so infinite interactive has done yet another puzzle game/rpg hybrid and this one plays kinda like super puzzle fighter,i know that the entire description of "super puzzle fighter RPG" sounds incredibly awesome and probably that's the only reason i'm keeping to play this because dayum! it looks like the most shoddy game ever made
first this things has cutscene and they are so badly done you would think they used some arcane art to resurrect the guy who made those crappy 3DO zelda game,it doesn't help that your character looks like a bad caricature of sylvester stallone,there are only few music in the game and everything is in ugly pre-rendered 3D,gone is also the fantasy theme replaced with a bad "conan the barbarian" one... i really miss puzzle quest look,it was definitely better than this so why change? there is also a shitload of loading,HECK THERE IS A LOADING FOR EVEN DOING SOMETHING AS DUMB AS ACCESSING THE CHARACTER MENU! (of course it might be a fault of the PSP version but i remember the same shit happening with the DS version of galactrix which always boogled my mind... i mean have you ever seen a cartridge game loading every five seconds?) again puzzle quest didn't have problem like these so why? Did i mention it uses lucasart adventure default font? i swear everytime i see the loading screen i have this impulse to stop playing and just get SCUMMVM
so anyway as i said this game is pretty similiar to super puzzle fighter basicaly it works like this,you have 3 kind of gems,regular gems,battle gems and RAGE gems,battle gems are required to destroy regular gems and RAGE gems,when you destroy 5 RAGE gems you deal damage and move the bar on the center toward the right stealing space from your opponent,the idea is that you end up stealing so much space that ultimately your opponent just runs out of place to put gems (it kinda works like the tetris board game if you ever played it) problem is everytime the bar move you also gain what gems your opponent was setting so you get to deal even more damage,it's pretty easy to snowball into victory as you steal every chance your opponent had to regain lost territory
(albeit there is a difficulty scale and i'm playing on normal so maybe it's my fault)
alternatively if you put gems into a 2X2 position they will create a power gem,destroying a power gem will activate one of your items depending on the color of the gem (so for example creating a red power gem activates your weapon which usualy gives you RAGE while a green power gem activates your shield which makes you invulnerable for a few seconds) destroying them also gives you power for your skill,problem is you only learn 9 skill and you can only pick a skill for color (so for example if you pick the skill that requires both green and blue,you can't use the skill that uses only blue or the skill that only requires green) most of these skill are useless except the one that directly moves the bar,again puzzle quest did it better so ultimately RAGE is all that matter
as far as rpg element go,you have 4 stats dictating the amount of RAGE you get and also the chance of different kind of gems appearing,you get to equip up to 8 items per type (and you can fuse doubles of item you have to get better version of them) and you can improve your skill by training your dog and that's about it
i really liked the original puzzle quest so it's disappointing to see they can't get the formula right again,heroes of might & magic:class of heroes did it better
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