Puzzle Kingdoms

9/10

Fun gem matching game with different classes, abilities and monsters.

I'm a huge fan of the PSP Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords game. This game simply doesn't cut it. It looks like a cheap knockoff, rather than a successor.

The gameplay mechanics just aren't as much fun as in the original, production values are a lot lower. Moves feel too random in order to get a real sense of being able to set up a proper strategy.

Great game to relax with. Before you know it, hours gone! Like Bejewelled and Total War had a sick child, but a loved child. Or something.

I feel like this game in incomplete. It seems like it was designed to bring puzzle quest match 3 game play to a strategy game, but they got to the limit of their budget before they programmed the AI. So you just go through the map like in puzzle quest but with fewer RPG elements. The space puzzle quest is the best, I think. But they all overstay their welcome.

I own a couple of hundred games, but I always return to this one. Each time I play the game is a little different. It's the same game, but it's always a challenge

Great puzzler if you are a fan of Infinite Interactive's games. 17+ hours long campaign, hotseat multiplayer and a couple of other modes of play (quick battle and minigames) make this well worth your money.
It's not as long or as deep as Puzzle Quest, but what is here should satisfy any puzzle fan, and at a discount, it's a total steal.

The story is painfully bad, combat is simplistic, and there's almost no explanation on how to play.

But if you're looking for a match-3 that uses a bit more brain power than bejeweled, this is a good choice.

The game has broken AI that renders most of the strategy in the game entirely pointless. It is hard to recommend a game less than this.

Played this as a kid and will say the story and gameplay has not changed one bit. Love it and good mental game for when you have nothing else to do

I hate this game. The campaign option uses some variations on 'match 3' games to advance a basic plot (good you versus evil demons), but everything is very unpolished and unclear. For example, your 'heroes' get bonuses for 2 colors and penalties for 2 others when assigning points for relics and spells, BUT while the base points and color-bonus/penalty points show on the assignment screen, when you actually make the assignment, a different value is used!

Other gripes:
- heroes have two colors, but you only get to see one unless you go through a convoluted series of screens.
- while you are given a choice to play as male or female, the story always refers to you as a male.
- just one save per campaign, and lots of places where the game auto-saves -- which means if you aren't sure whether you want to do one thing or another, you won't be able to save, try one way, then go back and try the other. Nope. You can save at most any time, but if you want to try that other option, you pretty much have to start a new campaign.
- why, oh why does this game basically require you to pick a small set out of a large list of heroes to advance, and then make its point system tie varying priced gear to the hero rather than the kingdom? That would have fixed so many problems!
- the mechanics just suck.
- for the timed game, the clock keeps running while automatic matches are being made, but you can't keep playing the game, so you are just watching the animation while clicking on a control that will not respond.
- you get a limited number of points per conquered kingdom (which also have two colors) but any assigned hero will advance such that they become too strong for various assignments ... which would be fine if the game didn't stop you from doing anything else at all when you scroll through the kingdom list and happen upon the over-assigned situation. At that point, you have to HAVE to either remove your hero or change their equipment (which has different costs for each kingdom with any given set of gear because of the color-based point system).
- even if you have NOT changed gear, doing all the little tasks at the end of each round auto-equips new equipment on your current 'hero' so they become too expensive to use for its 'current' kingdom.
- the help system is not helpful. It is very brief and does not cover much of anything.
- the game re-uses character profiles, so at one point, I had a character as my Hero for one battle, switched for the next round, and found myself battling my *previous* Hero because...? the game makers were too lazy to make another character? The system is that buggy? I don't know.
- When I got to the end, and the game actually have the words, "The End", AFTER THAT, there were a couple little anti-climactic things to do (final Tavern/Dungeon games).
- the quick-battles (not in campaign mode) give you and your enemy random equipment instead of letting you choose, which -- combined with the one-save, no backsies in campaign mode -- makes the quick battles useless for training purposes.

I shouldn't complain that the AI is too 'smart' because I might just be a bad player, but ... I played on Average and found the 'Tavern' game to be mostly unplayable at the highest levels (the ones costing 100-800 gold were fine, but the 1500 gold one felt mean spirited for anyone wanting an average challenge).

