craig189's Full Review: Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords for PSP
D3 Publishers score another direct hit with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. Gamers have come to expect great videogames from D3 and, yet again, they will not let you down. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a fun, fast-paced game incorporating challenging puzzles (what else?) and a medieval-type theme.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords starts with you choosing your character. You have the option of four types. You can be a Druid, Knight, Warrior or Wizard. Each character has its own strengths and weaknesses, so choose wisely. Personally, I chose the Wizard character for my first quest, and he turned out to be awesome.
After choosing your character, you are ready to play. You start your quest in your character’s home city of Bartonia, which is part of the world of Etheria. Much of the world map is not viewable until you unlock missions in new areas of the map. In your home city, you have access to your Citadel, the ability to get quests, access to local taverns for information and the shop to outfit your hero with new equipment and access their inventory. As you siege and conquer new cities, they will also become a Citadel. You receive your first quests from the Queen in Bartonia, and then spread out from there. When you view the cities on the map, you can tell if there are quests available by what type of symbol is on top of the city. A white flag means that the city is one of your Citadels. A red exclamation point means a main quest, a large green point means a side quest, a small green point means a quest that can be done multiple times and a grey point is for when there is a quest available, but you are not yet at the required level to do it.
Every quest is performed in the same way: on the battle grid. This is where the puzzles come in. The battle grid is an 8X8 grid that holds green, blue, red and yellow gems, skulls, +5 skulls, coins, stars and wildcards. Each colored gem represents Mana. Red is for fire, green for earth, blue for water and yellow for air. You battle your opponent on the grid by matching 3, 4 or 5 of the same color gems. Each time you match gems, it builds that color Mana level for your character. When you get to the required level of Mana, you can cast spells on your opponent. Each character in the battle has an amount of life points that are reduced when the opponent does damage. The easiest way to hit your opponent is to match the skulls and +5 skulls. When you do this, a lightning bolt hits your opponent and does a set amount of damage. Obviously, the +5 skulls do even more damage. You will achieve ultimate damage by using the skulls in combination with your spells. You also want to match the purple stars, as these increase your experience points. As your points climb, you can level up and receive new spells and life points. If you match the gold coins, you get money (duh!), which you can use to purchase equipment and such for your character while in a Citadel.
The enemies start off fairly easy, but grow harder and tougher to beat as you progress and level up. After you beat an opponent three times, you have the option of capturing them then next time you encounter them. This opportunity pits you against more challenging puzzles. If you solve the puzzle, you capture that opponent. Once you capture an opponent, you can learn spells from them. To learn their spells you have to.. well, you guessed it... complete more puzzles.
After beating some of your enemies, they will decide to join your quest as a Companion. When they do this, you gain a special skill from them, which varies from opponent to opponent. Virtually all Companions you acquire have their own agenda, and need help solving a quest of their own.
You will fight some very wicked enemies, from a common troll all the way up to the frost giants and the head bad guy, whose name I will not mention. Finding out who he is and what he has done is a huge part of the main quest, and I don’t want to spoil it. Trust me though; he is very tough, with over 340 life points. You will need all of your spells and tricks for this guy!
In addition to fighting enemies, you also have the option to siege cities. Be prepared though, as they are not easy to beat. They cast some wicked spells of their own and usually have a high amount of life points. Once you win the battle when seiging a city, the city becomes yours and you gain a Citadel there. This will come in handy as your quest goes on.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords combines awesome graphics, sweet sounds and a great story line with addicting puzzles. Throughout my quest, I could not make up my mind if the puzzles or the story line was my favorite part. When I solved the final quest, I decided the the puzzles are the best aspect, with the storyline coming in at a close second. So, if you are a puzzle junkie, a role playing addict or anywhere in between, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is the game for you.
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