Puzzle Quest Is Back, And It's Launching Today Exclusively On Nintendo Switch

This game is addictive.

I remember getting it free on Xbox 360 back in the day and being absorbed for the life of the console, sometimes the simpler games are the best ones

With Castle Crashers and Links Awakening both releasing in the same week. This little gem is going to have wait for my wallet to recover a bit before I can get around to it.

Played the psp version, it was great. I'll be sure to pick it up

Player choices? Nice. I remember the original being almost all linear, with some side quests here and there. The end result of them was usually a new party member.

I was hooked to this on the DS, so this has definitely become a priority for me.

Loved it on PSP and DS, bought it last night at midnight, thought I would check it out for 5 mins and played for three hours straight! Totally forgot how cheap the game can be when it wants to make you suffer however - cheating git! This game is old school, but awesome, so pleased to have this and torchlight 2 on my switch. My PS4 may never get used again...

needs a speed up mode though, this game plays soooooooo slowly!

Would like a physical option, but it seems cheap enough that in a sale I might get it digitally.

I played the absolute f@#king s@#t out this my psp and then had another bash on the vita. One my fave psp games, up there with metal gear and burnout. As sure as the sky is blue I will have this game.

@jiffymalaise Damn skippy. I will hold off until next week, when I get paid....if i can.

Perfect for the Switch and perfect for digital so you can easily jump in and out of the game. I played the hell out of this on DS and wanted more. Buying ASAP.

@jiffymalaise I did like to stick it in and twist it, but when I beat the final boss...."F@#k YES".

Ugh, why did I leave the switch home today? Stupid work

Played the first game like CRAZY

They got a second game too, didn't they? I don't remember liking it much.

This one looks fabulous though, can't wait to get back in.

I loved Puzzle Quest on the DS

Man, I LOVE this game. Both Galactrix and PQ2, came nowhere near as awesome as this game is (Personally I thought Galactrix was awful). And even though Gems of War is a really fun and addicting take on PQ, it still doesn't quite compare to the original. I am going to buy this again, but I am going to wait for a sale as this will be the 3rd purchase of this surprisingly fun masterpiece.

@Kalmaro There's no "reply all" but I like you so I'm just going to reply to you and the rest can figure it out.

Anybody thinking about getting this for $15 "Gems of War" is on Switch now and it's free but it's like this but with a whole lot more going on.

Those of you who'd rather spend $15 b/c you don't like "free" games, well, that's on you, but I've played this and many games like it over the years, thank you Gametap, BigFishGames, RealArcade et al, and Gems of War is the best. Well once you figure it all out, there's a lot going on, and after 300 hours I still don't have it all figured out. But I haven't spent a penny either. Not even a gold coin.

So if you were into this back in the day, or interested now, check out Gems of War. For free. It never ends. Well maybe it does but the story mode is 34-40 cities long, and it's hilarious.

Also, the people who made PQ also made GoW, so it should be better, they've had time to improve.

I guess beware if you're planning to purchase this today There's talk on Reddit that the game is unplayable due to a bug with enemy hp. Enemies start to have unusually large amounts of HP and they're impossible to defeat because of this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/d6c0av/puzzle_quest_early_gamebreaking_bug/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

@FLEEBS You ninja'd me w/ the Gems of War comment. You really liked PQ more, huh? I liked it alot a decade ago but I've found there's so much to do in GoW I could play it almost non-stop. Now that I'm over 3 hours it's usually just 1-2 hours a day though. Maybe it helps that I'm in a good guild rocketing up the charts, I think 1 of our members is a "Whale" who must be buying everything judging from his stats, but it keeps me excited and motivated to do my part.

@rjejr Thanks for taking the time to reply! I am now officially interested in gems of War. If it's free then I'm absolutely downloading it today and I'll see if I like it. You seemed to have enjoyed it a ton.

Bought the DS version earlier this year alongside some other DS games but haven't actually gotten around to it yet.

Originally 360 exclusive.

Anyway. Gems of War on (Free) on Switch is made by same developers.

