Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

I needed something to do during travel- and down-time for GDC last week, and I had never gotten around to trying Puzzle Quest before. I love stat-building RPGs; I love puzzle games. Unfortunately, what Puzzle Quest taught me is that if you put a half-assed puzzle game together with a half-assed RPG, all you get is a full ass.

The RPG component of the game isn't "bad," per se, just very uninteresting. Level-ups are very far between. The equipment system is scant and shallow. The story is dreadfully boring. Extra character-building stuff - party members, mounts, captured creatures, et al - are implemented well, but just couldn't get me revved up.

The puzzle engine is where I take serious issue. It's a two player, turn-based puzzle game with a shared field, and you move by swapping two adjacent pieces. Here's the problem: you can only swap pieces if they lead to a three-or-more match. You can't set up forward-looking strategy, unless it happens to coincide with a match you can make right then. You can't even pass, unless you have enough mana to do so in the form of casting a turn-taking spell. Which means that if the only move you can make puts the tiles in a position to let your opponent pound you, you have no choice but to take it. And it really seems like the blocks that fall down when you make a clear almost invariably favor the AI. Most of the time I'm looking for plays not to my own benefit, but to my opponent's detriment.

I really like the concept of the game, but it's executed very poorly. On my flight back north I couldn't find my stylus and, frankly, I wasn't too upset. There was a talk at GDC from the people behind Puzzle Quest, about how they combined 'casual' and 'hardcore' gaming interests; but no part of this game is terribly interesting to me.

Progress: Level 15