Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, the game that took all systems by storm after its initial PSP and DS release finally makes its way to the PS2. Many of you have probably already played this game on one of the other systems, but if you haven’t and you own a PS2 you should rush out and get this addictive genre-busting game.
Genre-busting is indeed the best way to describe this game. It connects the same basic gameplay as PopCap’s popular Bejeweled games and pours in some deep RPG gameplay in for good measure. The game itself is easy to play, but sometimes difficult to win or master. As you go through the story section of the game you will face off against a myriad of enemies. You and your opponent are have a number of hit points and you alternate turns to connect three or more of the same colored icons together. This in turn grows the amount of power you have in each color. As you increase your points in each color you can unleash magic to take away even more hit points or affect the game some other way that you learn as you increase in level.
You can only hold eight spells at a time, so once you get past that number of spells you have to pick and choose which ones you want to go into battle with. Each spell is easily explained by hitting the circle button on the spell button on-screen. There is a variety of spells available to you and the most popular ones will probably be ones that take away your opponent’s hit points directly or ones that allow you to make your opponent skip a turn.
The key to any battle is to bring your opponent’s hit points down to zero. You do this by putting together three or more skull icons which, depending on your battle skill level, will have a different amount of hit point loss to it. There are also skulls with a red circle around them that when put in the connection will increase the amount of hit points taken from your opponent. It is important to use the skulls to your advantage because if you miss a possible skull connection on your turn the computer will usually take advantage of it, but not always. The computer is more intent with setting up combinations where one connection cascades into several, including ones that eliminate four or more gems and allow them to take another turn before you take your next turn.
The story is told through 2D cut scenes that are well written. There is no voiceover, but the text is easy to read and it is easy to understand what is going on. There is a linear progression to the game and key quests that you must conquer, but there are a lot of side quests you can do in order to gain experience points and up your levels. After each level upgrade you get to choose how you want to spend your skill points. Each skill takes a certain amount of points to increase its level, so there is a bit of strategy involved depending on what type of character out of the four you picked at the beginning. If you are a wizard for example you will probably want to spend your skill points either building up your strengths or attempting to bring your weaknesses to an acceptable level.
If there is one minus to the PS2 version of the game it is that there is no online play like the 360 version. This means you can only play multiplayer in the same room and cannot look for challenges from around the world. This doesn’t take away from the vast amount of time you will spend by yourself just in the story mode. There is a lot of gameplay here that will just suck you in and not let go whether you win or lose a battle.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is not a hard game to recommend and you should really run out and get it if you have a PS2 and no other system. This game has been through a whirlwind of praise and this version is no different.
