Normally I look forward to every new game I buy, jotting down the release dates in a calender so I don’t forget. This time though I was caught by surprise by the game-series that occupies all of my gaming time. I’ve been infected by the PAD virus, or to spell it out: the Puzzle & Dragons virus! It’s not like I didn’t know about the game: I had played a demo of it on my Japanese 3DS about a year ago, and jotted it down for future reference. game-play was nice, but there was such a lot of text that I decided to wait for a Western release.
In one of its Nintendo Directs that release was announced, but to my surprise, it was to be coupled with a Mario version. And as it’s often with Nintendo, that part took all of it’s focus in the media. Now I have confessed before that I don’t particularly feel the love for Mario in this blog. I may be strange, but have you ever had it happen that when the majority of the population is raving about some new pop icon or movie actor, you tend to take the opposite stance? And not like that pop icon or movie actor at all? Maybe that’s what happened in my relationship with Mario. Too much Mario all around, ever since the very first Nintendo games. So there I was, interested in the game, but not in the Mario part. So I let it slide, busy with Story of the Season.
But then my gaming friends started chatting about it, and I got interested again. Not convinced yet I started reading up on it on the Internet, and found to my surprise that PAD isn’t originally a Nintendo game, but an app game. And an app game that is all the rage. It started in Japan, and was named パズル&ドラゴンズ Pazuru Ando Doragonzu there, shortened as Pazudora. By now it’s released worldwide on iOS, Kindle and Android, with as much as 41 million downloads last January. Anyway, as it’s a free game I decided to download that one to give it a try, and that’s the moment I was hooked.
The game is a combination of match-three with a twist with a sort of Pokémon RPG, collecting and powering up dragons. The match-three is not your standard fare, you can freely move one colored orb through the puzzle field, influencing the position of every orb you brush past. With some practice you’ll find that in one move, you can make several combination of three and more. With every combination you make in one move, your attack gets stronger. Every dungeon has 5 battles, and the most difficult boss battles can easily take half an hour to think through your moves. I love that, building up my attacks to maximum effect. The slain dragons drop eggs, and as an avid collector I hope for a rare addition to my monster collection. Some I battle with, some are used to fuse with stronger monsters, and in that way I construct a strong team.
The app game by Gungho does its best to keep things interesting. Adding special dungeons that can only be played a limited amount of time, you can find friends to battle alongside you and reward th em with friend points. They do the same for you, and when you have enough friend points you can collect a free egg. At times you can find extra rare dragons in your battles, and there are lots of decisions to make bettering your team. Some monsters can be used in ego-fusion, to evolve your dragon in an even more powerful monster.
Having so much fun with it I decided to bite the bullet and download Puzzle and Dragons Z, getting the original game and the Mario one to boot. I’ll tell you about my experiences there in the next blog, but for now: if you are still in doubt about whether you should go for Puzzle & Dragons Z, I would recommend you to give the app game a try. That is, if you have some spare time ahead…
I kinda want to try the one on 3DS now.
Reblogged this on Las Variedades de Venezuela y El Mundo Sin Borregos..
Thanks for re-blogging!