Puzzle Kingdoms – WII – Review

Australian developer Infinite Interactive struck
conceptual gold with 2007’s Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. By fusing
the gameplay of match-3 style puzzle games with that of traditional RPGs, they
created a fun and addictive formula that they’ve been mining ever since. Less
than a year after their breakthrough success, they put out Neopets Puzzle
Adventure, adapting a similar game system to the characters from the popular
kid’s website. This was followed almost immediately by Puzzle Quest Galactrix,
which set the action in deep space. Now they bring us Puzzle Kingdoms, which
returns the series to its fantasy roots.

Like the original Puzzle Quest, Puzzle Kingdoms is set
in the somewhat obscure Warlords universe, created as the setting for a series
of turn-based strategy titles released on PC between 1989 and 2003. Suffice it
to say, it’s your average fantasy world, with wizards, elves, and goblins.
Character creation is as simple as choosing a gender and a name, after which
you’re dropped into a pretty nasty situation. It seems that the land has been
cursed with a terrible drought and famine, and desperation has plunged formerly
peaceful villages into anarchy. Your character finds a magical artifact that
seems to remove the curse, and sets out with it to restore the land to
happiness.

Character creation couldn’t be simpler. You can’t even
choose between multiple character portraits.

Honestly, the plot’s pretty thin and cliché-ridden.
It’s mostly there as an excuse to set up the central concept of the game: to
conquer progressively larger and more difficult villages, towns, and kingdoms.
As in the previous games, combat is settled through a turn-based puzzle game.
Like they did in Galactrix, the developers have made some fundamental changes to
the rules of puzzle mode. Instead of swapping block’s positions to form at least
three gems into a straight line, here you’ll be sliding entire rows of gems up,
down, left, or right to make matches of any shape (as long as you have three or
more pieces and each piece shares at least one side with another piece of the
same color, it counts). Additionally, the game no longer penalizes you for
performing a move that doesn’t make a match, and you can’t earn extra turns with
especially large matches. While these might seem like superficial changes, they
pretty drastically alter the kinds of tactics and play techniques you’ll have to
use. Puzzle matches also move at a much faster pace than in the previous games.

The puzzle game looks pretty similar, but some changes in
the rules make for very different gameplay.

Your character, as the Warlord, is the strategist
behind the combat, but the actual fighting is done by your hero and his troops.
Your choice of hero influences many things, like elemental strengths and
weaknesses and basic attack and strength statistics, but your choice of troops
is more crucial. Each troop type (Peasant, Crossbowman, and Knight are a few
examples) has their own attack type, damage, and health. If a unit is killed
their attack can no longer be used, and if all your troops are killed then
you’ve lost the battle.

Troops act much the way spells did in Puzzle Quest – by
matching a certain number of a certain block type in the puzzle game, you can
activate their attack, dealing damage to your enemy’s troops. There’s an added
layer of strategy here – if you wait until multiple troops are ready to attack
each gets a damage bonus, so you can save all your attacks for one big
offensive. Of course, ready and waiting troops can still be killed, so it’s up
to you to decide if the pay-off is worth the risk.

One crossbowman is ready to attack, but if he waits until
his comrades are ready too they’ll all get bonuses.

Like its predecessors, Puzzle Kingdoms has RPG-style
depth to go along with its puzzle mode’s addictive nature. By playing puzzle
mode with slightly altered rules (like a timed variant, or one where you must
clear the board of all pieces) you can do things like search dungeons for
treasure and spells, recruit new troop types at taverns, and more. These minigame variations are a nice change of pace every once in a while, but they
can get old fast when you’re forced to do them over and over again.

If I had to pinpoint Puzzle Kingdoms’ weakness, it
would be the production values. It’s obvious that this game didn’t quite have
the budget that Puzzle Quest or Galactrix did, and this affects several aspects
of the game. Most notably, the visuals are quite static and lackluster.
Environments and characters are represented by simple 2D artwork, with little to
no animation throughout. The art direction isn’t terrible (uninspired, maybe,
but not terrible) so it’s not painful to look at, but the graphics are pretty
bare-bones. The sub-standard multiplayer mode (a simple one-on-one fight, with
each player granted a random hero and set of troops) also seems limited by the
game’s budget. The one area of production that doesn’t feel constrained by a
lack of funds is the game’s soundtrack, which is lush, orchestral and epic.

The map screen is about as fancy as the game’s visuals get.

The bottom line is, if you have any interest
whatsoever in the concept of a puzzle/RPG hybrid, you’ve probably already played
one of Infinite Interactive’s previous games. This one’s pretty good, too. It’s
as fun and addictive as ever, and Puzzle Kingdoms’ speed of play gives it the
slight edge over Puzzle Quest in my book. Still, it’s substantially the same as
the previous games, so if you’re burnt out on the formula this one probably
won’t impress you.

Gameplay: 7.8
Match like-colored blocks to fuel your physical attacks and
magic spells. Like the Puzzle Quest games, the combination of puzzle and RPG
gameplay is deep and addictive, and the new puzzle rules keeps things fresh and
interesting.

Graphics: 6.3
The visuals are about as basic as they come. The 2D
characters and environments have little to no animation, though they’re all
drawn in a nice (if generic) fantasy style. The only real visual effects are in
the puzzle mode, but the overall visual presentation is lackluster.

Sound: 7.5
The soundtrack is full of beautiful orchestral tracks, with
an appropriate epic feel to the music. There’s very little voice-work in the
game (mostly just in the opening cinematic), but it’s reasonably well done. One
cool audio touch: when your troops deal or receive damage, their battle cries
are played from the Wii Remote’s speaker.

Difficulty: Medium
Each puzzle is randomly generated, so of course luck plays
a role. If you’re stuck, you can grind previously beaten areas for experience
points. The computer doesn’t seem to get ridiculously lucky as often as in
previous Puzzle Quest games, so it’s a little less frustrating.

Concept: 7.6
Infinite Interactive has proven time and again that RPGs
and puzzle games blend to form a potent combination. While it’s not as fresh as
it was a few years ago, it’s still a great mix that can easily suck you in.

Multiplayer: 6.5
Fighting against a buddy with a randomly chosen character
and set of troops is fun, but they could have done much more (not to mention,
the randomness leads to plenty of un-even match-ups). It feels like they ran out
of time, money, or both.

Overall: 7.3
Puzzle Kingdoms is awfully similar to its recently-released
predecessors, and the bargain-bin production values leave something to be
desired. Despite its shortcomings, though, it’s probably my favorite game
Infinite Interactive has released yet. If you’re up for another helping of
puzzle/RPG this soon after Galactrix, Puzzle Kingdoms delivers.