Like forging that Godlike item… first you need the right Runes, which means you have to go out hunting for them and defeat the respective Runekeepers. Then you have to mix and match until you find the right combination, and then you need to get all those Hammer & Anvils in one sitting without running out of moves.
It wouldn’t be Xbox Live without online multiplayer and leaderboards, which greatly adds to replayability. Gameplay is a lot more unpredictable when you are playing against someone else rather than an AI opponent.
What most impressed me was the music. I mean, it was already good on the DS, but there were only a couple of tracks. They have been “remastered” and many others have been added, everything from short little happy tunes to longer epic chants. It adds so much more appeal to those long puzzle battle sessions.
D3P did an outstanding job with Puzzle Quest, and as far as I know, this is a game that should be published on every available platform, just so that puzzle fans and RPG enthusiasts won’t be missing out. I’m glad to have played it through once again, and I’m sure I’ll still be going back to it on occasion. It’s just that good.
Special thanks to Megan Korns and D3P for providing the full version of this title.