I don't have any bad thing to say about Evolve:Hunter Quest. I feel it's the right kind of free to play match three game with sufficiently deep gameplay systems, enough variety to make the player want to continue playing and most importantly, no energy system. This might sound silly, but if this game had an energy system (where attempting maps was throttled by such) the experience would have been completely different. As it is, it feels fair and balanced and losing a level isn't a terrible thing - because you would've lost energy for no gain - and I have no real opinion on it's tie-in with the Evolve shooter on PC. Besides setting, it doesn't provide much to this game.
You have a team of four characters, each with their own specialties and skills, which you use by accumulating energy matching tiles. Matching four or more things also unleashes special effects such as shielding your team from damage or making enemies more vulnerable to damage. You also have assault tiles that make your whole team attack at once. You use these attacks in order to kill monsters and bosses that attack after a set number of turns. All monsters have different preferences about what they target and the kind of attacks they do, and after you've gathered enough materials you can unlock their entries in a bestiary, which nets you some basic currency as well.
Bosses are quite tough and some enemies have attacks that hit multiple party members, but you can manage 'aggro' by using skills each hunter has. You'll fight the same bosses multiple times and each time you'll have to take their HP down a little before they run to fight once they're stronger. If you match monster tokens three times whenever you're fighting other enemies, they'll pop in for a devastating attack that deals damage and affects the board in some way. Luckily, you also have such special abilities like turning monster tokens into more helpful ones, stunning enemies, shielding your characters, and so forth. Each chapter of the game is divided between a different team, so you get to try various style of party members while you're at it.
Sometimes you'll have to break open eggs or get civilians to a dropship before time runs out. It can feel a little stacked against you - since the tokens of the eggs or civilians you have to break seem to appear less often - but as losing doesn't penalize you with any real loss, you can just try again if you fail. The premium currency of the game is used mostly to retry battles you're lost - or to buy small attack/defense/energy boosts - and the normal currency is used to heal/revive your party, I never had to use both really, leveling your team is enough to get through all the challenges.
I had a great time with E:HQ even though it's association to the Evolve franchise is weird at best. It's a nice match-3 RPG compared to the more predatory ones I've seen recently.