@Kalmaro Yeah, I'm like physically addicted. They really know how to trap you. Daily weekly login bonuses, monthly daily log in bonuses. I've played like 200 straight days. Though on vacation for a week I just signed in for 5 minutes a day to sign in, but it's usually an hour or 2 a day doing the "daily" adventure mode that they just added, or rescuing a pet every few days. I gave up on "story mode" w/ about 6 cities of the 34 left b/c they removed the difficulty option and I was playing on level 6 before, the hardest, but now it's all level 1 so it isn't worth my time. Otherwise I'd probably be playing 3 or 4 hours a day, so maybe that's a good thing.

They are annoying with the "Buy this for $49.99" pop up ads once or twice a day, so be leery of those. But I'm ok with it, 300 enjoyable hours for free and nothing has ever seemed "locked", unlike Kirby Clash, which I've abandoned after 3 hours, it's way too restrictive and grindy for my liking.

@rjejr I got it on my phone and so far it's been addicting. There APPEARS to be grind here too but it doesn't look bad and you can play as much as you want (I hate stamina).

@Kalmaro Honestly, I'm afraid to put it on my phone, tablet or PC - it's on STEAM - b/c of how addicted I am to it.

Well that and I once read somewhere the save file on Switch won't cross-play with the others. I also read the iOS, Android and PC save files will cross-play. But it's been a few months since I researched that, things may have changed.

Here's 50 pages of forums if you're extremely bored. The OP is pretty informative if you just want an overview of all that's in the game. I stopped reading after that myself.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3879381

BTW I know I'm hawking this game hard, but I'm no shill, I just figure it's my way of giving back to game devs for free 300+ hours.

And I found it odd GoW wasn't mentioned in the article. I'm not sure it's ever been mentioned on here before actually.

Mea culpa, they ran an article, not a review.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/03/free-to-play_puzzler_gems_of_war_is_out_now_on_switch

Ok, on with my day.

@Ventilator I've played Gems of War, but GERMS of war? Must be a new Dr. Mario clone. Lol

Ahhhh crap I loved this game... probably not enough to play it again unless I finish a million other games first, but... I'll consider buying it anyway.

I was starting to wonder if Puzzle Quest would ever make a return! This will get a purchase from me in the future!

@rjejr Oh my goodness this game is meaty. I have so much work to do, hahaha.

@Mykillvee You can find a Germs game on PS3 and VITA.

Nice to see Puzzle Quest back but it would be even more awesome if Power Quest also returns too.

love, love, love these games. Honestly I don't know how I graduated university: Zuma, Sims 2 and the Puzzle Quest games ate up more time than the bigger games for me.

@Ventilator you should have kept the spelling error. It was hilarious

I don't like how it is clearly a cell phone game for the switch.

Only $15?!?!

Getting this within the next 24 hours!

I have CotWL downloaded on my 3DS and I won't be passing up this remaster+. Good lord, I expected at least $20-$30. Wowzer.

@rjejr Gems is great, but PQ was and still is the best of em all imo. Sunk 5hrs into it today, and nothing comes close to giving me the rush this one does. I wont be dropping Gems (definitely never get it on your phone, eesh that was a mistake), but it's getting neglected for a long while. PQ has a lot of content also.

@PacMang It's not. It's Xbox 360 or PC version upgraded.

Puzzle Quest 2 is the best of them all, and i bought that on multiple systems. I would buy it again for Switch.

Dammit, Link's Awakening just came out! Oh well, on to the wish list this goes...

OMG yes. I hope it's as good as the original, PQ2 wasn't great.

@PhilKenSebben Maybe when I played DQ - it's been maybe a decade - I only played the story and didn't do much else?

Yesterday in GoW was Guild War, then tried to save 3 pets, only 1 successfully b/c time kept running out around fight 6 or 7, a couple of treasure maps, the daily adventures for item gathering, the 3 daily dungeon fights, and some PVP.

And I was trying to finish all 34 cities before they took away the difficulty settings, now I just can't be bothered, or I'd be playing more. I stopped doing all of the extra city missions b/c I was playing too much.

I suppose PQ might be better, but I'm a cheapskate so it would be hard to convince me it's $15 better than free. I was 2,000 levels deep in Candy Crush a few years back, and played a lot of Bejeweled before that, pretty sure I've never spent a penny on a match 3 game, even a good one, for myself. I did buy 1 for my kid on CD at the supermarket when he was little, and another 1 online saving the rain forests, but never for myself. My wife has half a dozen CC clones going on her tablet, we're a sad family.

Downloaded this and think I still have the old dsiware version downloaded onto my 3DS. Ha.

