Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Who would have thought that a combination of RPG sensibilities and mechanics wrapped around a Bejeweled-style puzzle game could not only work, but could be a critical darling released on just about every system imaginable? Not me, but that’s the case with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords from Australian-based developers Infinite Interactive. After debuting on DS and PSP in March 2007, the game’s positive critical reception and strong word-of-mouth led to it being popular enough to warrant releases on PC, Xbox Live, Wii, and now, the good ol’ PS2.

For those of you who haven’t played it yet, Puzzle Quest takes place in the land of Etheria (the game is ostensibly set in the Warlords universe, from the PC RPG series of same name, though the games share little beyond setting). The game world will be familiar to anyone who’s ever seen, read, or played any fantasy property ever — wizards, dwarves, elves, and ambulatory skeletons are all abundant. After choosing a character type, from knight, wizard, warrior, or druid, the player is dropped into a quest to free the land from the evil that has begun to take hold. Honestly, the storyline is pretty generic fantasy stuff, but it is relatively well-written and does provide a good incentive to keep playing — not that you’ll really need one.

Because what you’re going to be doing most of the time is playing an extremely addictive puzzle game. Anyone who’s ever played PopCap’s Bejeweled will know exactly what to expect, but for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, I’ll go over the basics. Your game board is an 8-by-8 grid, filled with seven different symbols; you take turns with your opponent, switching any two adjacent icons to try to make matches of three or more identical symbols in a row or column. While this by itself was fun and addicting, Puzzle Quest adds more depth and strategy to the mix. You see, each type of symbol represents a different resource for you to harvest — colored crystals grant magical power of varying elemental alignments, for instance. Other symbols include gold you can spend at shops between battles, experience that helps you level up, and skulls that allow you to attack your enemy. You’ve also got spells at you disposal, both offensive and defensive, that require the aforementioned elemental magic to use, but can turn the tide of the battle when used intelligently.

 
The battle screen shows not only the puzzle board, but also relevant information and statistics.

You’ve also got plenty of opportunities for depth and strategy outside of combat. Enemies come in many different varieties, and just like most RPGs, each type has their own strengths and weaknesses (rats can spread disease, for example, which drains your mana each turn), that require planning to compensate for. You can have six spells equipped at any given time, as well as four pieces of equipment (a weapon, a shield, a helmet, and a miscellaneous piece), allowing for tons of different combinations and strategies. Besides new equipment, you can use your acquired gold to make improvements to your citadel, with each addition offering new abilities (a stable, for instance, allows you to train a defeated enemy as a riding mount). Once your citadel is sufficiently large, you can siege nearby castles, conquering them and reaping the rewards, such as the citizenship’s tax money.

 
As your citadel grows in size, new options become available to you.

The PS2 version has some issues that aren’t present in other versions of Puzzle Quest. For starters, using the PS2 controller is far less user-friendly than the mouse-based control scheme of the PC version, or the touch-screen controls on DS. It’s still an easy game to play, but it is more troublesome to use the direction pad and buttons. The PS2 version also doesn’t fare well visually, even compared to, say, the PSP version. The game displays so much during the actual puzzle sequences that the puzzle grid itself feels small and cramped on screen. Also, while multiplayer is possible, this version lacks the online play present in most of the other versions, which severely limits the game’s replayability.

These are minor issues, though. Puzzle Quest remains one of the most innovative, most addicting games of the last year. Now that it’s available on the most common system in the world (at a budget price, no less), there’s simply no excuse to avoid it any longer. Clear your calendar first, though, because Puzzle Quest is a game that will draw you in quickly and won’t let go anytime soon.

Gameplay: 8.7
Taking the best features from the puzzle (simplicity of play, addictiveness) and RPG (depth, strategy, and storyline) genres, Puzzle Quest manages to make something quite unique and incredibly fun. While the controls in this PS2 version aren’t ideal, they’re certainly functional and don’t hurt the game’s playability.

Graphics: 6.8
While the fantasy artwork is pretty nice, a cramped screen during combat and blurry text make for a game that doesn’t look quite as good as some of its other versions. It’s far from a deal-breaker, but it could certainly look better.

Sound: 7.0
The fantasy music that plays throughout is effectively mood-setting, but also somewhat generic. Sound effects are minimal, but do add a visceral quality not often found in puzzle games.

Difficulty: Medium
While the game is enormously difficult immediately (due to a combination of a steep learning curve and the AI characters’ almost supernatural combination abilities), once you’ve got the hang of the game, it becomes challenging, but not overwhelmingly so.

Concept: 9.4
Infinite Interactive has come up with a formula that could very well become its own sub-genre: the puzzle/RPG. The two seemingly-disparate genres have been combined in such an intelligent and seamless way as to create something wholly unique and compelling.

Multiplayer: 7.5
Sure, it sucks that there’s no online play, but you can still face off against your buddies. Even better, your single-player character keeps whatever gold and experience you gain during multiplayer battles, so any multiplayer matches you fight can be considered leveling up for the storyline mode.

Overall: 8.7
While there may be superior versions of this game available on other systems, that fact in no way diminishes how great Puzzle Quest on PS2 is. If you haven’t tried it yet, you owe it to yourself to pick the game up — at a budget price, there’s really no reason not to.