Puzzle Quest - The Finale

And so it ends. Well, kinda, I'm struggling to beat the final boss but by the time next week rolls on that'll be a different story. I'm bloody stubborn. So, what's left to say?

Well...

Puzzle Quest isn't a terrible game by any means, in fact it's pretty good, but it should not be the length of an actual RPG. You'll see at the bottom of the page just how long it took to complete the game, and I'm pretty sure I may have missed a quest or two (mostly ones that required backtracking across the map). For first time players hoping to find everything you're closing in on around 40 hours. Imagine playing Bejewelled for 40 hours, and you've pretty much got Puzzle Quest. The game does have depth and it really does work as an RPG, it's easy to see why the game got popular, but for me personally I would have liked it to have ended a bit sooner. The final boss is a bit of an RPG trope... the big hard boss that requires luck more than anything to beat (at least in my experience. Screw that guy).

About half-way through the game I had to mute the sound and music. Not because the soundtrack is horrible but because their just isn't enough songs to last a 40 hour game. It does get a bit grating to hear the same songs over and over again. And sure, you may think "but all RPGs have battle songs you hear all the time!" and yeah you'd be right, but they usually get broken up by lots of different songs as you progress through the game. From what I heard, there was only one "map" music and that was it.

So, would I recommend this game? Maybe, if you want something you can just pick up and play, no one is going to play this for the story which is ignorable. It's pretty cheap, £5.99 on Steam, and you'll definitely get your moneys worth. 

Next Time...

I think one of the reasons I wasn't a fan of the length of the game was because I had expected it to be shorter, hence why I started it as a side-game with Vice City Stories, and now Super Mario 64. From now on I'll need to have a better clue on how long a game is before classing it as a "secondary" game. Speaking of, the next "Secondary" game on the list is Mario Kart Wii. This will only be a three-parter; one on the gameplay, one on the steering wheel that came with it and the last overall review of it. That will start next week!

Puzzle Quest - Part 4 - Your Citadel

The Citadel

So, let's go back to the beginning. If we head to our original Kingdom (Bartonia) and click on it, we'll see the option to visit our Citadel. 

When you first visit here you can use your gold to improve it and add buildings that will help you learn new skills, improve stats and train mounts, among other things. The full list of buildings you can build are:

• Dungeon - By building this you can get the option to capture enemies you've beaten at least three times. I've already gone through capturing in an older update. Capturing certain enemies also allows you to have a 'mount', allowing you to traverse the map quicker as well as adding another spell to your repertoire.
• Mage Tower - (available after building the Dungeon) This allows you to learn spells off of your captured enemies.
• Stable - (available after building the Dungeon) This allows you to train your mounts.
• Forge - Building this gives us the option to make new items with the runes we have found. 
• Siege Workshop - (available after building the Forge) Allows us to capture cities that will earn us gold.
• Temple - The Temple allows us to increase our character's stats with our gold.
• Towers - Every city that we capture has a chance of "rebelling". Building the towers will decrease the chance of that happening by 50%.
• Vault - Increases the gold that we get from captured cities by 50%.
• Statues - Increases our Morale by 5 points.

Each one from the Dungeon to the Siege Workshop has it's own mini-game attached to it. I've already talked about capturing enemies for the Dungeon, so let's move on to...

Mage Tower

So, every enemy that you capture gives you one or two spells that you can learn. However, in order to learn it you must complete a mini-game. For this example let's learn....oh, I don't know...

Wake the Dead! Why not? It's a spell that changes two random Skulls into +5 Skulls. Useful, but I probably won't be using it at all once I learn it. Once you've selected the spell you wish to learn you get taken to this screen...

It's a simple case of matching enough symbols to fill the meters at the side. However you may notice the Scroll. Yeah, that's a new one for this mode. In order to get it you must get at least a 4-of-a-kind. In order to get rid of scrolls you have to either match three of them, or the easier way...

By using the +5 Skulls to blow it the hell up! The chances of being able to get 3 scrolls in the same place are pretty slim, though not so much on the harder spells since you could end up with a heap on them.

Once you complete a category, all the matching gems on the board will wipe themselves out. This pretty much always creates a chain reaction of three of more gems matching each other. However, I got something a little bit perfect when I was playing this...

Completing one caused a hell of a chain reaction and in one fell swoop I got two others complete at the same time. The last scroll was matched not long after and the result was...

Stable

Now we're going to train one of our mounts. I use the Griffon because it's faster than the rest. It's time to level it up to level 3. To do this is a rather simple mini-game...

FIFTEEN SECONDS? They must be mad, I hear you say in my head. Well, I wouldn't worry too much about that. All it really does it make you think "OH NO, I MUST HURRY!" but from what I can tell it pretty much resets itself after each move. Just don't panic and hit as many skulls as possible and it's a cakewalk. Maybe at higher levels it gets harder, but I'm not worried enough about my mount to train much more. 

Note: Got friends? They will help you in these fights also. In this fight I was aided by one that helped against flyers and one that has a 25% chance of dealing 20 damage at the start of the fight.

