Review: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

[Susan Arendt]

Review: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

Does matching like-colored gems to shoot down spaceships make sense? Of course not, but who cares? It's Puzzle Quest!

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[asiepshtain]

Sadly the fantastic puzzle gameplay is let down by massive problems in the RPG game.

The mistakes in the RPG game are numerous and are made worse by how easily they could have been avoided. These vary from UI blunders like your ship continuing to move while you are in menus and no system names on the mini-map. To graphical blunders like the fact that your ship is indistinguishable from enemy ships in everything except engine trail. To simply odd decisions, like not showing alien appearances on first encounters but at random times, I'm meeting new and interesting species,I want to see what they look like. And the list goes on and on.

Most unforgivable is the terrible writing, while the previous game "Challenge of the Warlords" never took itself too seriously, with an orc obsessed with eating everything and a dwarf creating a machine that no one know its purpouse, including the dwarf. Galactrix takes itself seriously, and sadly the writer can't pull it off, Churning out one the most horrendously written sci-fi junk stories I've seen in a long time.

As an RPG the previous game "Challenge of the Warlords" was superior by far. The puzzle aspects of Galactrix are marvelous, shame they are buried in such a badly executed RPG.

For the puzzle lovers and no-one else.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

And most of the puzzle lovers avoid these games like the soul sucking vampires that they are.

They may look cute, but they're a brute.

 

[Tarmon'gaidin]

I truly love the puzzle quest games.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Sadly the fantastic puzzle gameplay is let down by massive problems in the RPG game.

The mistakes in the RPG game are numerous and are made worse by how easily they could have been avoided. These vary from UI blunders like your ship continuing to move while you are in menus and no system names on the mini-map. To graphical blunders like the fact that your ship is indistinguishable from enemy ships in everything except engine trail. To simply odd decisions, like not showing alien appearances on first encounters but at random times, I'm meeting new and interesting species,I want to see what they look like. And the list goes on and on.

Most unforgivable is the terrible writing, while the previous game "Challenge of the Warlords" never took itself too seriously, with an orc obsessed with eating everything and a dwarf creating a machine that no one know its purpouse, including the dwarf. Galactrix takes itself seriously, and sadly the writer can't pull it off, Churning out one the most horrendously written sci-fi junk stories I've seen in a long time.

As an RPG the previous game "Challenge of the Warlords" was superior by far. The puzzle aspects of Galactrix are marvelous, shame they are buried in such a badly executed RPG.

For the puzzle lovers and no-one else.

While I agree about the writing, I actually liked the RPG elements. True, they're not the same stuff as Warlords, but I appreciated the flexibility of tricking out various ships with whatever armaments fit the current issue. Then again, I liked crafting stuff just for the sake of crafting stuff, so I may just be weird.

 

[Doug]

And most of the puzzle lovers avoid these games like the soul sucking vampires that they are.

They may look cute, but they're a brute.

Indeed! Puzzle games or Tower defence games consume your life day by day!

 

[asiepshtain]

While I agree about the writing, I actually liked the RPG elements. True, they're not the same stuff as Warlords, but I appreciated the flexibility of tricking out various ships with whatever armaments fit the current issue. Then again, I liked crafting stuff just for the sake of crafting stuff, so I may just be weird.

I also like the combination of RPG and Puzzle, I just think the RPG elements were badly executed. For example the crafting challenges for the harder ships and materials are completely imbalanced in difficulty to the rest of the game. And why only three ships? I can understand only having three "active" ones, but there is a real miss here of some Pokemon style "Catch them all" action. Also for some strange reason the rumor game gave huge amounts of XP.

It's a real shame too as all these issues can be easily addressed, maybe the limitations come from them writing to the DS, I don't know.

 

[Susan Arendt]

While I agree about the writing, I actually liked the RPG elements. True, they're not the same stuff as Warlords, but I appreciated the flexibility of tricking out various ships with whatever armaments fit the current issue. Then again, I liked crafting stuff just for the sake of crafting stuff, so I may just be weird.

I also like the combination of RPG and Puzzle, I just think the RPG elements were badly executed. For example the crafting challenges for the harder ships and materials are completely imbalanced in difficulty to the rest of the game. And why only three ships? I can understand only having three "active" ones, but there is a real miss here of some Pokemon style "Catch them all" action. Also for some strange reason the rumor game gave huge amounts of XP.

It's a real shame too as all these issues can be easily addressed, maybe the limitations come from them writing to the DS, I don't know.

I would definitely agree that there many sorts of balance issues throughout the game. Stuff that's too easy in one part is punishingly difficult in another, and so on.

 

[Yegargeburble]

And most of the puzzle lovers avoid these games like the soul sucking vampires that they are.

They may look cute, but they're a brute.

Indeed! Puzzle games or Tower defence games consume your life day by day!

Don't mention tower defence games to me...they eat my life when I play them. At least the little flash versions do...

 

[Llil]

I got the DS version recently and it seems that the game is a little too heavy for DS.
The game goes through about 5 second loading screen every time you do practically anything outside the puzzle bobards, and it makes the game play a lot slower than the original Puzzle Quest.

