My Puzzle Quest campaign continues.
My Druid is now at level 30 with 139 victories out of 219 battles fought.
The battles take place on a 8×8 Battle Grid filled with icons. Gameplay involves matching icons to form 3 (or more) in a row either horizontally or vertically.
To win, you’ll have to reduce your opponent’s health to zero by matching skulls. Matching other types of icons will provide mana, experience or gold.
The colour of magic
There are four types of coloured icons representing the different types of mana and a wildcard icon can be matched with any of these. The mana is used for spells and these spells turn what is otherwise a simple match three game into an engrossing tactical battle.
The spells affect the Battle Grid, your character or your opponent. As a Druid, my character can cast spells to heal himself — an indispensable skill — and cause the opponent to miss his turn. Other useful spells allow my character to directly damage the opponent, create a shield to soak up damage or increase my mana reserves.
In a poor oversight, however, the spell list on the Hero Inventory screen doesn’t detail the mana requirements for each spell. This omission makes pre-battle planning harder than it ought to be because you can only take 6 spells into battle. Right now, my level 30 Druid has access to 22 spells and choosing 6 out of those 22 would be easier if I knew their requirements beforehand.
The peril of 4-in-a-rows
Another annoyance is the message which obscures part of the Battle Grid for a few seconds whenever you get a 4- or 5-in-a-row. This isn’t a problem in normal battles but it’s potentially fatal during time-limited battles like those necessary to train your mount.
My mount, a Spider which confers the highly useful Web spell, is now at level 15 and training it to level 16 requires battling a level 17 version of that Spider with each turn having a maximum of 3 seconds. (A failure to make a move within the stipulated time limit will result in a loss of health.)
That’s three entire seconds to scan a 8-by-8 grid for matches, frantically tap the direction buttons to move the cursor to the right spot and then hit the X button.
Now imagine trying to do all that while that damned 4-in-a-row message obscures part of the screen momentarily.
Bug
I was quite annoyed to read the PSP version shipped with several bugs — one of which rendered a game mechanic completely useless. Infinite Interactive doesn’t have a good track record with dealing with game bugs and despite Vicious Cycles’ assurance it was looking into ways to resolve the issue, I think it’s almost certain the bugs aren’t going to be patched.
If you have a choice of platforms, I would strongly recommend waiting for the XBox Live Arcade version that’s due out soon. The developers would have had time to look into the bugs afflicting the game on the other platforms and in the event they included brand-new bugs in the XBLA version, deploying a patch ought to be easier.
There are some who are waiting for a PC version but I have a feeling Microsoft isn’t going to allow a PC version until the XBLA version has had enough time to sell.
If you’re intrigued by the game, I’d strongly recommend checking out the PC demo.
