Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

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We challenge thee to a fight to the death! With coloured balls!

Words: Mark Green, NGamer UK

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Jan 8, 2008

If you missed it on DS, Puzzle Quest is a puzzle game and an RPG. You engage in takey-turney battles, casting spells, buying weapons and leveling up your mage or warrior or whatever, just like in a traditional RPG. But the ‘battles’ are competitive rounds of ball-matching puzzling in the vein of Bejeweled and Zoo Keeper.

It is, clearly, a very silly idea. And there’s something about the po-faced medieval trappings of Puzzle Quest that really gives us the giggles. But - honestly - it works. The puzzling’s great: you deal damage by linking up rows of skulls, and the balance of skill and luck - along with the massive combos you can rack up as the grid refills - makes it feel like a proper hard-fought scrap. More than that, the depth is astonishing. Linking up coloured balls builds power for spells; matching coins earns cash for ability-enhancing items; you can ‘fight’ to conquer cities then build workshops to research new items… there’s so much going on.

Sadly, though, the DS has spoiled us rotten. Like many a tile-sliding puzzler, Puzzle Quest was tailor-made for the double-screener’s press-and-drag stylus control. The Wii remote is miles better than a traditional joypad - but it’s fiddlier than DS. Plus, this version’s less ‘flip-closey-openey’, if you get our meaning. PQ’s later battles are long, hard, tactical slogs, and we need DS’s power to stop now and come back later with a simple lid-snap. We’ve tried folding our TV in half but it just doesn’t work.