Also the controls are a bit inaccurate and stiff, especially the popup menus that you use to choose what to do on planets, spacestations and such.

So for anyone thinking of buying the DS version, the game does not play very smoothly and it can be annoying sometimes.

Also, the battles are usually longer than in the original Puzzle Quest and the computer seems to get more lucky combos, so you may have to retry long and difficult battles quite often just because of bad luck.

I think that Galactrix isn't as good game as the original, but desipite it's flaws, it's still fun. And I've noticed that it gets more enjoyable when you get a little further in the game.

 

[Kross]

I grabbed this game on Live at around 10PM on a Sunday. And was playing it till almost 3AM. :/

It definitely has its share of bugs and annoyances, but the puzzle gameplay is fun (hacking Leapgates gets old quick though with no real reward other then temporarily opening the gate). The ship inventory/skill system is interesting if a bit under explained, although the crafting interface could use a bit of work, as you have no idea what anything you're crafting does unless you go remember the description from an enemy/store. I only found out by accident that your cargo space from all your ships gets added together because you are actually in a fleet rather then only your "active" ship, which is a big deal when your starting ship has almost no cargo space and the early ships with cargo space have worse stats.

The fake computer voice in the puzzles and the music was actually a lot better then I expected. It's not the greatest soundtrack ever, but is very easy to listen to and goes well with the puzzle play.

I'd imagine anyone who liked the first PQ with all of its bugs and bad UI decisions will get addicted to Galactrix just fine.

 

[asiepshtain]

I grabbed this game on Live at around 10PM on a Sunday. And was playing it till almost 3AM. :/

Snip...

I'd imagine anyone who liked the first PQ with all of its bugs and bad UI decisions will get addicted to Galactrix just fine.

I agree but thats exactly what bugged me the most. An educated game designer or interactive designer could have burned through these issues in an afternoon, some of them are even very easy to code. Like having your ship appear in a system in a random location instead of the gate you jumped in from, how hard is it to code that?

The more obvious the bug is and the simpler the solution the more it irked me, maddening.

 

[Doug]

Question Susan: From a purely gameplay point of view, is this Puzzle Quest or the first one better/funner?

 

[BonsaiK]

The first puzzle quest is a lot better. The new one is still good, but definitely not as good.

Problems with Puzzle Quest Galactrix that make me like it less:

* The characters and story are boring. The original Puzzle Quest had heaps of humour and fun characters who were well thought-out. They made you want to play the game just to see what they would say next. The sequel has cardboard cookie-cut characters who very rarely provide any humour (the sole exception being the robot and even he's just a duller, more whiny version of Kryten from Red Dwarf). And the story is so dull... the usual "save the universe from some vaguely-specified evil force" nonsense. You'll stop caring about the plot and the characters way before the game ends.

* The game is SO EASY. No enemies really provide a challenge. Bola Mines, a turn-skip module or two and you've got every fight sewn up. Proof: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9GvgYFToV8 Even the boss fight at the end of the game is weak.

* The game crashes a lot, usually after an hour or two. Odd for a casual game to do this. The original Puzzle Quest had a few issues too, but it didn't crash to the desktop!

The leapgates that the reviewer complains about, on the other hand, aren't really that hard. In fact they're probably the only part of the game that provides a decent challenge and one of the few parts of the game I enjoyed. And although they sometimes do relock themselves, that's rare. Most of them you only have to do once.

Still, it's not terrible. If you've got money to burn you probably won't hate it. Just don't expect too much.

 

[Kross]

It's not that the Leapgates are necessarily hard (although it can be stingy with the colors you need sometimes), it's that there are SO MANY that you have to hack through with very little variety in the gameplay.

Also, the fact that the timer keeps running while the gems are cascading can be REALLY obnoxious at times.

It can be fun when you're down to 15 seconds with 3 matches to go though, with you both rushing and trying to pull time bonus pieces together.

 

[BonsaiK]

To me, the whole gems cascading and wasting precious seconds thing made the leapgates more fun. It means you have to play to specifically avoid cascades - a neat twist on the way these games usually work where you're trying to cascade as much as possible. It forces you to use some actual strategy rather than just "let's match the biggest thing I can". Also, as it's meant to represent "hacking" so I mentally likened it to a real hacking attempt where it might take some time to accomplish each "command", but that probably says more about my inner hardcore RP nerd coming out than the quality of the game itself...

I thought it was good anyway. If the space battles were anywhere near as challenging as the hacking the game would have been a lot more interesting and I may have been able to forgive its other faults more (crap story etc).

 

[Doug]

The first puzzle quest is a lot better. The new one is still good, but definitely not as good.

Well, I've just got the first Puzzle Quest over steam now, and I'll get Galactrix when it drops in price.

 

[Eric the Orange]

The change from, always falls from the top, to, falls from whichever side is closest, seems that it would be hard to get my head around.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

There's a demo here : http://www.playpuzzlequestgalactrix.com/

 

[BonsaiK]

The change from, always falls from the top, to, falls from whichever side is closest, seems that it would be hard to get my head around.

It is at first, but you do get used to it eventually. It's actually one of the better things about the game, because it does open up some different gem-moving strategies to what you're probably used to in games like this.