I liked Puzzle Quest on the PSP except that it had some fatal bugs which never got fixed. Also the AI was insanely, ah, "lucky."

@rjejr Sounds smart to me. No reason to spend, if your itch is scratched for free Something about how PQ is setup tho, that I just cant say no. Only gem game I've ever spent a dime on. Three times now (original PC, DS, and now Switch). I grind out the side stuff more than I should, micro manage my gear, play all the characters, etc. So I definitely get my bang for buck. But that's me. I'll spend more time in PQ, then Dragon Quest, or Monster Hunter. So $15 is nothing to me for that many hours of joy. What I love most about this era of gaming, is that despite us being on opposite ends of thought in regards to this, we both have options. Freaking beautiful.

@PhilKenSebben Options are good.

@Kalmaro Yeah as sequels go it was less Godfather 2 and more Godfather 3.

@matdub Which game, puzzle quest 2? If so then I think I get what you mean.

@rjejr Just wanted to let you know that I'm still playing this dumb gems of War game, this is way too addictive...

@Kalmaro re: Gems of War.

Sorry about that.

I went down to play last night after dinner and my wife said "Of course you are, you're addicted." But it wasn't in a funny way, it was in a "I'm thinking about getting you help" way. So I watched "Fist of the North Star" on Amazon Prime just to spite her. Then stayed up until 12:30 playing GoW.

It's addictive, and I am addicted, but it's always worse during Guild Wars. Have you joined a guild and are you doing all that guild stuff? Our guild is ranked 32 overall, I think we were 25 in guild wars, so our competition is quite competitive. We have 1 guy on our team - who I suspect is either a whale spending real money on this game or 1 account shared by an eSports house in S. Korea - who raised us much higher than we were last GW were we just ran over the competition and came in first. Now we're like 5th.

But every day I do the 9 or 10 Adventure challenges for 30 minutes, rescue a pet or 2, then play a match or 3 or 5 of treasure map. I still have 10 cities to finish if they ever bring the difficulty options back. I gave up on those challenges months ago or Id' be playing 8 hours a day instead of 2 or 3.

What's your poison?

@rjejr I play on Android, I may sure to get to tier 1 now by the end of the week.
Max seals
Griend explore to get arcanes forh priest class
Use the gold from Pvp to get another kingdom to lvl 10

Try to unlock more kingdoms, I'm at the pirate one now and it's getting tough, need to swap my strategy.

I'm in a guild who's is somewhat active, we can never get far though because half the people don't do anything.

@Kalmaro Probably 8 people in our guild do stuff, but that 1 guy does enough for 8 - 10 people.

1 thing I'm not good at is gaining trophies. Only about 50 a week. I don't like PVP, too stressful. I used to do them until those 9 - 10 Adventure challenges each and every day, no time for PVP.

I think they changed the way we do those cities for story mode, I think they direct you now, when I started we could just do whatever city we wanted that we opened. I've paid to unlock every city so I can see them all. Is that pirate the father of the girl and he's trying to get the queen mermaid to fall in love with him? That was pretty funny. They put a lot of humour into the story and the card descriptions, some I photo to post to twitter but then I always forget to post them to twitter.

If you are having trouble getting through story mode make sure you are upgrading the cards you are using to level 17, 18 or 19. And make sure on the class you are using to check those options every 5 levels.

I'm using a battle axe that hits w/ the other persons atack + 18, that's on my guy who is level 98 warlord, some girl who hits the other persons attack then gives it to us as life, typical JRPG girl, then a guy who gives us all 18 armor plus calls another person should 1 of us die, and some Queen who hits with my weapon attack, usually about 45, then gives us all 5-6 mana. That's my team for real fights, for the daily adventure levels I have another team that just wails on them.

Anyway my recommendation for a team is attack w/ a weapon, find a heal girl, another armor person and another attacker. I also like people who delete a row to make match 4 when possible.

It did get hard near the end though, I remember the last world I did, which I think was the post boss end, the underwater city of Merlantis I think, was pretty hard. Which might be the last one after you if you are doing Blackhawk. The actual last story world end boss is on the other side of the map in Grosh-Nok or some such, he was pretty hard as well, though not as hard as the mermaids if I recall correctly.

So do you play all touchscreen on Android? I tried that once on Switch, didn't like it. TV w/ my faux Pro for me.