Good game, I got it on a hell of a sale so not real sure if I would have paid 15$ for it but it is fun. Very unique game play multiple fronts to work on in game to make it through. You basically have to conquer the whole map and have different armies and heros you can equip differently with different soldiers to suit however you would like to be playing it. You having to conquer the whole map is in response to a malignant invasion that is farfetched at best but works for the game. 8/10 good game not perfect.

I was about to give Puzzle Kingdoms a negative vote: the battle screen is an interesting match-3 variant and the side puzzles are not bad, but there is no possible comparison with Puzzle Quest:

- The interface is atrocius. Its usability reminds me of cascading menus of early 1980's accounting software; it is utterly incomprehensible and some choices are, appropriately, puzzling: buttons that visually click but don't do anything because they are disabled, oversized "time left" texts covering the game board, higher-level timed puzzles made almost impossible by disabling moves while block animations are slowly playing... while the clock goes down!

- The influence of luck in battles is very high and the block entering from above are different from those depicted. Moreover, I believe the AI player cheats (as in Puzzle Quest), in the sense that it knows which blocks will enter from above.

- There is no strategy or tactic on the main board, none in war boards and only very little tactic in battle. The game is basically a corridor.

- Character progression is ludicrous: I think I was offered a grand total of two, maybe three, binary choices (e.g. add 1 point to attack or to defense?) in the whole game.

So why the positive vote?

- First, I played the game to the end: despite its many shortcomings, it has a sort of hypnotic "one more battle" effect.

- Second, try to consider the interface as a puzzle game in itself: when I finally discovered how to configure the hero and, over all, how to get more points [I don't want to spoil your fun] the game became almost playable, maybe even too easy.

- Third, I found the non-timed puzzles interesting and challenging.

So, definitely not a good design but a decent pastime.

I'm not the most avid match 3 gamer out there, but I appreciate that the concept can be made to be entertaining. Puzzle Quest 1 has a lot of interesting features and good music and art, but honestly I feel the battles last far too long and end up being boring to me or entirely based on luck, so I'm hoping some improvements have been made. Kingdoms has some big shoes to fill as a sequel to that game, but as I am a researcher of the Warlords franchise and Etherian universe in general, I took the plunge.

Lets start with the pros, what this game does right:
- The setting, as always with Warlords games, is interesting. There's definitely a feeling that the preestablished universe is helping to set the scene.
- The gameplay has gone back to more of an original Warlords style, where the player searches ruins for artifacts, builds armies, recruits heroes and uses combinations of these to defeat opponents. There's a massive amount of variety in the way each unit attacks, each hero casts whatever spells you've selected them to cast and even the initial setup has type-based advantages or disadvantages depending on which kingdom's army is used. There is a lot of strategic depth to be found here, which is very surprising.
- Heroes can be customised as the player wishes, selecting items and spells for them to use, each with additional costs or discounts based on the chosen kingdom.
- I am very pleased that the combat is much faster than it is in PQ1. Most battles only last around 3-5 minutes, with the harder ones going on towards 10. I absolutely love this, as it makes the combat more virulent and helps to keep it fresh. By comparison, Puzzle Quest 1 just sits there dawdling every time you encounter what is essentially a Zubat because everything has SO MUCH HP.

Things which are neither good nor bad:
- The music is kind of mediocre to me. There are a few delightful tunes, but most isn't memorable and is there to get a job done.

