DS Review: Puzzle Kingdoms

When dealing with typical colored block puzzle games, there's only so many possible ways to try and change the game up. While this one tried its best to do so by adding many intricacies to create a deeper game, it fell flat in the shallow end of the pool.

The game opens with an ominous storyline about how a far off, distant (and imaginary) land is perishing to death and pestilence, and that your hero is the only hope that can even try to save it. You have to assemble teams of fighters to come along with you on your "epic quests", attempting to regain everything that once belonged to your people.

To do this, you'll have to battle through colored block puzzles. Oh, yes. Colored blocks on a grid, and you get to slide them around, one block at a time, to try and connect three of the same color. Doing so will help you to power up your fighters and attack the opponents, as well as vice versa. Whoever has more fighters still alive at the end of the fight wins.

There's just one small problem with this game: There's relatively little to no explanation of how to play. You're expected to figure this part out more or less all on your own. While not impossible, it leaves you feeling very confused, trying to figure out what the hell to do while getting your rear end handed to you on a plate in the meantime. It's definitely harder than it initially seems going into it. But it's not just the puzzles that aren't really explained to you. It's not very well explained in how to conquer the different kingdoms, other than to 'win battles'. Well no s***, Sherlock. Ugh. And then it takes trial and error to figure out the right way to even assemble your troops.

In my opinion, if a company's going to make a game with a complicated premise like this, wouldn't it make more sense to at least include a tutorial level to show you what you're supposed to be doing, rather than either figure it out for themselves or get ticked off and return it? It just makes no sense to me. For this, as well as the game looking to be seemingly very low budget, I'm going to rate it a 3 out of 10 vassals.