Puzzle Quest

I shouldn’t like Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

For one thing, it’s a role-playing game, and I tend not to like computerized versions of the genre. I find them boring: full of tedious dialog, boring storylines, random battles, and the inevitable “leveling up” times that require you to fight a lot of small battles just to get enough hit points to take on the next Big Bad.

For another, Puzzle Quest’s mechanic is novel for RPGs but trite in the larger universe: You fight each battle by playing Bejeweled, the ubiquitous puzzle game from PopCap, against your opponent. It’s a ridiculous conceit if you think about it, though no more so than other video game mechanics, I guess. As you clear colored gems off the board, you build up enough mana, or ingredients, to cast offensive and defensive spells. Clear a set of skulls, and you do direct damage to your opponent. Clear gold coins and you earn money. Clear a set of four and you get an extra turn. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

So why am I so addicted to an RPG that uses one of the most overexposed casual games as its sole means of battle? An equally addicted friend and I have chatted about this, and we can’t figure it out. I’ve done every little side quest. I’ve collected every possible companion. I’ve trained up my mount. I’ve forged items from runes I have found throughout the kingdom. I have, in short, opted to do all the things that I dislike about RPGs. Melissa has even quipped that she should buy me a d20. (As an aside, this game cost me $15 on XBox Live, and I’ve poured hours into it, giving it the best gameplay-to-price ratio in my collection.)

I think one key factor is that it transforms the solo game of Bejeweled into a two-person strategy game. You can’t clear any row you want: You have to consider how your opponent will be able to use the board. And the different strengths and weaknesses of the various monsters create different strategies. I favored green and red jewels in any fight against trolls, because the combination would let me drain the troll’s blue mana, which he can and does use constantly to regenerate health. I favored green gems in battles against elves just to prevent them from getting them, since they need very few to cast some nasty spells.

There are other facets of the game the make it appealing — the scant dialog you find is often humorous, and the music is at least good enough to not get tiring — but the heart of the game is the “strategic Bejeweled” component.

There was one thing about the game I didn’t like. By the time I got to the final boss, I had hit the top level for my character, I had forged some impressive items, and I had done virtually every side quest. But with him I was massively outclassed. Within minutes, he had obliterated me, and I had barely made a dent in his health. I expected an epic match, but this felt way out of balance with respect to the rest of the game. It felt disheartening, not challenging. On the other hand, I did beat him after a dozen or so attempts, so maybe it wasn’t as unbalanced as I thought. But I wonder if the casual player who doesn’t go to the lengths I did will find the final boss truly impossible. Perhaps the game adjusts his levels based on the player.

Maybe there’s a little RPG fan in me after all, just waiting for a game like Puzzle Quest to draw it out. I doubt I’ll be digging into Final Fantasy any time soon, but I am now one of the countless hordes waiting for Puzzle Quest’s forthcoming Plague Lord expansion.