Possibly the finest mixture of turn-based RPG and match-3 ever made, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords makes a comeback on pretty much all modern systems, Xbox included, with what is promised to be its finest version yet. We played the PC version of Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition, and here’s our review for it!
What changed?
I’ll be brutally honest: I’m at a bit of a loss with this review. As a big fan of the Puzzle Quest series, and match 3 titles in general, I played through the fantastic original game many times before, across various versions. If you’re on Xbox, changes are, that you also played through one of its finest ports: the Xbox 360 version that is still very much backwards compatible to this day, whether you’re on the Xbox One or the Xbox Series family of consoles. Well, I’m struggling to find meaningful changes or upgrades here, to the point where I went back and retried prior versions just to see if it’s my memory that is hazy.
Indeed, the list of changes isn’t too long or important, though there’s some nice quality-of-life updates here and there. The biggest change is obviously the artstyle, with new and improved drawings, a more refined look on the gems and so forth. The visual revamp is a mixed bag – while the graphics are more clear and defined, the gems themselves are bit less easy to distinguish, with the skulls in particular popping out a lot less. Other than that, it’s mainly small but very welcome little changes, such as being able to change the difficulty on the fly before missions, altering the amount of rewards in the process. You can also increase the animation speed of gems falling, the inventory seems easier to read, and there’s a new class, on top of all DLC content being in from day one. That’s about it, really.
Okay, but what is this game anyway?
Maybe you aren’t familiar with this title, and Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition is your first taste of this unique classic. Well, it’s still quite a blast. It’s an RPG where the player gets to choose a class, give it all sort of attributes, skills and items, then move around on a top-down map completing story missions, side quests, hunting down monsters, hearing rumors at the bar, buying equipment. The story is really nothing special, and it’s pretty close in structure to a JRPG – except the combat isn’t done in traditional ways, but via the art of match 3. If you ever played a more recent Puzzle Quest, a game like Candy Crush or Bejeweled, you know the drill – you have a 8×8 board with coloured gems and you need to create combos.
Puzzle Quest‘s approach is different though, because you don’t just have to make big combos or capture colours. Each colour represents a certain type of mana, which then can be spent on skills. There’s skull gems to attack the enemies, purple gems giving XP, coin gems giving money and so forth. The player and the enemy take turns, so on top of trying to build our strategy, we have to ensure we don’t leave opportunities too great for our foe either. It’s a mighty addictive formula for a very lengthy campaign with tons of replayability, as the player can find new and new synergies between magic skills and playstyles. It also had a PvP multiplayer mode in some versions – that’s gone from Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition, which is quite baffling. It’s also not a Play Anywhere title, unfortunately.
I’ve been here before
Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition is an absolutely inessential upgrade for what is quite the timeless classic. It’s still a mighty fun and deep single player RPG campaign, with a ridiculously addictive core gameplay and plenty of content to boot. But the few changes and additions barely warrant a new version, especially if you already own the previous backwards compatible Xbox 360 or PC version, with the lack of any sort of multiplayer being a bizarre omission. It’s quite the classic single player experience, but this remaster doesn’t quite change enough to become an essential buy.
Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition
Played on
PC
PROS
- Puzzle Quest remains a stellar game
- Has all the extra campaigns from the various editions
- Various small but smart quality-of-life updates
CONS
- No real new content
- Loses the multiplayer component
- Not all art change feels like an improvement
