Once I realized that Puzzle Kingdoms was a sequel of sorts to Puzzle Quest, I decided to give it a go. For those that don't know, Puzzle Quest is a precursor to Candy Crush (at least gameplay wise), featuring the same gameplay of switching gems on a game field to match 3+ gems, causing collapses and chain reactions and whatnot. Except Puzzle Quest used this to resolve combat situations as you controlled a character who was out to save the land from an ancient evil. EVERY encounter was resolved with a Candy Crush-esque game, and some other activities required that mini-games based on the same concept be solved. Combat situations were resolved by matching gems to collect mana which you used to power your spells. Up to 6 spells could be chosen, some companions could be brought along and items used, giving the game a minor RPG vibe. The other notable thing about Puzzle Quest is that it's a part of the Warlords franchise, so the world map and NPC names may seem familiar to some old grognards.
Anyway, back to Puzzle Kingdoms.
PK features the same world map, almost the same starting point and pretty much the same plot; It seems that Lord Bane is back and out to conquer the world. Instead of the player creating one character, he can choose from a series of heroes, and those heroes can choose equipment, spells, troops and relics. The troops are the backbone of your force, you're matching gems to build mana for their attacks, and once they're charged you click a button and they attack the enemy's troops. Also, instead of swapping two gems, you push a row or column by one square. Frankly I don't see the reason for this change, it took me over an hour to get used to this "new" system compared to the one in PQ.
One of the biggest problems with Puzzle Quest was that EVERY conflict, even if it was a roaming beast that got in your way, had to be resolved by matching gems, which often dragged the pace of the game down to a crawl. Puzzle Kingdoms takes this aspect to the extreme; PQ only used around 70% of the world map, while PK uses ALL of it. What's worse, in order to defeat a kingdom you move to one location and "attack", which opens up a mini-map where you have to fight your way through waypoints to defeat all the enemy strongholds, usually around 10-15 fights. Once all the strongholds are down you get an item which must be destroyed at a shrine, and that involves the most annoying mini-game I've seen in decades. In PQ I often suspected the game of cheating, in PK it's just plain obvious. While the fights themselves are a pushover, the mini-games range from being very frustrating to outright impossible... and they gets worse the further you progress.
Eventually I just gave up playing because of two reasons: When I wasn't being trolled by the game in a stupid mini-game, I was curb-stomping the enemy forces as if the AI was nonexistant. I conquered 7 territories (around 150 fights in total) and only lost one fight, and that was due to bad luck rather than any skill on the computer's behalf.
Puzzle Kingdoms takes the WORST aspects of Puzzle Quest and builds on them. That alone should be a bad sign.
2/10, would not bang (gems together).
