Puzzle Quest - Gameplay Part 1

Song of the Day

Background 3 - Marc Durell

Gameplay Part 1

So, how does a game that combines RPGs and Puzzle games work? Well, you start off on the world map. At the beginning of the game it looks like this...

So empty. However, if you see an exclamation mark then you can click on the town and be able to get quests. Not all quests are mandatory, but all of them have a reward of some sort. The more quests you do, the more of the map you unlock. Travelling to place-to-place is as simple as just clicking where you want to go. Occasionally enemies will spawn and you'll have to defeat them in order to get past. At towns you can also go to the shop to buy equipment and listen to rumours. There is also the citadel, but I'll get into that more later on when I've had more of a chance to play with it.

Most of the important quests have a little discussion that takes place before it, if you like reading incredible boring generic fantasy-talk that is. Luckily for the rest of us there is the option to skip it. 

Now, the above image was stolen from a Google search, and stealing is wrong! So, let's see what my character looks like...

As you can see, our map is a bit more filled in (there's more places past the mountains to the south). If you squint you can also see an ogre blocking a path. Now, if you look at our character you'll notice that he is a Warrior. There are four professions your character can be; Warrior, Druid, Knight and Wizard. Each class changes what spells you can learn. Now we're a Warrior, our main concern is dealing damage and our spells reflect that. But more on that later. If we click the character box there we get taken to this...

Here we can see our hero's stats (I'll go into more detail when we get to the battle side of the gameplay), how many battles he's had and how many of those are victories. Each one of those tabs corresponds to another menu, this one is for our items. We can have four items equipped at any point; a headgear, clothing, a weapon and a miscellaneous item. Each item gives off different effects, for example the Lysean Crown boosts your Morale by +5, while the Mirror Armor will deal one damage to your enemy whenever they deal more than two to you. Next up is the Spells menu...

As I mentioned, Spells differ between classes. A lot of our spells deal with inflicting damage. You can only choose 6 spells at a time (there's one more I've unlocked that you can't see). Levelling up is the basic way to learn new spells, but you can also get spells from monsters you've captured (more on that when I get to the citadel). I'll probably talk about what spell does what when I get to the battle section. The next tab is for...

Companions! Yes, certain quests will give us a companion. Both companion quests had a 'choice' where I could either side with the companion or take a reward from the "enemy". Usually it's worth just going for the companion. Unlike in most RPG's though, they don't help you defeat every enemy, but they will give you a boost against certain types. Syrus is an undead hunter, and will automatically inflict 10 damage to any undead enemy we meet. Serephine will add +10 to our battle stat whenever we fight against a "good" opponent, like a knight or what not. Not completely useless, especially when we amass a big group of them.

Each of the other tabs I will talk about later, as most of them are barely used at the moment (if at all). They are, in order: Captives, Mounts, Kingdom, Rumors, Victories (basically telling you your win/loss against each opponent) and Awards. I'll talk about each one when I come to them.

After all this, it's time to get into a battle...but I'll save that for next time.