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Worst Game Evar

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 20
Date: September 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This weekend, I played two games: Bioshock and Puzzle Quest. Bioshock was pretty good. Puzzle Quest was the "Worst Game Evar." Three handled trophy and all, this has to be, hands down, the dumbest idea I have ever encountered, implemented in a manner that can only charitably be characterized as ham-fisted, with so arbitrary and flimsy a primary play mechanic that any fun that this game threatens to have gets crushed into dust before it ever happens.

Perhaps I'm being a touch harsh, but I suspect that the game deserves it - however, before I proceed with the bashing, I feel compelled to provide the basic rundown. Puzzle Quest is in many ways a generic RPG - you are Generic Hero of Variable Type (Druid, Warrior, Knight, and Wizard in this game) who is entering into knighthood in the service of the Just and Good Queen who must Save the World from Evil. Pretty basic stuff for an RPG. The art is cartoonish and good at it. What character progression I saw was relatively fast and satisfying. So, decent in that regard.

What kills this game is the "Puzzle" part. Long story short, you basically have to play Bejeweled competitively against anybody and everybody with a grudge to determine who's got the bigger, well, jewels, I guess and move on to the next angry puzzle-phillic skeleton. As you eliminate jewels from the table, various effects, from adding mana to your pool to dealing damage to your enemy to granting experience and cash happen, based on the gems you pull out. Strange concept, but interesting on its face, you might think. Here's the problem, though. There's a REASON Bejeweled was never a competitive game, and certainly not on the same board - puzzle games are hard because random stuff that gets pumped into the board make it hard to achieve your goal. RPGs are hard because your opponent is beefy and strong. This game is hard in both ways, and abusively so at that.

All the way from the beginning of the game to where I quit in frustration to prevent myself from unleashing a barrage of profanity that likely would have blanched my relatives' features, I had to deal with the game essentially arbitrarily deciding that I lose. That's a problem. You can play this game with a perfect, ideal strategy and the computer will STILL rip off a 10-hit combination out of nowhere, based entirely on the pieces filtering down from the random ether above the board that you cannot peek into, and you WILL lose. Period.

But, I hear you thinking, you can do this too, right? So it's, you know, fair, and junk? Well - yes and no. Technically, it should be possible for you to do this. However, in some experimentation that I did, I lagged far behind the internal computer in random crud that I ended up cheesing at him versus random crud that he cheesed at me. It was something like a three to one advantage for the machine. If that ratio were TOTALLY REVERSED, this would still be a broken, practically unplayable game. The reason is pure, basic game design - there's an infinite number of the computer, but only one of the player, so when the computer starts doing cheap things to the player that cause him to lose, that has a much, much greater effect than when the player does something cheap that causes Random Spider #7 to prematurely die.

To call this game infuriating doesn't even begin to describe the experience. I can't say for sure whether the AI was cheating or not, but it most certainly was frequently getting the better of me, and I'm not really a slouch with RPGs and puzzlers. The spells and effects added to the game are theoretically counterbalancing effects, but they're far too little to save this game. ANY game that unintentionally arouses the sort of red fury that leads men to beat each other to death in alleys with pool cues has some serious deficiencies. This game has that in spades.

The glitches are just the extra cheese and bacon on this hamburger. Not only is the game broken in the theoretical sense, but apparently it is also broken in the literal sense. I didn't encounter any of the issues here listed while I played, but my experience was mercifully brief.

Bottom line on Puzzle Quest - this game is EASILY in the running for my personal list of worst games ever implemented, not because you can drive up walls without so much as slowing down and fall through bridges, but because it is a terribly implemented interpretation of what might otherwise have been a good mechanic. This is the kind of game that makes all games look worse than bad or mediocre, the kind of game that drives children and adults away from the pastime, and the kind of game that gamers should NOT tolerate, under any circumstances. I wouldn't recommend that anybody buy this piece of software, and that everybody regard it with raised eyebrows and dubious expressions if offered it as a gift.

puzzle quest not as good as it sounds

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: April 20, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I wanted to surprise my son (15) for Easter so I didn't ask him for the name of a new game. This was in the 2007 list of best games and sounded good. However, upon loading it, the writing is very tiny, even for his eyes, and the game not very challenging. He played it about four times and now is back using old games he had.

Challengingly bland...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: August 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

fun?! ZERO is what I should be allowed to give this!

Since I can't properly rate this, I'll have to rate it here in the commentary.

How much fun is this game?.......... ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO
How do you rate this game overall? ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO

How I can count the ways on how freakin' awful this game really is. Maybe for the puzzle twitch junkie this will get their buzz on. But for me, it's so bad I can't describe the hate I have for this turd.

Great game with major flaws

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: July 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I'm a casual gamer who loves games but doesn't want them to be so difficult that they cause stress. So there's nothing I hate worse than investing long hours in a game, only to find that I can't beat the final boss no matter how hard I try. And this is one of those games. I agree with every positive comment that any other reviewer has made; this game is great fun. But now I'm up against a final boss that somehow gets to take five or more turns almost every round, and who blocks most magic. Oh, and my experience is at the 50 level cap, so I can't do anything to improve my stats without raising tons of money. And the side quests for creating better items and spells are too frustrating to bother with. So I'm basically going to have to give up on the game at the very end, because it's a better alternative to throwing my PSP against the wall in anger. I would really like to wring some game developers' necks for assuming that all gamers are hard-core strategists; I just want one RPG that I can beat without breaking a sweat.

I've enjoyed Puzzle Quest enormously, more than any game in recent memory, but without the satisfaction of playing it through to the end, it still almost feels like a waste of time.

