The eighth game in the Puzzle & Dragons franchise and an exclusive to Apple Arcade. The franchise has a long and successful history on mobile devices that I’m totally ignorant of. Until I just looked it up. So I’ve come to this completely fresh to quickly check it out.
The core game is match-three. Not a genre I play much of. More evidence I’m not a real gamer. That said, I’ve played a little of Finity (also on Apple Arcade) which is alright. The match-three here is unusual to me in how much you can rearrange the symbols. Each move is under a time limit, which can be increased with skills, but even so I almost cleared the whole grid once or twice. Giving some super satisfying block deletion. Just keep spinning the mouse around and anything is possible.
Deleting matched blocks makes the fighters in my RPG style party attack. Block colours relate to character colours. Kill monsters. Loot. Advance the fairly thin story. Clear dungeons and pathways. Rinse repeat. It’s a solid gameplay loop. I got quite into it. There is a dose of RNG when blocks drop down to fill the gaps. If favourable it can lead to huge combos as many more lines keep disappearing. Or I get nothing.
On the RPG side of things it is very JRPG in essence, you know, stats, but thankfully without inventory management. The tactics are all in managing party members, their skills, and unlocking and levelling up more members. I found the process of creating new fighters a bit too cumbersome. Too many animations and repeated clicks to upgrade. I’d prefer that was all streamlined, especially as there are hundreds of creatures to create. It should appeal to the collector types among us, of which I’m one.
For me this is a bit too grindy, even though the match-three stuff is genuinely good. I’m just not convinced it will switch things up enough over time. I could be wrong though as I’m only a few hours in. It makes a good time killer to switch off to. The tactics are potentially deep with a lot of different skills and combinations. I’ve only touched the surface of understanding how best to exploit enemies weaknesses and maximise combo bonuses.
I can see why this has been successful and having a new game with no micro-transactions is undoubtedly an improvement. I’m unlikely to continue with it but fans of the genre should find it worth a look.
Available from Apple Arcade.
mishmash 