Cons
- As should be noticed immediately before even buying the game, the art. For a game made in 2009 in particular, very little of it passes the check, with most failing and looking like ugly cardboard cutouts. Everything just looks so bright and flat, why is everything lit from all angles? Any sense of depth is completely lost because there's basically no shading in most areas.
- You yourself have to be a human warrior from some village in the borderlands. I much prefer PQ1 here, where you got to personalise your own character and play with them in a much more RPG-orientated format. Instead, Kingdoms has you use heroes that you find across Etheria for battles.
- Border-blocks are a nice new feature which can help stale boards function better. Unfortunately, this feature is mired down by some serious issues. Firstly, when matching anything, new block randomly generate from the top instead of being of the type seen around the border. Secondly, as others have said before, there are simply too many colours, too many block types. Because of this, boards have a much higher chance of being completely stagnant even with the border blocks. You will definitely encounter a lot of boards like this, where no-one gets to do anything for multiple turns and the combat becomes unnaturally long.
- Dubious balance. Some units are just outright better than others. Why would anyone choose a crossbowman when an elven archer is directly superior? Yes it costs 25 gold more to produce, but by the time you've conquered around 2 or three kingdoms, you always have the gold and your hero's build starts to combo off more smoothly meaning you're unlikely to lose them anyway.
- There's no point in being able to field more than one hero. By the time you get to the end-game kingdoms, it's highly likely that you'll have one max level hero and a bunch of level 1-3's, which are completely useless at this stage of the game. The thing is though, you need to min-max your hero XP otherwise the game will likely be considerably harder.
- The game is so long. You'll be playing hundreds of matches and that's more than enough to burn out the gameplay. It gets incredibly monotonous and by the time you reach the Doomwood you'll want to just complete the game as quickly as possible or drop it.
- Throughout the game, you will be collecting and destroying boxes which are linked to some sort of curse. This wouldn't be a problem if you didn't have to complete one of the most tedious matches in any Puzzle Quest game. It's so completely unnecessary and unrewarding, and it often takes well over a hundred turns to clear the board (it's a special game type where you have to clear the entire board with no random blocks coming down. Instead, you have to use the side blocks which are randomly generated every time they're used). These types of matches never give you what you need to proceed, so it ends up being an endurance match which I admit, I have actually lost one or two times (when I went to 200+ turns and gave up).
- If you're aware of the Warlords universe, well suffice to say that Kingdoms is most definitely not something to be considered canon. If you're not, ignore this con. There are mistakes - some blatant, some minor, riddled throughout this game's lore. The story is completely implausible, the map is broken, locations are scattered more than they've ever been and there are few new things to discover. I feel like this is definitely a waste of a well-setup universe, which has immeasurable detail and a good timeline that's existed since Warlords 3. It makes me sad that the immense detail this game franchise has may never even see the light of day (except in The Protectors that is).

Overall, Puzzle Kingdoms tries to make some improvements on the original formula of Puzzle Quest. In some areas, I think it has actually succeeded, but in most others it failed. Gameplay is faster and the strategy is there, but the RPG aspect has suffered and the characters and story are no where near as good as PQ1 (and they weren't particularly good in that imo). It feels like Kingdoms was rushed, and there is evidence of that even in the text where some incorrect syntax has been input in a couple places. If you're a PQ or match 3 veteran and can't get enough, there is definitely something to be had in Puzzle Kingdoms, if you can bare the empty void that was the RPG aspect (or the art for that matter). Otherwise, I would recommend skipping this game.

You can think of this as a casual game with a tactical twist, or a tactical game with a casual twist. Either way, the game has a fair amount of depth to it. You build armies, level-up heroes, choose spells and artifacts to equip, and battle across the land all through match-3 style puzzles where you play against the computer AI.

The match-3 puzzles play a little differently from the standard "move one color tile to create a row of 3 or more" style found in most match-3 titles. In this game you slide a whole row or column of tiles over by one, and you can match 3 or more in any combination as long as the sides touch eachother (kitty-corner doesn't count). There is a fair amount of strategy involved as you try and match certain colors to power up spells and activate attacks, all while trying to prevent the computer from being able to do so on its turn.

This game can appeal to both the casual gamer as a more strategicly involved game with lots of depth and choices to make, as well as to the strategic gamer as a lighter take on kingdom conquest without lacking in plenty to plan and do.

Grab it while on sale!

Very good game. Most people compare it to another one to judge it, which is pretty unfair.

Game mechanics: You play Match 3 against an AI opponent by pulling on one row or column each turn. Once done, your opponent plays, and so on. If you match 3, you get the point, and your opponent doesn't. You also have unlimited time to think your move. Contrary to most Match 3 where the speed is crucial, here it's all about careful playing and clever moves.

