Extremely addicting puzzle adventure set in a fantasy world with swords and sorcery.

Story

You are a young hero living in the world of Etheria. Your father tells you about cultist activity in the vicinity and you set out to investigate this. Your investigations quickly lead to what the kingdom feared the most; undead creatures have become a common sight and they relentlessly attack people of the land. Finding that monsters are linked to the cultists, could it be that Lord Bane has new sinister plans in the making?
You must gather friends and allies to take a stand against this growing threat of the land. Many challenges and dangers await – the world outside the castle walls is filled with monsters and dark magic!

The Game

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords mixes fantasy roleplaying game elements into a ‘match three’ type puzzle game.
If you are unaware, in a ‘match three’ game you are presented a playing field with a grid holding various objects, in this case Mana Orbs of four different colors, Gold, Skulls and Stars. You take turns with your opponent to move one object at a time. Your aim is to get at least three of the same in a row, either vertically or horizontally. Each move must result in a match. When three or more of the same object type is aligned adjacently, they are considered matched and disappear. New randomized objects will then drop from the top of the screen to fill the empty spaces created. Thus the playing field constantly changes, and the more you manage to match on your turn, the better.
The battle is over when you or your opponent is out of hit points.

What makes this game special is that it features multiple character classes, abilities, spells, magical weapons, treasures and monsters. Your character’s abilities and equipment will influence the battle in various ways and you’ll be able to create your own battle strategies and character builds.

You can take your time and think about your next move. The game even helps you out in the beginning by suggesting a move that you could take. Occasionally, the play field ends up with no possible valid moves left. This is called a ‘Mana Drain’ and it wipes the play field clean, randomzies a new one and resets both combatant’s acculumlated mana.

Controls

This game is almost entirely played using the stylus. Out of combat you are presented with an overview map and the locations you can visit. By tapping on the map, your character moves. While in a town you tap the various options to navigate through dialogue, quest boards, item shops and inventory screens etc.
In combat, you tap or drag the Mana Orbs you want to move when it’s your turn. It’s very intuitive and easy to play like this. Thanks to the stylus, I think this game plays the best on the DS.

Content

This single-player campaign starts just like any other typical fantasy roleplaying game. You get to create a character, and choose a class. There are four classes available; Warrior, Knight, Druid and Wizard. They all play differently since they have their own unique abilities. Then you enter the world of Etheria, and a story sequence takes you through the first few character interactions. A tutorial shows you the basics of the game and pretty soon you’ll be free to start exploring the town, the quests and the rumors there.

There are around 80 main quests in the story and countless side quests. If you complete the main quest, you can still continue to do side quests. Fans who have played some of the previous Warlords titles might recognize some names and places, which is a nice touch.

Once you find a monster to battle, it’s time to put your character’s skills and your wits to the test, not to mention your luck. As this game has a lot of random variables, luck can easily make or break a battle for you.
The different object types can be described as follows:

• Matching Mana Orbs gives you mana of that corresponding color. Mana can be used to active skills and spells.
• Matching Skulls deals damage to your opponent. Skulls are very important to get, so they will typically be your first priority. Otherwise your opponent gets them.
• Matching Gold gives you gold. Gold is used to buy weapons, armor and upgrading the Citadel.
• Matching Stars gives you experience points. Experience points are needed to level up your character.

If you manage to match four or more object types, you are given a free extra turn. What’s more, the new objects that fill the play area may land in such a way that it gives you free matches, too. This way you can get chain combos and really get the upper hand in the battle.

Most opponents you will be battling will have their own set of skills and special abilities. Most of these you will learn about the hard way – like the thief stealing your money or the spiders poisoning you, making you lose hit points every turn. You will need to use the money you earn to buy weapons and armor to help your odds in these battles.

The AI in this game is very calculating – it sometimes seems to have foreknowledge of what objects will appear next, and occasionally making seemingly impossible chains of matches that quickly could eat away your hit points and chances to win! There’s actually discussion going on whether the AI cheats in this game and it certainly feels that it might. We’ve seen a countless battles where the AI instantly matches multiple Skulls on their first turn, causing huge damage before you have even had the chance to take a turn! Every now and then you’ll catch a lucky break too and revenge is sweet in this game.