Forge

Certain places on the map give you the chance to "look for runes". These are harder battles against enemies, but once you win you get a rune. I used to do this a lot early on, but as soon as I hit Act 3 I sort of stopped. The runes are for making new items, but I've found that the items I get via quests are better anyway (some are so good I pretty much haven't changed by inventory since the start of Act 2). So, for this example let's just choose random runes. You have to choose three of them, each one has a different effect.

The better runes you choose, the harder it will be to complete. Though there is no punishment for losing apart from wasting your time, you can repeat it as much as you want until you win. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the first rune affects the Character's stats when worn, the second rune can increase the effectiveness of the item and the third rune helps you in battle. I could be wrong in saying though. However, this combination will give us...

A pretty damn good item actually. This is pretty much the same as learning a new spell, except instead of scrolls, you have to destroy Hammer & Anvils. There is a slight gimmick to the Hammer & Anvils though...

Destroying at least one will completely wipe the board. Unlike Scrolls, H&As are random just like any other gem, so in a way this is easier, though I think they're a rarer drop than the rest. The best way to destroy them is to set them up to be in the same row or column as a potential 4-of-a-kind, which will complete destroy the row (if it's vertical) or column (if it's horizontal). After finally getting all eight H&As we get our item!

(I would have put the Victory! screen here...but apparently I decided that it was unimportant...)

Siege Workshop

It's almost over, I swear! The last mini-game attached to the Citadel is the Siege Workshop. However, once we build it we have to go to the city we want to attack, click on it and choose "Siege!"...

If you are to attack other Kingdoms, be sure to have Khalkus as a companion, he'll give you a boost to your Battle skill. Citadels can be tricky to fight, but Enmouth is one of the starter cities, so it shouldn't offer too much of a challenge. After this the battle carries on as normal until you win or lose. If you win...

Excellent. However, gold at this point is only useful to me for one thing...

Temple

Okay, this is the last one I have to talk about! Gods help those who help themselves...but even Gods and Goddesses can be bribed with money (as anyone who has played Half-Minute Hero would know).

Pay gold and increase your skills. By this point you don't need to buy items (in fact, you NEVER do) and as you can see I have seriously neglected some of my skills. I also neglected to show you the look of my skills after I did this, but I'm sure it doesn't matter that much to you.

Phew, that was a long 'un, sorry about that. Luckily I'm pretty sure I'm approaching the end of the game, meaning that the next update will be the "Conclusion" update. Hooray!

Puzzle Quest - Gameplay Part 3 - Capturing/Misc

Capturing Enemies

Once you've earned enough gold you can go into your citadel and build a stable. What this does is allow you to capture any enemy you've defeated at least three times. Like so...

Here we have an Ogre ripe for capturing (though in this case it's not a random encounter and thus I can't remember if it counted as a kill or not). Now capturing is much different than your usual battles. You have to solve a puzzle. Every enemy type has a unique puzzle to it. Some are fairly simple, some are not. For example, here is the board for capturing Ogres...

The idea, as you've probably guessed, is to destroy all the gems with no leftovers. Those good at these kind of puzzles should be able to figure it out, but I'm not so I'm cheating and looking them up. Once you clear the board you've successfully captured the Ogre and you get a little message...

Like the message says, build a Mage's Tower in your citadel and you can learn "Thump!", which is a handy offensive spell. I will talk about the Citadel and everything you can do within next time, which should hopefully be the last time I need to talk about Puzzle Quest. 

One more thing about capturing though, you can capture certain enemies that you can use as 'Mounts'. They give you an extra spell to take into battle as well as allow you to travel the map quicker (sadly, it doesn't seem like you can just fly from place to place, even if my mount is a Griffon). Quite handy

Random Thoughts

I enjoy this game as a brief distraction. I basically skip through the actual "cutscenes" but the problem I'm having with it is that it's getting a bit too long. Granted, I'm doing most, if not all, the side-quests that I can. But the gameplay is started to get a bit samey, and right now the only enemies that give me trouble is the bosses. There's not much variety to music so I've resorted to muting it and just playing my own tunes over it and the map is starting to fill with random enemies. Once I had to fight four battles in a row trying to get to a destination. According to my Raptr, I've played 17 hours of Puzzle Quest in the past month. The game is getting to the length of an actual RPG, but it doesn't really have the variation or exploration of one.

I'm using Puzzle Quest as a 'secondary' game, so I'm not forcing myself to rush through 'Super Mario 64', but I'm quickly finding myself trying to rush through this instead. The sooner this ends the better, not because I hate it, but to prevent myself from hating it.

Oh well, back to Super Mario 64 for now... 

Puzzle Quest - Gameplay Part 2 - Battles

Song of the Day

Background 1 - Marc Durell

Battles

Warning: I go a bit mental with pictures in this update...

So, last time we talked at length about the World Map and a little bit about the character, but it's now time to see what the meat and potatoes of the game is like: battles.

