Notes on Puzzle Quest

I'm totally addicted to Puzzle Quest.  I have a lot of trouble resisting the urge to pick up the DS and play another session.  I ask myself why that is.  "I could be playing God of War II right now," I say to myself.  "It's really just Bejewelled.  Why am I playing Bejewelled?" I ask myself.  "The production values aren't even as high as Bejewelled," I say.  "They traded scope for quality."  And yet I keep playing.

I don't like Bejewelled.  It doesn't engage me anywhere near the level of say, a Tetris or Minesweeper.  The beauty of Puzzle Quest is it adds a layer on top of Bejewelled that makes it interesting, illustrating Sid Meier's whole thing of small mechanics layered on top of small mechanics.  Because those jewels you collect become mana which then power spells that give you special abilities and/or do direct damage to your opponent, and because your opponent is taking turns on the same Match 3 board that you are, it suddenly becomes interesting.  Then, add to that the macro game, where you're deciding what spells and items to bring into a session, and the leveling up and economy of an RPG...it works!

Add to that the short session length - it's actually deceptive - a single session can take fifteen minutes or more if you're being careful - but I trick myself into thinking I can do another combat in just five minutes.  And then another.  And another.

Comments

[Skip]

I'd been the same way. But now, finally, a game has replaced Puzzle Quest from my DS. It's Etrian Odyssey. If, like me, you grew up on the 80s RPGs and started with Bards Tale and Wizardry and the like, you'll likely enjoy this.

It's an old-school dungeon crawl with cartoonish graphics, but the neat thing is you get to draw your map on the DS with the stylus. That's either going to sound great to you, or painful.

[Despayre]

That is hilarious Skip. I have also been addicted to puzzle quest and haven't seen anything coming close to matching it until I picked up Etrian Odyssey this weekend. It's a fantastic dungeon crawler, and I'm fairly sure that it had to be made by the same team that did the PS2 wizardry game since the menu scheme and gameflow are almost exactly the same.

I am starting to get over my PQ addiction now, but only because my level 38 wizard destroys anything that comes near him. In fact, that's one of my few complaints about the game, some abilities are just sickly overpowered. That and I really dislike that instead of forcing players to make valid moves, you can lose a turn and health just because you happened to not hit a gem perfectly with the stylus and end up making an invalid move, which just lets the CPU make that unbelievable 6 in a row 4 or 5 gem combo. It really is a brilliant game, but I am a fan of bejeweled games so I am a bit biased. :)

[Stuart Roch]

Good to hear more comments on Puzzle Quest. I was intrigued by the title after the guys over at Penny-Arcade seemed to develop an unhealty addiction to it. Going to try it out tonight for the first time.

[Jason Booth]

You should try Puzzle Pirates - it's has the same layered quality as Puzzle Quest, but with a much better framework and more varied experience. The only thing it lacks is the portability of working on a hand held - something I relish these days.

[Aaron]

I've tried Puzzle Pirates a few times, but I find the game isn't as "tight" as Puzzle Quest. I was quite addicted to the Puzzle Quest demo on PC, but I've yet to find the actual game on retail shelves Anywhere.. Actually, not being able to find the game anywhere for purchase has seriously degraded my interest in actually playing the game again.