Puzzle Quest: Galactrix Review: The Final Frontier

“Puzzle Quest” was one of those games that I never thought I would find myself playing. Simply put, it’s the nerdiest game ever released that didn’t have the word “dungeon” or “dragon” in the title, and I just never expected it to be one of my favorite games of 2007. There was just something extremely enjoyable about the competition of the casual gameplay, mixed with the RPG elements that really drew me in. Sure, the story was bad, but they needed to give you some reason to go to battle to reassemble a dead minotaur. However you slice it, it’s one of the best genre bending games to come along in a very long time, so when “Puzzle Quest: Galactrix” was announced my ears immediately perked up, and I’ve been curiously following the development of the game, hoping that it would live up to its predecessor, and not put this amazing franchise into a sophomore slump by sending the game into space.

Right out of the gate “Galactrix” mixes up the “Puzzle Quest” formula by completely changing … well … everything. Aside from keeping the basic idea of using a “casual” game as a combat system, there’s not a whole lot of similarities between the two games. Sure, both games have RPG elements, and you have to work with other characters, and you have missions, but comparing “Galactrix” to the original “Puzzle Quest” is almost like putting “Mass Effect” up against “Oblivion”; they’re both a similar genre, but they’re galaxies apart. This doesn’t necessarily mean that “Galactrix” is a bad game by any means, but it does mean that fans of the original might get a little more than they bargained for in this iteration of the franchise; it’s most definitely not a sequel. [Continue Reading]