I picked this game up for my DS the other day and can’t put it down (except to play Zelda). It’s great fun and is a good twist on both the RPG and puzzle genres. I liked it so much that I bought it on my 360 XBLA just to play it on the big screen with clearer visuals ( I have a hard time telling between green and yellow for some reason on the DS screen).
The only complaint I have is that the computer seems to get WAY more “lucky” than me when it comes to cascading combos from new gems dropping into play. I don’t know how many times the computer has gotten 3 or higher chains of skulls just dropping in “randomly”. I question the randomness of the computers gem drops but otherwise it’s a GREAT game and can be found cheap ( I got for $15).
Anyone else playing this thing? CAn we battle on the wifi?
Funny. I bought it weeks ago for my wife because she loved Bejewelled, but she never opened it up. Thirty minutes ago I finally cracked it open and started playing. I’ll let you know how I do…
Day 1: Hey, try this! lends game to friend
Day 2: “I bought it. You can have this copy back.”
Day 3: “This game is awesome!”
Day 4: (looking groggy) “I hate you so much.”
Day 12: (looks like he hasn’t slept in a week): “So. I beat Puzzle Quest.”
It’s great until you’re able to one-shot everything or use a stunlock rotation, then it’s kind of tedious. I’ve no idea how it goes if you don’t intentionally max/min until you break the game though.
The developer has said a dozen times that the AI doesn’t have any advantages over the player, other than it’s better at playing attention to what’s on the board. The game doesn’t spawn jewels specific to aid the AI etc. I didn’t believe it at first, but after a while, when you get better at spotting groups and adding another ply or two to your consideration, it seems that AI’s “luck” goes away, so he’s probably being honest.
Unfortunately, the DS version of Puzzle Quest is not able to utilize Wi-Fi. I know, it’s something you think they would have thought of immediately. If you’d like to play Puzzle Quest against people online, you can buy it for your PC through Steam for around $19.95. It lets you challenge other players.
I own it for both the DS and the PC. It gives me something to do, though I have to say I like the PC version better. I just won’t play against other people because I’m not one of those who will utilize stun-lock or other tactics like that while I know others will. Not my style to make it so easy that I get bored of it.
I bought the PC Puzzle Quest over Christmas. Having now pretty much done all I can with it, playing kind of intermittently, I have to say I really liked it precisely because it is, as Cubsfan said, a good mix between a puzzle game and a role playing game.
This has been my video game crack. It was the first game to successfully pull me away from Call of Duty 4, which I didn’t think would happen until Gears of War 2 came out.
Every session starts the same way. I hop on XBox Live, telling myself that I’ll only play one or two puzzles…then three hours later, I finally pull myself away.
In general, I like this trend, which consists as far as I know of Puzzle Quest, Bookworms Adventures and the upcoming sci-fi offshoot of Puzzle Quest: Galatrix. you have the hypnotic charm of a puzzle game combined with character building and optimization and enough of a story to give you the illusion that all this mindless nonesense is actually accomplishing something. I quickly bore of seeing how many points I can score in Bejewled before I’m rewarded with having to start over from scratch, but I’ll dive in again and again if there are suddenly victory conditions and you give me XP and gold at the end. They should tie more puzzle games to RPG mechanics. Mind you, I may regret having said this the way that I now regret wishing I could play these CRPGs online with other people.
Hm, I bought this at xmas to go with my new DS, but haven’t started it yet. It said you can play wireless, so I assumed Wifi. No? Sounds like I need to start playing it!
I have the Wii version, and yes, it’s addictive. I never thought I would be able to play what is essentially Bejeweled for hours, but damn, it just sucks you right in. I love learning new spells–the thrill of finally getting my first “Very Hard” spell was awesome. It must have taken me 30 tries.
I haven’t beaten it yet, but only because I’m taking a break from games at the moment.
I have Puzzle Quest for the Xbox360, and my wife and I play a game or two against each other pretty much every night. Plus, I’ve been doing the quest by myself. It’s a great game. Great mix of RPG and strategy game.
The DS has a slightly annoying bug where it starts with the same layout every time after switching it on for the first time. You can either just keeping playing because the gem drops are random anyway so you don’t stay with the starting layout for very long, or quit and restart the battle which will get you a random layout. It’s not that big a deal. There were some balancing changes done on versions that came after PSP and DS, but I’m not sure if they were applied to the PC version.
I think it’s the same for both, whether you buy it on Steam or via the box. When you get to the menu it has options to play against others via internet or LAN, so it probably doesn’t matter. I only brought up Steam because that’s how I got my copy, so sorry for that confusion.
I’ve played my DS version a bit, but it’s pretty disappointing compared to the PC demo - mainly because of the size, and how the skulls don’t stand out as well.
I’m playing the PC demo until my PC boxed game arrives. I can’t figure out how to get rid of the “helping arrows” in battle. I set it to No Tutorial, but that’s not it. Do the arrows stop after a certain level, or will they be nagging through the whole game?
I just Googled Bookworms Adventures and, man, if that thing came out for the PSP (or, alternatively, if I could fix the wifi on my laptop), I’d be in trouble.
I do agree with Palooka that Puzzle Quest gets a little too easy once you’re able to stunlock the enemy. Still, it was good fun while it lasted.