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Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
April 28, 2009
Remember how exciting it was when Puzzle Quest first came out for the Nintendo DS? Imagine! Here’s a game with the addictiveness of Bejeweled, with the depth and adventure of an RPG. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that blend. And PQ: Challenge of the Warlords was definitely one of the most memorable DS games for 2007. It’s just been long enough to do everything in that game, twice over (shame there was only two save files), so it’s just the right time for a sequel.
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is far from a carbon copy of its predecessor, but it makes me wonder if it is too different. Switching from fantasy to science fiction is neat, and the idea of fighting with spaceships is cool, but something may’ve been lost….in space.
Ads for this game advertise a whole new puzzle game, and they’re right. Instead of doing combat on a Bejeweled-esque board, you and your opponent do battle by playing Hexic (practically the same, except that the board is a hexagon, not a square). The control is the same; there is a board of gems, you switch two consecutive gems in order to match colours into rows of three (or more). However, the implementation of this seemingly straight-forward game makes Galactrix fairly more complicated than Warlords. For starters, when choosing two gems to switch around, it actually matters which gem you choose first. In Warlords, gems just fall from the top. In Galactrix, gems can fall from the top, bottom, top-left, top-right, bottom-left, or bottom-right, depending on how you switch the gems. That took me some time to wrap my head around; I never thought I’d have to consider HOW to switch the gems.
Getting used to combat in Galactrix is complicated, but the character customization is far too simple. For starters, there are no classes to choose from (Warlords had four), leveling up only gives you the option to improve on four skills (Warlords had at least twice that), and the items you use to customize your spaceships (which allow you to do different attacks) are very limited (I didn’t expect to play through most of the game with “Basic Laser”). And even though you’re exploring a vast universe…..there just isn’t that much to do. In Warlords, one could look for runes and use them creatively to make powerful weapons, capture foes and learn spells from them, ride and train mounts, lay sieges on cities, even without touching the story. Galactrix has some variety, but it is less impressive. Aside from battling, there are Hexic-based mini-games which result in you learning rumours (just for exp), haggling shops for discounts, crafting found blueprints, and hacking leapgates. Hacking leapgates is cool at first, and is necessary to travel from one system of planets to another. Hacking requires gems in a specific order within a time limit. But after you’ve done it a few dozen times, and you realize that you don’t get any exp out of it, you may wish you didn’t have to do it so much.
It’s hard to comment on the multiplayer aspect of the game. So far, it is hard to find any players online at any given time (it may just be my bad luck?? Maybe I need to wait for more people to play it??). But everytime I did find somebody to play with, they were too many levels away in order to put up a fair fight. In theory, there is the option to play as the enemy ships, pre-mades which come in a variety of levels. Still, I’d rather be playing against people with something I’ve created, with weapons I’ve discovered
In conclusion, this is a long list of complaints. I feel that Puzzle Quest delivers better than this. Maybe it isn’t fair to compare games to Puzzle Quest, it’s just so great. Had Galactrix come out before Warlords, would I be so rough on it? Would I like it more? It’s hard to say. I’m tempted to say that I would have liked it. I probably wouldn’t have thought it was something special (I wouldn’t start by saying “Imagine! Space battles fought and won over Hexic….”). As it is, Galactrix is a decent game. It’s definitely more challenging than Warlords. And if swapping gems is your thing (and it is for so many of us), more power to you. If you still enjoy Warlords, I might suggest just sticking with it, Galactrix is light years away from being an improvement.
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
As played on Xbox Live Arcade
Also available on PC and DS.
Developed by Infinite Interactive
Online interactions not rated by the ESRB.
By Quizmaster of Gamers-Gateway
Topics: General |