For all its charms, Puzzle Quest is not a game that ends well. Once you've completed every mindless fetch mission and julienned the anticlimactic final boss, you're dropped back into the worldmap with hardly any ceremony save some brief epilogue text. The landscape appears just as you left it, unaffected by your victory or valor.
The New Gamer laments in its review, "I keep hoping that, finally, my character will have some complete and utter impact on the lands, that all those I've interacted in will pronounce the lands free of evil, free of conflict and that they can finally live their lives in peace." But your deeds are quickly forgotten by the townspeople you've saved, and there's little to indicate that you've had an impact on the kingdom of Etheria. In short, it never feels like the Challenge of the Warlords has actually been completed.
Though this lack of finality isn't exclusive to Puzzle Quest, we really expected more from an otherwise fantastic game. Hopefully, Infinite Interactive will take pains to address the issue before putting out its next puzzle/RPG hybrid, Galactrix. Until then, we'll be haunting Etheria's dusty roads, matching gems against any soul that stumbles across our path, sighing no matter what the outcome.
Posts with tag pq
Looking for closure with Puzzle Quest
DS Fanboy Favorites: Eric's top five
All this week, the DS Fanboy staff is letting you in on a few of their favorite titles. Each day, a different member of the staff will present their personal top five DS games along with a snapshot of their gaming paraphernalia and habits, in an effort to provide our readers with a little more information on the tastes and personalities of our writers.
When my afternoons aren't busied by hours of photoshopping cat heads onto pictures of my friends, I pass the time with puzzlers and plumbers on my DS Lite. But those kitten-free days are few and far between, so I end up being able to only fit either the most polished or the most eccentric games into my packed schedule. Wario: Master of Disguise? Sorry, I've got things to do and feline faces to retouch. Lost in Blue 2? I'll have to pass -- I'm already lost in trying to get these whiskers to look perfect.
My collection is a mishmash of AAA titles and niche releases, their cases piled atop one another like a Jenga stack of mismatched blocks, threatening to topple over at any moment. Just pulling a game from the middle of the shaky structure is an act preceded by hours of anxiety and self-doubt. Having my wife provide commentary during the ordeal, remarking "Oh god, it's going to crash this time for sure, I just know it. Why'd you even try, Eric?! Game over, man! Game over!" as I tug out my copy of Advance Wars DS doesn't make the challenge any easier.
So when I do manage to put aside the pussycat photos and secure a game to play, it better damn well be worth it. Journey forth and read which of those titles have captured a place not only on my top five list, but in my heart.
