Puzzle Quest DS

The first game that I played over the break I want to talk about is Puzzle Quest for the DS. This is a random game I got for Meghan because I had heard it was really good, even though I didn't know much about it. Since I got her super addicted to Nintendogs for her birthday, I decided I had to try and live up to that with another addictive DS game.

Puzzle Quest is basically a mixture between a simple RPG you might find on a cell phone nowadays and a really addictive flash game. More specifically, this is an RPG where you fight battles by playing a Bejeweled-esque game against an opponent. Matching like-colored orbs gains you Mana of that color, which you then use for your spells, which have various effects including directly doing damage to your opponent, or blowing up certain parts of the board. The game board also includes tiles containing gold, extra experience, and skulls. The matching skulls does damage to your opponent. The strategy in these fights comes from knowing the moves your opponents can do (trying to mana screw them), matching more than 3 like pieces to create chain combos, and not setting up your opponent for moves that will kill you. The battles are quite fun, and definitely addictive. The same simple, addictive quality of the flash games remains true here, and it makes the game quite compelling.

The RPG elements are rather simple. The overworld and story reminds me of something like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and other strategy RPGs. The story and writing are passable, and you have a generic world map where you make your way to different landmarks to fight a battle. The leveling up is simple. You can put points into each of your mana types, and also increase your Battle, Cunning, and Morale skills, which have various passive bonuses, like increasing health and amount of damage done from skulls. Also, there are 4 different class types in the game, each with their own set of spells, so it makes for a slight variation on the battles if you decide to play through again. There are also other things to do in the world, such as create weapons from runes found in the world (guarded by hard to kill Runekeepers, obviously), capture enemies to learn new spells, and siege cities. Even the capturing and spell research has you playing a variation on the Bejeweled mini-game in order to be successful.

Overall, this is a really good game, and I recommend it to anyone with a DS (if you can find it). It is a great combination of traditional RPG elements and simple, fun browser gaming. While it is not the most deep game, it is certainly one of the best games when you are on the go.