You have soldiers with damage and life. Each time you match the symbol corresponding to your solider, it loads up. When it is fully loaded, you can launch an attack on your opponent's soldiers instead of playing the Match 3. Once all your opponent's soldiers have died, you win.

Then all these battles take place in a larger framework where you move on a map, hire new soldiers, upgrade your hero, who can then learn spells that can be used in "battle".

There is some sketch of a story, but it unfortunately remains at a very bland level. The same narrative mechanics is repeated again and again each time you set foot in a new province. There are plenty of stuff to get you interested though, as you can hire new heroes, dig out new artifacts, plunder dungeons (who play as special challenges, relying on different rules as the regular game)...

Overall it's very fun and nicely done. Graphics are sober but nice. Music is perfectly appropriate. Warmly recommended (on sale).

Add me to the list of people who do not understand all the negative reviews. Granted it does not have the charm of the original Puzzle Quest, and the story is not as good, but I don't play games like this for the story anyway. In terms of the gameplay, I actually enjoyed this more than Puzzle Quest, because the battles seemed more strategic and less based on luck (although there is still some element of luck of course). The music is surprisingly good for this type of game; one of the rare cases where I didn't shut it off after ten minutes. I wil probably play this again at some point, maybe using a different hero next time.

Developed by Infinite Interactive and published by Strategy First, Puzzle Kingdoms is yet another terrific title from their wonderful puzzle series of games. If you're a fan of match three, puzzle, roleplaying or any combination of the three then you'll be pleasantly surprised by Puzzle Kingdoms. The game is very fun, can quickly become quite addictive and provide you with hours of intense gameplay. From what I've read on various forums, many people who enjoyed the first title, Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords, didn't really seem to like the sequel Puzzle Quest 2 quite as much because it wasn't as heavy on the roleplaying elements as the original game was. In that matter, this title seems to be much more like the heavily preferred Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords.

The story, told through hand drawn art and silent dialogue is mildly interesting with a welcomed dose of humor sprinkled in to boot. One thing I didn't like was that the artwork wasn't nearly as great as the superb art seen in the previous titles but it gets the job done as far as storytelling goes. During your travels throughout the land, you will recruit heroes, choose different types of troops with which to build your army and lay siege to various kingdoms before conquering and adding them to your very own empire.

The puzzle battles, which are the highlight of this game are fantastic and have a new twist. You have the typical match three or more gems up and down but now you can also match gems in an "L" formation as well which adds a new degree of strategy to the gameplay. By matching gems you build mana to power your heroes spells as well as attacks for your troops weaponry. In typical R.P.G. fashion, as your heroes level you can choose which abilities to upgrade and equip many different types of loot in the form of spells, weapons, armor and relics with which to upgrade your forces.

The music and sound effects in this game, as in the other Puzzle Quest titles, are top notch and fit the gameplay perfectly. I've been a fan of puzzle games since I first started with Puzzle Quest 2 and although Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords is my favorite thus far...I can say that Puzzle Kingdoms is quickly becoming a favorite as well. Highly recommended!

NOTE: I paid 90p for this game during a 90% sale a few years back, and my review is based on a price around that region. £10.99 is too steep, but 75% off or above is reasonable.

Puzzle Kingdoms takes a familiar match-three base and adds a little spin on it to make it feel fresh. Basic gameplay involves pushing tiles onto a grid of blocks, making the rest of the row or coloumn move along by one tile and hopefully making a line of 3. The spin comes from the player-built armies you take into each match.

From swordsmen up to dragons, you can take up to four units into a battle with you, and your opponent does the same. Each unit is “fuelled” by a different colour of tile on the game grid. Clearing a line of three adds one point of fuel to your unit, and combos add more. Once your unit is fully powered up you can unleash their attack on your opponent or wait for other units to be ready to attack which grants additional damage.

The added layer of strategy in building an efficient army changes Puzzle Kingdoms from a well made match-three into something much more interesting. You may have a powerful Green unit, but stacking your army full of only those not only means the other colours go to waste when you match them, but also you need to clear a lot of Green tiles to get any combo bonuses. You also need to pay attention to what colours your opponent is going for so you can try to get those lines yourself and prevent them attacking.