@rjejr I'm playing on touch-screen. So far I haven't gotten stuck, I just noticed that I can't cheese through missions AS fast as before, haha.

Theres so many weapons and troops to try that I'm constantly mixing up who I'm using, so I'm in arena a lot in order to farm souls quickly.

@Kalmaro I was in Arena exactly twice. First time I didn't like what I saw so left after picking a team before even playing. Then I finally went back and finished it up b/c I got sick of looking at the screen that said - "You have an arena match to finish" - or some such.

Which really shows how much there is to do in this game. They really put a lot into this free game. Meanwhile every Mario Kart Tour article is FILLED w/ comments that say "free games suck and are all gotcha". I can't imagine ever spending money on this, I never run out of stuff to do.

Like my JRPG I play w/ mostly the same 4 people so never run out of souls. I usually have 30,000 souls, 200,000 gold, 30,000 glory and I think 30,000 of whatever else I'm forgetting. Though I only have about 3,000 each gems and diamonds. I don't craft anything though I did max out the forge. For tower defense this week I used a couple of "max level" orbs. I have a few of most of the orbs, don't really use those either except for the weekly guild stuff forcing us to use new cards.

So yeah, near limitless addiction. Have fun, hope my long posts don't scare you off.

@rjejr I JUST maxed out my soulforge. I'm going to need so many diamonds and shards to craft anything that it's absurd. They obviously want you to work for these troops.

I'm burning through the story again, managed to cheese my way through pet-rescue thanks to abusing Mang and now I'm trying to get through the story so I can work on that weapon that boosts your attack according to everyone else's attack or something.

I think it's from the bear place.

@Kalmaro I looked at weapons in soulforge yesterday and they each wanted 100,000 - not a typo - souls. And here I was thinking sitting on 30,000 was a lot.

I have a battle-axe from my class of choice warrior which has a special of 22 attack plus whatever the opponents attack is. Plus the weapon, or my class I forget, "enrages" me on +4 matches so I hit with a lot more. So you might be looking at something similar.

Don't forget to level up the weapons with the ingots, just only pick 1 weapon, those ingots are hard to come by at the higher levels.

@rjejr a yeah its nuts. I'm leveling the storm caller one because it's great for clearing levels faster, and it just does a lot of damage. If i didn't use that I'd do Mang or that other one... Shield of ursyka or something. It's the sentinel class weapon.

@Kalmaro For clearing all the adventure levels faster I have a sword that does 17 damage to all and creates 6 red gems, so I can get rid of the low level teams. Not good for anything meaningful.

I gotta go, filling out FAFSA forms, if you don't know, consider yourself lucky.

@rjejr I know what those are and those forms stink.

I use the sword in arena that buffs your stats by 10 when you kill someone with it. It instantly makes you more powerful than the entire enemy team. I only do this when I'm farming souls though.

When I use it, I try to make sure I have one other troop that can weaken the enemy for me.

@Kalmaro I used up about 10,000 souls last night buffing up my Naga team for tower defense - I had to buff up 3 other cards that my player randomly calls when 1 of my team dies which were all at level 1 - so I think you've talked me into trying out arena again if I can farm souls there.

But first, online defensive driving course for the 10% off insurance while I wait for my new dishwasher to be delivered and installed. Sometime between 10-2 they said but I'm thinking 3 b/c at 3 I'll be at the orthodontist w/ my other son, not the FAFSA one.

I'm like 10% gamer, 90% stay-at-home dad.

@rjejr The world needs more responsible parents.

Just remember to use the armor that boosts soul rewards. It works for arena.

@Kalmaro Thanks for the armor reminder. About a week after I started playing, whenever that was months back, I "purchased" using diamonds or gems the highest or 2nd highest armor I could, 75% experience, 50% souls, no gold bonus, and I haven't changed it since. I looked a couple of weeks ago, showing stuff to my wife, but I like leveling up more than I like gold.

But you're right, if I'm in arena for farming souls I should look into the soul armor. Not spending, never ever spending, $50 real money on that high end armor though. Before I do that I'll go play Witcher 3 which I purchased complete for $15 like 2 years ago and still haven't' started. My plan for this winter.

OK, time to go act the part of the responsible adult.

@rjejr yeah I'm entirely F2P, even though they keep spamming ads at me.