Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

2025-01-20
The year is 2007. Game developers are putting RPG mechanics in everything. Scouring the Earth one of them finds Bejeweled cowering under a rock. "You're next" the game developer says dragging it screaming into the Game Dev Dungeon. And after some sort of sacrilegious act Puzzle Quest is born.

On paper it's a great idea. Match 3 games make me want a lobotomy but I love Leveling Up so it was the perfect lure for 16 year old me to pick up on my PSP. And initially it's pretty cool. You have different classes which consume different colors of gems to use as your resources to cast your various abilities. And abilities augment how you blow up all the gems and ultimately how you plink-plonk your opponent's health bar to win. But while the actual skills/abilities side of the RPG is fine and dandy, the assorted accoutrement around the puzzlin' is pretty garbo. A terrifically uninspired story, tons of fetch quests, and repeated battles against the same enemies over and over.

And as a result, maybe 5 or 10 hours in, the allure of the extra gubbins became rote and I was left with a Match 3 game. I hate Match 3 games.