When you gain enough experience points your character levels up, and gains access to new abilities or spells, based on how you spend your skill points. There’s 50 character levels to progress through. There is a host of different abilities and spells you can learn – healing, damage dealing, entangling (forcing your opponent to skip a turn) and so on. Some abilities affect the play field directly, and can for example clear an entire row, giving you all the Mana, Stars and Money in that row. These abilities can be very useful and can turn the tide of a battle.

As you progress in your quest, you will earn enough money to start upgrading your Citadel. This in turn means that you can gain access to even more features, like crafting unique items in the forge, learn spells from captured enemies, train mounts etc. As the campaign is huge you really will be busy for a long time with this game. We’re talking hundreds of game hours.
There’s also the chance that companions will offer to join in your quest, which adds another level of depth and replay value to an already massive puzzle game!

One could argue that the game is quite repetitive – but it will always have a unique dynamic to it because of the vast amount of variables that keep changing – your abilities, the different types of enemies, items, spells and so on.
Since randomness has such a large impact on the flow of a battle, it can feel cheap sometimes. But it also makes you want to try again when you fail, because next time you might have better luck.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords clearly has an emphasis revolving around these puzzle battles and rightly so. It’s a great concept, fun to play, easy to learn and very addicting. They have also done a good job at making the player feel quite okay even if they happen to lose a battle. You are still entitled to earn some experience and the money gained in the game, so no matter what your win/lose ratio is, you will still be making some kind of progress.

If you don’t fancy playing the story mode, there is a game mode called Instant Action, where you can select an opponent matching or close to your level and battle against it. This is preferred if you don’t have the time for epic stories and just want a quick match. The extra nice touch here is that your character does improve through these battles too, as you get to keep all the money and experience you earn. The same goes for the multiplayer mode!

Multiplayer

You can save two different characters on one DS card. To play multiplayer you need two copies of the game, and it only supports local games. Apart from these limitations the multiplayer mode is extremely addicting and really makes time fly.

Graphics

The graphics are generally very clear and lush – depicting the world of Etheria more glorious than ever before. The character and monster art is brilliant and everything just looks appealing, with that delightful anime fairy tale look. It should be said though, that despite the good graphics, it can be hard to follow the on-screen action when the AI makes its turns. It goes really quickly between making chain combos and using abilities. You really need to take your time to read up on the monster’s abilities to fully understand what is happening.
Another negative point that we noticed is that there are some minor frame rate drops sometimes. This generally occurs when there are lots of Mana Orbs and numbers fading in and out at the same time. While this doesn’t affect the gameplay in any way, it doesn’t look pretty all the time.

Sound

The musical score in this game is very appropriate – it’s bombastic, dark, mysterious and epic, and absolutely helps in giving this game its unique feel. I really enjoy the music here, as it has that charming dungeon synth sound of older fantasy games and the sound effects are quite good too. However, since you’ll be hearing the same music for hours on end, it will naturally become tiresome after a while.

Summary

Simply put; this is a massive game that has a very gratifying level of complexity and depth to it. One moment you will be puzzling the hell out of a monster, the next you will be browsing for new weapons at the local merchant in some town, later to be conversing with the baron of the land. There’s no other way to put it; if you like puzzle games like Bejeweled and fancy an epic fantasy story, or wish that you could increase your odds in a Bejeweled-like game through items and spells, then this is definitely for you.
I have had many exciting hours and lots of frustration with this game, and I know that I will have many more!

Developed By: 1st Playable Productions
Published By: D3 Publisher
Version Reviewed: Nintendo DS
Genre: Puzzle / Roleplaying Game
Players: 1-2 (Multi card)
Also Available On: PlayStation 2, Wii, Windows PC
Released: 2007-05-16
Website: https://d3go.com/