Another puzzle game on the DS? Another puzzle game that uses the match three of one type game mechanic in its puzzling? Yeah, Puzzle Quest sure sucks…oh, and when I say suck, I really mean it only sucks because I find myself wanting to play it more than I want to work, which isn't a good thing. Who would've thought combining a puzzle game with a story and RPG elements would produce such an amazing game. You'll have to manually come and pry this game from me, because I don't think it is leaving my system anytime soon.

THE STORY SO FAR
Though some puzzle games have attempted to introduce stories, many of them aren't much (or at least too involving) and are simply there as a way to try and tie the gameplay puzzling into something else. With Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Puzzle Quest from here on), however, the story is really engaging and interesting, making it stand on the same level as most RPGs.

In the land of Etheria, you find yourself as a member of the Bartonia royal guard. A once peaceful and calm world is dissolving into evil as undead creatures are invading, and there seems to be no stopping them. But where are they coming from? You'll trek out across the globe on errands from your queen, searching for aide to help stop the onslaught, and to ultimately solve the riddle of why these undead are attacking and who is behind it all.

Along the way you'll encounter sidequests, such as escorting a princess to be married off to her awaiting husband, helping protect a caravan from roving monsters, and other such matters of heroic deed. Though many of these sidequests are used only to get you more experience, gold, and the occasional special item, you'll also amass an army of compadres to join you on your journey; only you'll battle any given enemy at a time, but the companions you gather will help in various situations, such as putting the hurting on undead enemies before the match even starts, letting you get the drop on good enemies (like knights training you), or doing damage to a city you are trying to siege.

You wouldn't think it coming from a puzzle game, but the story is really well done, as it constantly compelled me to the finish, and it even did a great job of giving a voice to the characters during their dialogue moments. There have been better RPG stories throughout history, but this is the best a puzzle game has ever done, and as a Tolkien lite adventure, you couldn't ask for much more.

SINGLE PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
Before you get started with things, you'll first have to choose your hero and which character class they will be a part of. You can create a druid, knight, warrior, or mage (and you can rename any character picture to fit your choosing – there are two anime designed characters for both the male and female avatars). The druids use many spells based on yellow and green mana, typically succeeding in battle by healing yourself and temporarily stopping your enemy in their tracks. The knights use the experience orbs to gain extra experience and heal themselves, plus they have a stock of damage spells based in red and green mana. Warriors have a lot of red mana spells they use to damage their enemies. And wizards use a variety of different spells to ultimately defeat their foes.

As mentioned, the game is a puzzler at the core, and it involves around matching three or more of any color or item. What you might not know is that within your puzzle piece laden grid, you won't be the only one trying to match pieces up, as the enemy you are fighting will also be making matches at the same time. Of course, you aren't randomly grasping at matches, but rather you and your enemy take turns matching up.

You want to at least make matches of three or more straight-line connections, either going horizontally or vertically. On your board just waiting for your matching abilities, you've got red pieces, yellow pieces, green pieces, blue pieces, experience orbs, gold piles, and skulls. If you chain experience orbs together, you takeaway from the battle some experience which you can use to level up your character (more on that in a bit). By matching gold, you'll earn money for after the fight to take to the local store to buy you some much needed equipment to help your offensive or defensive chances in a fight. As for the colored pieces, these will go into your mana pile, which you'll use to cast both healing, defensive, and offensive spells. The other main item you need to match are the skulls, which when you connect you'll perform attack damage to your enemy. By using your spells and skull matching skills, you'll attempt to reduce your enemy's health to zero points, and if you do so you'll win the battle.

Read The Rest Of The Review On Page 2