You take on the role of a more-or-less freelance space jockey, running errands for various interplanetary species, repairing warp gates, mining planets for resources, and doing battle with space pirates. All of this is accomplished, miraculously, by shifting honeycomb-shaped jewels around on a board. The trick is that each task requires a different variation on the main game. Mining requires you to make as many matches and chains as possible before locking the board (no more matches can be made). When repairing a warp gate, you need to match colors in a specific sequence in an allotted time. Fighting enemy ships has you and the baddie taking turns chaining combos and blowing up bomb blocks to deal damage to the opposition. The Bejeweling itself is a lot of fun, but all of the fluff surrounding it detracts from the experience.
Youll do a lot of reading, talking, and guiding your ship icon around a whole slew of identical maps, tapping on planets to proceed with tasks. Youll equip items to your ship, or read about your shipmates, or sell mining resources for cash which you use to buy new items. Youll fly from one planet to the next, one warp gate to the next, doing the exact same tasks for the entire game. Completing missions and defeating opponents nets you experience which you can use to level-up your pirate-fighting skills. Vs. battles have you managing several colored energy bars (which are replenished by matching like-colored jewels) corresponding to shield strength, HP, and various weapons levels. You use weapons to deal damage directly, replenish your shields, or drain enemy weapon levels. The Bejeweling itself takes a backseat to resource management, which is problematic. The difficulty of pirate battles ramps up quickly, but its not because the Bejeweling itself is any harder; the enemies just have more shield strength, higher HP, and items that damage you without relying on bomb blocks. Leveling up attempts to remedy this problem. When you level up, you are allowed to add attribute points to particular areas, which just means that when you clear a certain jewel color in Vs. battles, youll get so many more points for that resource color. For example, if you invest heavily in Shields, clearing three blue jewels (which would normally net you three shield points) gives you six points instead.
Something I dont like about Bejeweled, as opposed to other puzzlers like Panel de Pon, is that youre not free to set up chains. The only allowable moves are those which clear a row of jewels, so chains are more of a random occurrence. Still, getting a nice chain is always thrilling, even if you werent able to meticulously engineer its occurrence.
The touchscreen interface leaves something to be desired, too. I often had to press a desired area unusually hard to get blocks to swap spots, and there were some places where blocks would swap the wrong spots when I didnt tap that spot in the first place, which in Vs. battles leads to a penalty. When navigating menus on the galactic map, tapping an option would sometimes close the menu and send my ship flying away at great speed instead, which is both puzzling and annoying. There were many times when it took several tries to make the menu option work.
The game offers two-player multi-card play, but it might be hard to find somebody with another copy of the game. Online battles wouldve been appreciated. The game wouldve been better as a stand-alone Bejeweled cart, with traditional game types like Endless, Time Attack, Vs., etc. As it stands, Galactrix adds way too much unnecessary clutter to the core puzzle game. I know thats kind of the point, but it just comes off as being unnecessary.
Pros:
Lastability: 4.0
Whether or not you enjoy Puzzle Quest: Galactrix will depend entirely on your tolerance for navigating menus and reading text in order to get to the next puzzle. If your tolerance is low, this game is not for you.
Final: 4.0
The control issues simply shouldnt be there, and I wouldnt have more fun with a straight-up collection of Bejeweled games. At least then it wouldnt be trying to be something its not.
Puzzle Quest is extremely hardcore. It's a strategy-RPG with puzzle-based battles... what do you expect? That's part of the charm of the original one, as it turned the most casual game ever into an incredibly deep, complex, and rewarding hardcore title. Galactrix doesn't pull the same trick because it's no longer based on Bejeweled (despite what Zach's review implies), but it may be even more complex than the first game. That's not necessarily a good thing, mind you.
I want to see someone turn Peggle into a hardcore title. I think it could be done. (And I LOVE Peggle.)
I want to see someone turn Peggle into a hardcore title. I think it could be done. (And I LOVE Peggle.)
I wouldn't say that this is significantly more complicated than the original, but that may just be because of how much of an Escape Velocity fan I am so I'm used to some stuff like the commodity exchange.
Stratos, I'd say that which one you should try depends on what setting you want; if you want fantasy play the original Puzzle Quest, if you want sci-fi play Galactrix.
