The game's story and setting splits the difference between the Japanese and Tolkien styles of high fantasy, producing a world filled with knights, dwarves, a variety of elves, orcs, ogres, wizards, warriors, dungeons, dragons, and so on, but all portrayed with a distinctly anime art style. The main story concerns warring kingdoms, uneasy alliances, and of course, an ominous, creeping force of darkness that threatens to consume everything. As standard as the setup is, the writing in Puzzle Quest is better than you might expect, especially when it comes to defining the various characters that you'll fight with and against. There's a simple character creator at the start of the game that gives you four professions to choose from--druid, knight, warrior, and wizard--as well as a handful of different character portraits. I chose to try my luck as a Druid.

Druid - strong points [ defense / healing ]

Knight - strong points [ experience / stats ]

Warrior - strong points [ direct damage / effectiveness of the skulls on the battle grid ]

Wizard - strong points [ tuen mana into life / stats ]

At the start it seems like RPG business as usual. There's a nicely painted overworld map dotted with castles, villages, and enemy strongholds that you'll travel about, taking on quests and fighting the random monsters that block your path from one location to the next. You'll get new weapons, armor, equipment, and spells; new characters will join your party; and once you establish your own personal citadel, you'll be able to capture creatures and use them as mounts, craft new items out of special runes found out in the world, and eventually lay siege on opposing cities. What makes Puzzle Quest so interesting is how it uses a familiar puzzle game format to perform these actions. The gameplay in Puzzle Quest is most similar to Bejeweled. You're presented with an 8x8 grid of pieces that you can slide around one at a time. By lining up rows or columns of three or more identical pieces, those pieces will disappear, and a random assortment of new pieces will drop down from above to fill the gap.

If Puzzle Quest were just Bejeweled, it would probably get tedious quickly, but by applying several standard RPG combat conventions to the formula, it becomes something much more strategic. Standard, one-on-one combat is the most common game you'll play, and it's also the deepest. You and your opponent, each using the same board, will take turns moving pieces, trying to whittle down each other's reserve of hit points. Attacks are performed by lining up skull-shaped pieces, though you've also got several spells that you can use for both offensive and defensive purposes. The spells you'll start off with, as well as the spells you'll earn as you earn experience levels, are largely dictated by which profession you choose at the start of the game. Spells can require up to four different types of color-coded mana to use, and of course, you charge up your mana reserves by clearing out red, blue, yellow, and green pieces from the board. The back-and-forth dynamic demands that you think several steps ahead any time you move a piece, since you want to avoid setting up your opponent with favorable piece positions at the end of your turn. In addition to the mana and skull pieces, there are gold coin and purple experience-point pieces that can earn you extra postgame bonuses, as well as wild-card multipliers, which can make the pieces you clear out worth much more.

Setting up rows or columns of four or five pieces is of critical importance during combat, as it gives you an extra turn, and any time you can buy is useful, because even just a few hours into the game, the enemies you'll face in Puzzle Quest can be downright merciless. Their spells are potent, they have a lot of hit points, and they have a knack for setting up lengthy strings of attacks that leave you depleted before you even get a chance to retaliate. As easy as it is to get into Puzzle Quest, it can be damn frustrating too, and there are times when it seems as though the computer is stacking the odds in its own favor. Still, even when you lose a fight, you earn a small amount of coin and XP, and the only punishment is that you have to fight that enemy over again. The other activities you'll perform via puzzle proxy tend to be a little more evenhanded, and are just different enough to keep them interesting. Training a mount is similar to straight combat, except that your turns are time limited. When capturing enemies, you're presented with a carefully placed board that you have to clear completely, leaving no extra pieces behind. Learning new spells and crafting items introduces specific types of pieces that you'll need to clear to succeed.

When you gain enough XP to level, you're given points that you can distribute between seven character attributes. The air, earth, fire, and water masteries will determine how effective you are at using the different types of mana; battle determines how much damage you do when you clear skull pieces; cunning increases how much gold you'll earn; and morale increases your hit points. All these factors, along with your gear, your mount, your party members, and your spells, can have a profound effect on how Puzzle Quest plays, and it's what helps keep the game fresh. Even if you stick strictly to the main quest, ignoring the numerous side quests, the item crafting, the sieging of towns, or the numerous other activities you can get into, Puzzle Quest is truly epic in size. If you consider all of the content on offer in the single-player game, along with the inclusion of local, two-player multiplayer, there's easily 100 hours of gameplay to be had here.

The appeal of Puzzle Quest for fans of either RPGs or puzzle games is quite obvious, as it does a great job of scratching two distinctly different types of itches simultaneously. What's most remarkable about Puzzle Quest, though, is how a simple change of context turns some tired genre conventions that have been done to death into something that's suitable for just about anyone, regardless of your interest in the components.

Final Thoughts :

Puzzle Quest : Challenge of the Warlords is a Puzzle based game with RolePlaying Elements implemented into it's game structure. It's a hell of a lot of fun to play and highly addictive. What makes it addictive is it includes a storyline for your character ( hero ) to get involved with as well as you play against computer based opponents in the battle arena for gold, experience points and stats. What makes the game addictive is even if you lose a battle with a foe, you'll still be awarded a few gold and experience points. Sooner or later you will defeat your adversary as you'll have accumulated enough points, gold, stats to either buy new weapons and armor, skills and spells. Play well and your enemy will go down.

I found that when I lost ( and you will... lots ), it just made me wanted to play longer and with a bit more grit and determination to bring my enemy down. Once you have defeated a key character, the storyline continues on and brings you to your next quest. I recoomend playing the main quests as well as the side quests ( although you don't have to )

This title is worthy for the gamer library of anyone who owns a PSP. Don't have it? Get it!

I rate this game a perfect 10/10.