Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

One day, at a meeting for new game ideas, someone said, "let's find a way to take a standard color-matching puzzle game and merge it with an RPG." Instead of the result you'd expect--being laughed out of the boardroom--they actually made the game and came up with this charming, addictive title that overcomes it flaws by providing a lengthy, rich experience that's perfect for either quick sessions or wrist-punishing marathons.

With a very simplistic overlay of RPG elements on top of a game that's essentially Bejeweled, you travel from locale to locale in effort to find who's taking your people slave and for what nefarious purpose. Picking from one of four character classes (wizard, druid, knight or warrior), each of whom is suited to using different abilities, you set off on your own, and eventually form a small party, with each member giving you a bonus against different monsters. Standard combat is done via taking turns on an 8x8 puzzle board. Matching three of a color generates mana to be used for spells, while matching skulls deals direct physical damage. The real fun comes in setting up combos and longer matches, as four or more gives you another turn, and against some enemies you'll need them. The real innovation to the puzzle comes in other areas, as special puzzle boards with their own twists are used to forge powerful items from hidden runes, capture creatures, and learn spells from captured creatures. Your inventory isn't directly used as you never actually wield a sword or swing an axe. Instead, equipped items might give you mana for spells at combat's start, reduce damage taken, inflict status ailments, or award extra experience or gold from battles. As you advance, expect enemies to have greater items and skills at their disposal and be more likely to get extra turns for themselves in combat--a battle you're winning can turn against you shockingly quickly. The whole package works so simply, intuitively, and so well, that you'll enjoy every bit of your quest to find and vanquish the evil plaguing your land.

The game's length (especially compared to its price) is a huge bonus. If you do all the sidequests and spend a decent amount of time learning spells and forging items, you can easily surpass 40 hours of questing. The wide variety of spells you have access to via captured monsters gives great customization to your character, and finding that just-right mix of compatible spells that can work together to bring you hasty victory is a fun challenge. The humor in the dialogue helps compensate for the text-only presentation, and no conversations are so long that your eyes glaze over from boredom. The fact you can do battles in just a few minutes make it perfect for short commutes on a bus/train/taxi as well as a lazy afternoon on the sofa.

The biggest gripe is that the game freezes on you--a lot. You may experience one roughly every 90 - 120 minutes. The game auto-saves after everything you do, so you never lose anything, but that doesn't make it any less lame or agitating. The shops that you find in town are the most useless ever in an RPG. If you've been hunting and acquiring runes to forge items, you'll likely never buy anything after the first hour or so of play, and items you get as rewards are similarly unremarkable. The difficulty is a bit reverse-balanced, leading to much frustration around the time you meet the first boss, but if you've learned and picked the right spells as you head towards the climax, the ending chapter tends to be a bit on the easy side. The fact that there's so much left over map at the left and bottom make you wonder why they put it there, almost teasing you that there could've been more.

The simple, stylus-only gameplay works well, with you sliding puzzle pieces into their new positions. Going to a faraway spot on the map is a bit of a hassle, and a setting to automatically avoid enemies when you're on a mount (instead of making you manually cancel each battle) would be a welcome touch. The graphics are somewhat blah, and your feeling about them may be colored by your expectations from the game. There's little to do in the puzzles but slide pieces, and in conversation there's never any movement, so graphics were clearly an afterthought. The sound is decent enough, and each companion has their own catchy little ditty for your conversations, but the tinny swords-clanking sound when a battle is starting is below par. For the $20 you can likely find the title, the game is a super value, even with little replay to be had. While fans of both genres will love the game, it's likely to hold more appeal with puzzle fans who typically shun RPGs than vice-versa, yet with the holidays approaching, it's a great stocking-stuffer for any gamer in your household.