One of my favorite games to play at work during my break is the PopCap game Bejeweled. I don’t know what it is about this game, but I have been a fan of playing it for many years now. There is something simply addicting about matching colored jewels over and over again. I have played this game hundreds of times and even purchased it for the Xbox 360 and I am still not tired of it yet. The funny thing is even though this game doesn’t have a story line it is still very addictive. The developers at Vicious Cycle decided that they wanted to combine the two most unlikely game genres together: RPG’s and Puzzle games.

The story for this game is setup in the world of Etheria, a mythical land that is overrun with evil. It is your job to help protect the kingdom of Bartonia from the undead invasion and seek out the source of where all of this evil is coming from. You want to do this because you feel that it is your need and desire to protect your countrymen from this evil. When you first start the game you can choose from four different classes for your character. There are the druids, knights, mages, and warriors. Which character class you choose will determine how easy it is to upgrade in various areas. For instance my knight has a high proficiency for battle so it was easier to update my stats in battle and hit points as opposed to the fire magic. You can also choose the gender of your character, even though it makes no difference if you are a female or male other than your onscreen avatar.

That's gotta hurt!

After the character creation is completed, you are thrust in the world and you are off to do errands for the Queen. Pretty soon you will hit your first battle and this is where the fun of this game begins. The battle screen is an 8x8 grid where you and your opponent face off Bejeweled style. On the game board you will find skulls, coins, stars, and different color mana representing fire, earth, air, and water. You must then match the color tiles together to get mana for your spells, stars to gain experience, coins to get money, or skulls that do instant damage to your enemy. If you match four or five tiles together you get an extra turn and what you matched is more potent than a three-tile match.

This game is extremely tactical because you want to prevent your enemy from getting the mana to do their spells, but you want to get mana to do yours as well as get the extra stuff on the field. You will always be looking for an opportunity to set yourself up or set up the computer for failure. The game gets extremely involving because you want to make sure that you stay alive while getting the necessary mana to perform a devastating spell on your enemy.

The graphics for Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords are done really well. During the cutscenes, when you are finding out more about your missions, the game takes on a very anime-inspired theme by the look of the characters. The overhead map is not extremely detailed but it gets the job that it needs to done. Even the battle screen is nicely done and has nice effects to them when you make a match.

Victory!

The music for this game is very similar to something you expect to hear out of a big-budget RPG game. The music is just very nice and gives the game even more oomph then it already has, especially when you are in battle or just out on the world map. The sound effects for this game are also well done and very crisp sounding. My only complaint is that there isn’t enough variety in the sound effects, but that can be easily overlooked.

This game also offers multiplayer battles for up to two players, each person having to own the game. You can use the same characters that you have been leveling up in single player mode. What is even better is that you can use any gold and experience that you obtain while playing multiplayer back in your single player game!

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is rated Everyone 10+ for suggestive themes.

Gameplay: 9.1
Taking the best features from Bejeweled and adding in the complexity of RPGs and you have a really great game idea on your hands that works really well once it is in your hands.

Graphics: 8.6
The graphics for Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords look really nice on the PlayStation Portable screen. Players will relish the very anime-inspired theme.

Sound: 8.7
The music for this game is really well done and gives the sense that you are playing a regular RPG game. The sound effects are also really well done; the only problem is that since most of the fighting is done in a Bejeweled-like board there is not as many sound effects as one might like to hear.

Difficulty: Medium
This game is pretty easy in the beginning, but the later levels will provide some serious challenges against the AI.

Concept: 8.6
I loved that the developer made a game that combines many of my favorite games into one, and it is a game that is actually fun!

Multiplayer N/A
At the time of this review I was unable to test out the multiplayer portion of this game.

Overall: 8.8
I am really glad that some developers decided to branch out and try to combine various genres that people would normally not think of combing. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a great game that will offer hours of playtime. You will not want to let this game out of your hands because it is extremely addicting for anyone who gets their hands on it.