A LOT of promise..... with no return

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I first heard of this game from my younger brother who enjoyed the game imensly, so it seemed when I talked to him. So I picked it up for him as I owed him some money. Then as a good brother i had to open it and play it. Well I didn't love the game strait away, and as I played it became apparent more and more as to why. Some of the fights are over before hey start. You may not even get one hit off depending on your abiliies that are chosen as you level up. Then the music, along with the game play get's old and repetitive. You move around a screen that you can see enemys on but can't avoid, then play a puzzle game to beat them. Then you cap out at a whopping level 50 (wait I thought that this was a role-playing game????) Why can I not keep advancing my levels? The A.I. when playing against them seems too lucky, as i have barely only gotton a hit or two off of the some enemies. There is no originality in the puzzle aspect og the game, as with no different games. I mean that you could easily have different types of games when capturing an enemy, or making a rune item. But instead you play a different, or similair version of the same game. (There is very little difference should you attempt to distinguish them) Also worth a note is that it has glitches, NONE of the secondary people in your group do what they are supposed to do, as well as the screen may freeze on you for no reason.

But that does not mean the game is without merrit, It has beautiful graphics, and a simple game play that won't confuse those that are slow at these types of games. The sound effects though limmited are nice, and not over done. Plus for the PSP you don't have a stylus, which for a portable game like this may cause its own problems.

So if you want an inovative sounding game, that will last you hours, than his is the game to get. BUT it is incomplete with glitches, and you could a similair gameplay on a flash game off the internet.

NO NO NO

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off it is a good game but the glitches just like the DS version. Like someone said before you can't call you companions in to help well I could not use certain my spells. I gain 15 spells altogther and could only use a few. When I tried to select different spells my PSP FROZE AND SHUT OFF :(. This is why I give the game a 2, it a fun game but this glitch is killing me.

PSP Version Has a Bug

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 18 / 27
Date: April 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had to let unsuspecting people here know about a bug in the PSP version since none of the reviews here covered it.

Basically, a bug prevents your companions in the game from applying their unique bonuses? What does this mean? It means the game will be harder than intended by the designers and some wasted time if you spend it earning bonuses which cannot be used. Your mileage will vary if this is a big bug or not. So fr, no patches exist since the developer is downplaying it.

The bug does not exist in the DS version of the game.

Great game, but avoid the PSP version

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Puzzle Quest is a wonderful concept, setting match-3 casual gameplay in a basic Roleplaying Game framework to create a fresh new approach. But the PSP version is bug ridden, and has crashed on me many times. I had read online about the bug that the companions you find in the game don't actually help at all - that's something I could live with. But I had to give up playing one character because every time I tried to scroll through his spells the game crashed and the PSP shut down. I'm most of the way through with a second character and have only experienced two intermittent crashes, but that's inexcusable in a released title like this. I'm a professional game developer and would never release one of my own games with this many serious bugs.

Puzzle Quest : PSP

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game itself is fantastic. I now own a copy for both the PSP and DS. The PSP version's only flaw lies in the fact that your companions do not activate their abilities before appropriate battles. Other than that, the game is phenomenal

Surprising Depth

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off, anyone familiar with the Bejeweled types of games online will immediately grasp the game. All battles, puzzles, and challenges are handled by playing this puzzle type of game. Of course, with an RPG twist, gameplay can be changed/affected with spells that you amass as you gain levels and/or capture enemies.

The only knocks against this game are:

1. The combat mechanic can get old if you're not interested in that type of game.
2. Once you reach the level max of 50, most enemies pose little to no threat.
3. The forging mechanic leaves a bit to be desired since it won't explain what you're making until you commit to do so. Also, some of the items are comparable to ones you can buy or pick up early in the game, so even creating a Godlike weapon can be anti-climactic.

I intentionally got those out of the way so I could begin to sing the praises of Puzzle Quest. Like I said, it's an RPG wrapped around a puzzle game. However, I'm truly amazed at how they took a game that is known and reinvented it into a game that easily sucked 25+ hours of gameplay out of me.

First off, you get to choose between four different classes. Yes, they matter. There are seven "stats" available to each character. The four magics (Earth -green, Fire - red, Air - yellow, and Water - blue), Battle, Cunning, and Morale. Each class has preferred stats which cost less to upgrade. You're given only four points to spend in stats when you level up and the preferred stats cost 1 pt each while some cost up to 3 pts each.

Once you've decided on a class, you begin quests. There are a bunch of them. Delivery quests, kill quests, storyline progression, etc. Sidequests give you access to new members who might join, new items, new titles (with stat bonus benefits), etc.

Eventually, you'll earn enough money to build a citadel of your own. This allows you to capture enemies and use them as mounts or learn spells from them. It also allows you to forge items (once you begin finding runes), train mounts to higher levels, and buy stat bonuses. Yes, spend your gold on the stats you'd like to raise but are too costly to raise with your level bonuses.

I apologize if I'm not explaining everything, but it's an intentional choice. There's so much to do in this game! For those of you that really want to learn every spell, make every Godlike weapon, train your mounts to 20+, complete every quest, conquer every city (with siege warfare), and collect all the titles, it's going to take a while.

For me, the game was a great length. I chose to complete all the quests (including the side quests), dabble in the other areas of mount training, spell learning, and item creation, and finally finish off the main storyline once I maxed my character out at Level 50.

It's a great game that you can pick up, fight a battle or two and put back down. Or, as was more my case, look up to realize that it's 3am and that the game has eaten those hours easily. Of course, just one more quest won't hurt...

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