Knights of Puzzelot is a haunted game, haunted by the specter or free to play mechanics and tactics to get your money. The core game is quite good, but that’s even more of a bummer when almost every step of the way, I’m left wondering if something is difficult because they want me to pay, or if it’s just annoying for the sake of convincing me to pay, or wondering if the next level is going to be the one where I have to grind or pay to get past.
After a small tutorial, you’re thrown into a world of many dungeons where you fight enemies by matching things. You match swords to attack, shields to raise your defense and gold to acquire money. Matching four and more of a thing gives you upgrades. Better swords, potions that heal and bigger gold amounts. I wish there were another level after that - when you match 4 upgraded tiles - that’d be neat. I also wish the game would be clear about what shields do. Do they absorb a percentage of damage? Is it a flat rate? Also, showing me my life total and my shield value would be useful.
While clearing dungeons, you get better gear - that you can upgrade at shops - with special abilities, like dealing more damage when your shields are full or healing yourself after killing an enemy. I like that. Enemies have different abilities - making tiles teleport randomly each turn, putting them on fire, etc. - but I wish I could view a bestiary somewhere. Enemies get tougher as you go through more dungeons, and you can mix and match your gear if you’re having issues with tougher foes. I don’t like how you have to grind certain dungeons because they’re locked behind a level requirement. Oh, and the worst offender is of course the energy system
This game is plagued with free to play. Certain upgrades can only be bought with premium currency - important upgrades to your stats, please make them available for normal coins, you can buy random chests with ‘a chance’ for a good item. You can pay to make everything go faster, while in a non free to play game, you’d pay to unlock your upgrades and get them immediately. You can pay premium for better items, you can pay premium to refill your energy, I hate it, it ruins the experience of a otherwise enjoyable game. Another thing that bugs me are these locked chests, you need to make a key fall down to the bottom row to unlock them. Is the game cheating by putting the key where I’ll have trouble getting it down, before telling me to pay to get more turns to try? Probably not, but the fact that I keep wondering if it’s the case for many things ruins my experience.
I love match-3 RPGs and the more systems you pile on top of them, the more I like them. Knights of Puzzelot was a good candidate for being a game that I would keep playing over time, but the second that I had to stop playing because my energy was empty and the game prompted me to get the HERO’S OFFER, I just tuned out. You can buy upgrades to your energy capacity, but they mainly cost premium resources, of course.