Usually when taking a quest from a city you'll have to go somewhere and fight a monster. Quest places are signalled by sparklies. Go to the sparkly place and click on it, a little menu will pop up. One of the choices will enter you in a battle. You can tell because a little animation will play and something like this will pop up:

Before every fight you will always get a little description of the enemy you're about to face, usually by telling you the spells it can do as well as it's strengths. If it is a special enemy then it will have a second paragraph detailing what is unique about it. In this case, it's stronger to fight and it has an additional spell in 'Rend' (which can damage you for five damage without ending his turn). Press 'FIGHT!' and you get to the actual battle screen...

The order of battle is decided by our 'Cunning' rating, whoever has the most gets to go first. In this case the Troll gets to go first. Now to people who are new to Puzzle Quest might think this looks like Bejewelled, but don't be fooled...it IS Bejewelled, just wrapped up differently. Your aim is to get at least three gems in a row. Do so and you can collect the gems power. There are eight different types of gem:

Green Mana

Red Mana

Yellow Mana

Blue Mana

These will act as your MP in this game, collecting enough of these will allow you to use your spells. No mana, no spells. You'll probably end up spending most of your battle time collecting these.

Experience

Although most of your levelling up will be done by completing quests and finishing off enemies, you can earn additional EXP by collecting three or more of these.

Gold

Like all RPGs, you need to earn gold in order to buy upgraded equipment and the like. You can earn extra gold by collecting these, though I tend to only collect these if there is nothing else.

Wildcard

These can act like any of the coloured gems. It can also be used to get four/five in a row (more on that later) and it gives you a multiplier. See one of these and use them immediately.

Skulls

Collecting three or more of these and you will deal damage to your enemy. There is two kinds of skulls, this one that deals 1 damage, and a "glowing" skull that deals 5 points of damage and explodes all the gems surrounding it.

If you're good at Bejewelled, or just puzzle games in general, then you'll have no problems getting to grips with this game. However, there is a handy option for people with bad eyesight or just not very good:

If the game feels that you're struggling it will point out a match for you. This can be turned off in the options if you want. The only problem with it is that it doesn't always give you the best possible outcome, use it as a last resort if you can't see anything better.

It is possible to get four or even five in a row. Like this!

Getting these give you a bit more mana/coin/exp/damage while also giving you an extra turn to play with. Getting five in a row will also create a wildcard on the board, giving you a chance to earn mad mana with your extra turn.

So, now you know everything you need to know about battling...except the magic spells. Let's bring up the battle screen again:

Each spell costs a certain amount of mana, very rarely will it ever just be one type of mana either. You can carry six spells into battle that you've learned through levelling up and one spell from a captured enemy (in this case it's my mount, a Wolf...more on that in a future post). Since I'm a Warrior most of my spells deal in damage, for example 'Throw Axe' deals damage according to how many Skulls are in play, Cleave is the same but with Yellow gems, "Enrage" ups my 'Battle' skill etc. This Troll has two very annoying spells, Regeneration heals it by 4 points (but it doesn't end their turn) and Rend, which I mentioned before. 

I had intended to this battle to show off what would happen if I lost, considering I was struggling to beat it, however I managed to actually defeat it this time (the strategy? Hoard all the blue gems to prevent it from healing. "Wild Lore" also removes all the Yellow and Blue gems from the board). If you lose it doesn't really matter, you get whatever gold and experience you earned in the battle and you are kicked off to the map again, but you can try and try again until you succeed. There is no real penalty for losing a battle.

If you win however this pops up:

And when you finish a quest...

Now there is another battle mode, 'CAPTURE', but I feel this has gone on long enough. Next time I'll be wrapping up all the gameplay mechanics I've still to talk about. Until then, so long!

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.

Puzzle Quest - Introduction

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Developed By: Infinite Interactive

Published By: D3 Publisher

Year: 2007

Version We're Playing: PC via Steam

Puzzle Quest is an odd game. It mashes together two completely different genres; puzzle games and RPGs. The result, however, is a fantastic game...almost. I'm only a couple of hours in, but the story is so terrible I'm starting to think it's a parody, though if it is it's quite a subtle one. But the actual gameplay is enjoyable. If you've ever played bejewelled you'll know the basic game, you match three or more gems. Each gem has a different effect, I'll go into more depth about that in a later date. 

This one's from the Xbox version, but it gives you an idea on how it works.

The game was a surprise hit though I cannot find any figures for how many it sold probably because it was released on several consoles (PS2, PSP, PS3, 360, PC, MAC, Wii, DS, Mobiles and iPhones to be exact).  Critically the game was also a success, the PC version getting an average of 84 on Metacritic, and most of the other versions are around the same area. The game also had a spin-off, Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and a direct sequel in 2010, neither of which I own however. 

Unlike the current Vice City Stories, I will not be going into depth about each mission. Honestly the game's story is, by all accounts, pretty poor and the gameplay doesn't change much. Instead I'll basically be posting parts of a review of sorts as I move forward with the game. The first of which should come in the next couple of days.