Puzzle & Dragons is an addictive game that combines monster collecting with match-three puzzle gameplay. GUNG HO ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT / Courtesy
I don’t know what is motivating my addiction for this game. Perhaps it is from my days of playing
Puzzle Quest 2 on the Nintendo DS. Or maybe it goes all the way back to my days of going to football games in high school to walk around the track and play
Pokémon with my friend. (Oh, yeah. I REALLY did that) But
Puzzle & Dragons has become one of the only games that I play on my iPhone.
There really isn’t a story to be had with this game, but you can see influences from other games such as
Pokémon at the core of it. At the beginning, you are given the choice between three baby dragons of the fire, water and grass-type. After that, you send your pet into a dungeon to battle other monsters and match orbs that correspond with your monster’s attribute to initiate attacks. Matching grass orbs make grass-type monsters attack, light-orbs for light monsters and so on. Also, with each battle, there is a chance of bagging a monster to fight alongside you on your team. These dungeons are really fun to play through and involve more strategy the more and more dungeons you open up. Not only do you have to launch attacks by matching orbs, but you also must match heart orbs that heal your HP bar from enemy monsters that attack you. These battles may seem plain at first, but the thrill of them come in when you can launch combos; achieving multiple orb matches in a single turn. Combos greatly increase the power of an attack and healing spell and if you get enough of these combos in a single turn, the effects can be devastating to monsters you are battling.
Aside from the regular dungeons you can undertake, the game also has special dungeons that are a bit harder at times, but give special treasures to players that clear them. These dungeons are pretty much downright necessary at higher levels as they can net you a substantial amount of money as well as rare monsters that are needed to not only level up your monsters faster, but also evolve them into new monsters.
And it is the evolution aspect of the game that makes it very addicting. I find myself frequenting the special dungeons more than the normal ones trying to bag evolution material. The special dungeons have monsters that only appear on certain days and if you miss a day, you’ll have to wait until next week to get them, so playing frequently is definitely a key to your success. Beating these tougher dungeons is an accomplishment on their own, but it feels even greater when you bag the one monster you need to evolve your monster.
Puzzle & Dragons works on a freemium model. You don’t have to pay anything to play the game, but you can put down real world money to buy magic stones. These stones can do things like recover stamina instantly, purchase monster boxes to store more monsters and revive your monsters if they get KO’d during a dungeon battle. Having magic stones are great to have, but this isn’t something you have to do to play the game. Having them increases the chances for success when fighting harder monsters, but some of the difficulty can decrease with friends you meet online that can join your other monsters in battle. Having strong friends with abilities your monsters don’t have can definitely be a key factor to your success.
Puzzle & Dragons is a great game to have on your iOS device. The dungeon runs may be short and sweet at times, but you will put hours into it maintaining strong teams and evolving your monsters. This has a great combination of match-three gameplay and monster collecting. If you are a fan of these genres, you will definitely love this game.
Rating: 9/10Do you have a topic you would like the Prairie Nerds to address? Let us know at PrairieNerds@tulsaworld.com