The story is kinda dull. There's a pretty interesting twist in the tail, but little reason to really care about it- so you should grab this for the Puzzle more than the Kingdoms. It's well worth sinking some time into if you can get it cheap.

When I bought Puzzle Kingdoms, it was on a 90% Steam sale and costed me a buck and a half. Unfortunately, money isn't the biggest concern when it comes to a game's actual worth, the real valuable resource we truly pay when playing games is time.

Puzzle Kingdoms is a Bejeweled-like puzzle game with some strategy RPG elements thrown in. Now if you're not farmiliar with those match the shapes kind of games that's been flooding the web for the past several years, you're not missing much. The activity consists of endlessly and effortlessly moving shapes around in one way or another to group them together, and when you do a nice little sound effect plays and the shapes disappear to make room for new ones, manipulating your brain with constant small benefits to drive you to keep playing.
While doing a good job at cloaking itself from the fact, Puzzle Kingdoms is much like those games. The game provides you with "troops" you can buy and use which can attack and deal damage to enemy troops after you have matched the same shape enough times, and later on gives you more kinds of troops and different items which give you slight benefits. At first one may think the game has a neat twist to the formula, but soon enough one will discover that the game is just covering it's one boring mechanic- moving shapes around to group them- with much more distraction and brain manipulations than the other games of it's type, rather than adding any new interesting mechanics.
The game is insultingly easy, giving you a staggering amout of money to endlessly fill up your board with troops while the opposition never attacks you with anything bigger than what you already have. It forces you into painfully slow paced puzzles that makes you roll an invisible dice over and over again until you win, all for the sake of a story that is so obviously ment to manipulate you into giving any context to matching shapes it's laughable. The choices made in this game- the kind of troops you buy and the items you equip- have zero implication egainst an opponent that literally can't beat you as long as you deny him a specific shape to group together.

The game as a whole can pretty much last forever, and that is a pretty big part of the problem- it manipulates you to play it endlessly and effortlessly and in turn do nothing but waste your precious time. If a game does that it should at least have a strong point (Prime examples are Allan Blomquist and Kyle Gabler's "Little Inferno" or Edmund Mcmillen's "AVGM") or have some really solid mechanics to go with it so the player will have to [god forbid] think about the game.
As much the gaming industry wants to dany it, "time spent divided by money spent" is not a healthy way to measure a game's value, because that implies your time is a bad thing you want to throw as much of it away as possible. This game is just not worth your time even if it costed you zero dollars.
Please, do something and play something meaningful and fulfilling with that time, because your time is limited and it is worth much more than this.

What an addictive game! I wasn't expecting much, to be honest, but I installed it, played a bit, and here we are, 25 hours later. Yes, 25 hours for a single playthrough. Okay, yeah, I started over a few times early on, but once I got the hang of it I just kept going. The primary gameplay is match 3, with a slider rather than a swap mechanism. Each kingdom you conquer opens up a tavern and a ruin where you can find new relics, spells and items, and recruit new troops. To do this, you use some of the gold you've gotten in your warmongering, and then play a minigame. Higher level items and troops have a higher gold cost and a tougher minigame to play.

You can customize your newly acquired kingdoms with your chosen hero(s), troops, and relics, and use them in battles against kingdoms that you haven't conquered yet. You can outfit your hero with the items and spells you've gotten. All of these items have a color value and a points value, and each kingdom has either discounts or increased costs for using these items. (Ie, a kingdom might have lower point cost for blue and red items and troops, and higher point cost for red and yellow items and troops. Your hero's total cost is affected by his color and the combination of items and spells he or she has assigned.)

It's relaxing, but it can also be challenging, especially if you have trouble with the recruitment minigames.

I'd probably play the crap out of this on my phone or something but it's pretty basic and gets old fast. Puzzle Quest and Puzzle Quest 2 are way better, since they've touted this game as being "from the creators of Puzzle Quest." I guess if you're looking for a fairly mindless game to blow time on it's okay but wait for a super cheap deal.