Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlord - 6/10
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is an RPG with a puzzle-based combat system. Rather than two parties facing off for a duel, you both match gems and other pieces on a board to gain mana, experience, money and damage your opponent. This game has a lot of features, so this review is a brief introduction into the world of Etheria - there is a lot more that would take too long to cover.
In typical RPG fashion, you first create your character, selecting a profession (Druid, Warrior, Wizard or Knight), gender, portrait and a name. Your task is to rescue Etheria from a hoard of undead warriors and destroy the source. From there, you accept quests from your monarch, neighbouring rulers and other people you meet on your travels. You also gain companions to help you on your journey. These guys provide a slight boost in battle and sometimes give you additional quests, but otherwise don't have a huge impact on the game.
You gain money and experience by battling monsters, either on the journey between towns, or as the result of a quest you have accepted. Gaining a certain number of experience points gives you four skill points to spend on increasing your level in Air, Fire, Earth or Water mastery (basically how quickly you can gain that colour mana for spells), Battle (how much damage you do), Cunning (chance of going first in battle and increases the effect of the game pieces) and Morale (increase life points and chances of extra turns and wild cards in battle).
Money also allows you to improve your citadel. Improvements in your citadel allow you to capture enemies, train mounts, forge new items and lay capture other cities. When you capture enemies, depending on the type, you can research their spells for your own use, or train them as a mount, so you can travel faster. Some mounts also provide an extra spell in battle.
A quick note on researching spells - unlike normal battle where you have to defeat your opponent, researching spells requires you to clear a predefined layout from the board. If any pieces remain once you have run out of moves, you don't learn the spell.
So that was the brief intro to the game.
Okay, lets get the bad out of the way - this game cheats and, unusually for Nintendo platforms, is a bit unstable.
Occasionally the game degenerates into pixel fuzz, frequently redraws sluggishly and sometimes freezes with a black screen, requiring a restart.
On the cheating front, this game will make moves that don't seem the best option on screen, but result in a fantastic cascade once new pieces arrive on the board. I found regular breaks were required so I didn't hurl my DS across the room.
Now for the good.
The game is annoyingly addictive. The gem battles are fun, and the desire to conquer the entire world is enticing. Even at a high level some of the cities are a tough fight.
Figuring out the best combinations to prevent an opponent powering up is challenging and adds and extra dimension to the battle - trying to prevent a massive hit while still getting enough mana for your own attack.
Trying to capture all of the enemies you encounter is another challenge, and learning spells from them provides a welcome change to the regular jewel matching.
You can also spend a lot of time training mounts and working out whether you want a good attack mount, or a fast one.
This game definitely isn't for everyone, but if you like puzzle-action or bejewelled style play, this is worth the time.
Submitted by Amebr
28/08/2007
90
2
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