Because then it would no longer be a combat system, and the combat system is the main reason I play Puzzle Quest. The fact that the enemy is going to use your tiles against you makes you think at least one turn ahead and not choose easy moves that would give the enemy an advantage. It forces you to react and change up your actions based on the situation–i.e. think tactically–instead of just puttering about slowly building up to the perfect combo–i.e. concentrating only on strategy.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with puttering about slowly building up to the perfect combo. But lots of puzzle games already do that. So why should Puzzle Quest?
Anyway, the real problem with the AI is not that it doesn’t understand the back-and-forth of trading moves, but that it doesn’t understand how to ruthlessly exploit the the spell system the way the player does. What the game really needs is better spellcasting AI and (more importantly) a better-balanced spell system.
For those wondering about whether to get PQ2, it has tighter combat than PQ1 and some new minigames. Outside of the puzzling, the presentation is different–Diablo-style dungeon crawling rather than overland travel–but sharing the same functional-but-unpolished feeling as the orginal. You don’t play a PQ game for the writing or the animation.
I broke down and bought it yesterday, and so far I’m quite pleased. No instability or buginess.
I’m struck by how diablo-esque this game is trying to be. The first PQ was somewhat that way as well but the addition of random loot from chests, loot with prefixes (runic, ancient, etc) and town portals really drives home the similarity. So far I’m fairly pleased with the game overall but I haven’t had a ton of time to devote to it yet.
I’m both loving and hating it (360 version), I like that it seems all enemy types are considerably tougher if they are able to unload their attacks on you and I love the assortment of new minigames for looting/lockpicking/etc. But I’m not sure what they were thinking when they let assassin’s essentially control the entire board with the strike abilities, coupled with stealth and disarm you can neuter most enemies and then hit them with triple damage strikes (stealth and disarm stack) that if unblocked can do upwards of 60 damage.
I wish I could control the board that hard with my assassin. I never seem to have enough of the right kind of energy at this point in my young life to eat everything into purple, which I can then feed into my shield, because I assume that’s the strategy they’re herding me toward.
I don’t bother with shield unless it’s a high melee damage boss and I can’t disarm them in time. Using shield is a great way to get rid of all that extra purple you’ll have from using strikes though. It mostly comes down to patience and the ability to take some good stingers at the start while you wait for your abilities to be ready (I imagine our main problem will be mana drainers).
I’m up to level 17 with my barbarian and having a pretty good time with this game. It’s good, but it’s not original Puzzle Quest good. Closest they’ve come to recapturing the magic since the original PQ, and a good game overall, but still a mild disappointment for someone hoping for another original PQ.
I started with a barbarian and was bored enough to start regretting the purchase, then switched to assassin and I’m loving it.
Yeah, this. It can make for some really dramatic battles as you watch your health get whittled down until you can turn the tide. I was at 8 pts vs 80-something in the Yeti quest and ended up winning a few turns later.
I went assassin as well – it seems crazy good but I assume that all the other classes have similar insanity if you know what to do.
I found you could easily / cheaply upgrade the poison offhand with a fairly common material drop, so now I’m like level 20 or so, I have poison that costs like 4 AP to use and does 48 (!) total damage over the span of 8 turns. Easy to keep up and it puts every battle on a timer. Combine with Disarm & Stealth and I can easily stay alive while also putting out the hurt with 4x Strikes fairly regularly.
Also, Weaken is completely broken in how strong it is. 5 mana to effectively get a free turn whenever the board is dense with any color – it doesn’t end your turn so you can almost always strategically find a gem to remove which will then let you swap to a 4-in-a-row. The reducing of the enemy’s mana is almost incidental.
The game is completely broken balance wise with Templar as well. Minus how busted poisons are (and you can stack the DOT’s), Templar’s have good ol’ shield bash, which hits based on your defense. Considering only they get access to Plate Armor, Tower Shields, etc, that’s a 40+ hit every other turn.
Oh ya, they can spam Rush and stun opponenets for 6 turns in a row. They also have Divine Power, which again is based on defense, which REFILLS EVERY MANA pool. Infinite Loop O’ Divine Doom.
I beat the Green Dragon in 70 turns spamming this cycle. It’s so unbalanced lol.
It looks like every class (except maybe the barbarian) can get to ridiculous combos pretty quickly, because I’ve done the same with the Sorcerer.
Mana tonics give a +N bonus to the amount of mana gained from a particular color, and the bonus works when you destroy gems with a spell, so taking a tonic then casting a destructo-spell of that color is an infinite loop in itself.
Throw in spells to make wildcards or skulls wherever you want, for easy 4-gem matches, and I sometimes end up blasting an enemy into the wall with plenty of unused action points and mana left over.
I wouldn’t hold your breath for an iphone port unless they do it in-house this time, I doubt they were pleased with how fucked up the Transgaming one was (until finally patched months later).
I’ve made it up to level 31 and the game is getting better. Two components of the first game that I thought had been cut for the sequel, namely companions and learning spells, have finally shown up. This has boosted my interest in the game significantly since I’m now facing interesting choices for which spells to equip instead of just progressing linearly up a fixed spell tree like it originally appeared. I still mourn for the originals far more interesting equipment system but PQ2 is looking up.
Yes, yes, and yes. The more I play PQ2, the more I’m confused by the apparently “meh” reaction to it. I don’t remember PQ1 well (as I haven’t played it in a while), but PQ2 is excellent. Great gameplay, with different classes all feeling very different (I love the assassin), lots of different game modes – the room searching minigame is basically Jewel Quest, and there are distinct and interesting minigames for picking a lock, bashing down a door, casting an unlock spell, and looting chests, plus of course the regular fighting game.
PQ2 is good, but it’s no PQ1. Weak item variety, some lackluster selection of powers compared to the original, etc. Lots less motivation to grind or keep a player interested in the late game phases.
