Puzzle Quest: Galactrix released about two weeks ago. I can't tell you how excited I was to be reviewing this game. The original title in the series is one that I have purchased on multiple platforms and poured innumerable hours into. And, after investing a considerable amount of time into this new game, you will never see a review for it written by me.
I'm done. That isn't to say that I have finished the game; far from it. If I had to guess, I might be about halfway, perhaps even a third through the main storyline, if that. The truth is that Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is a terrible game, and I refuse to go any further with it.
I do feel that I owe everyone an explanation, however, and that's what this post is. Not a review, but a look at the ways in which Infinite Interactive managed to take one of the most charming and addictive games in recent years and turn it into a steaming pile of crap.
The first issue with Galactrix lies right at the core of its gameplay: the game board. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords utilized an eight-by-eight square of gems which, when matched, would disappear from the board and send new gems cascading in from the top of the screen. Taking things in a different direction, Galactrix has a hexagonal board that measures eight gems across at its widest points. Gems can now be moved in six directions and how a gem is moved to create a match determines how gems fill in the space created by their absence.
When I first learned of this design, my initial thoughts were that this would revolutionize the way the game was played, changing it into a far more strategy-based experience. The former method lent itself to a lot of randomness that I expected to be reduced. In practice, it has the exact opposite effect.
Due to the size and shape of the board, making chains of cascading gems is an almost entirely random affair. It's rarely possible to see and execute a chain of even three sets of gems even if you are working from one of the far ends of the board. And, due to the number of ways gems can be moved (and all of the increased possibilities that brings), scheming to force an opponent into making a misstep is nearly impossible.
The result is that success or failure relies more on luck than ever before. Acquired abilities mitigate this, but not any more so than in the original game. An added shield mechanic where blue gems can be matched to recharge defenses helps to prevent sudden loss due to random enemy cascades, but very little.
Another major problem is in regards to how you travel throughout the galaxy in the campaign. Warlord's map system was not great, but it was at least functional and easy to access. The over eighty locations would appear as they became relevant to your quest and travel between them was merely a matter of selecting where you wanted to go, and off you went.
Galactrix also has a rather large galactic map and it's all available to you from the very early in the game. But the way you move between them has added another step to the process. Star systems are connected by "Leap Gates," a network of linked passages where ships can travel at faster-than-light speeds. The problem is that they're all closed at the start and must be hacked open by way of a puzzle game where you must match colored gems in a sequence within a time limit.
There are about eighty different solar systems in the game (possibly more if some remain to be discovered), and going to each of them requires hacking a gate. Many of them have multiple points of access as well, adding to the number of times you may have to deal with them. And, on top of all of this, gates will occasionally close and force you to hack them again. It's highly annoying to have to open up every path directly and makes the entire process tedious.
In addition to the interruptions in your travel caused by the Leap Gates, encounters with hostile forces occur as you pass through systems. This isn't new to the series, as practically every path in Challenge of the Warlords would have a monster blocking your path which you would fight or capture. The difference here is that they would appear on the map previously and you could, in some cases, circumvent them by taking a different route.
Encounters in Galactrix are out of the blue. When an encounter happens, you are taken into the system you were traveling through and must either outrun enemies onscreen (highly unlikely) or duke it out. They usually only occur when passing through hostile systems, but not being able to see them can turn an otherwise speedy trip across the galaxy into a painfully slow exercise you might have been able to avoid as you slog through one enemy after another.
The map is also utterly useless in regards to the information on the solar systems you will enter. Each system contains planets, spaceports, asteroids and so on, effectively increasing the number of places that you can engage in puzzle questing by a magnitude of five (roughly calculated). The map, however, gives no information about a system except for the organization or race which controls it, what kind of government they have and the type of system (industrial, mining, etc.) it is.
Is there a port there? How about a shop for new equipment? Will there be asteroids that the player can mine for resources? Sorry, you're going to have to potentially waste your time checking it out yourself, even if you've already visited it before. It is pointless and frustrating and a problem that could have been solved so easily with just a brief text display. This is 2009 and, while I love my gaming roots, I should not have to keep records for this crap on-hand like I would on a game made ten or fifteen years ago.
Last in our triple threat of major shortcomings is the game's setting. It seems as though the designers intended to create a universe of interesting species with a deep history (such as can be found in Mass Effect, for example) but there's nothing of the sort here. Despite the character you play being a member of a powerful organization within the galaxy, you are given very little information about who resides within it.
If you want to expand your knowledge of the world, visiting planets and moons will give you an opportunity to gain rumors. But the rumors aren't seedy little secrets or anything, serving to establish the setting as a whole. So, unless you're willing to really work at it, every group in the game is utterly interchangeable with the next. The story mode is bland as a result and does not inspire the sort of intrigue and adventure which could make such a setting compelling.
I really hate to say it, but Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is several steps in the wrong direction for the series. Nearly every aspect of the game feels like a mistake, taking the flaws that existed in its predecessor and amplifying them. I can only hope that, in future titles, these sorts of issues will not make a new appearance because there's absolutely no way I could recommend this game to anyone.
The reasons above have literally stopped me in my tracks. If there is some sort of hidden depth, epic story or other gold at the end of the rainbow, it is impossible for me to care about it any longer. There is absolutely no reason why anybody should have to deal with these issues in what is supposed to be a form of entertainment. I am not an impatient man but this is unacceptable. All I can say is that I hope my experience has spared you a similar fate.
Contest:
3:00 PM on 03.05.2009
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Very disappointing, but at least I have the original Puzzle Quest to play through again.
My main frustration with the first Puzzle Quest was the frequency with which the computer would acquire four-in-a-row extra turns... the game would be over in one move. Frequently. This simply doesn't happen a lot in "Galactrix", because you need five-in-a-row, and that just doesn't happen all that often. It's less about combos and extra turns, and more about one-move-at-a-time strategy, and defensive moves -- preventing the enemy from getting those blue gems, or linking those bombs. Games last much longer, and run in smaller bursts.
For those of us who aren't great about thinking five moves ahead, this makes "Galactrix" more like an action game, and less like a frustrating chess match, where checkmate is only a few mistakes away.
I suspect this game might actually be more enjoyable for beginners - those who didn't play the hell out of the first game. You just can't play Galactrix like you played COTW.
You're right about warp gates, though: the game forces you to hack these FAR too often. It's a blatant imbalance in the game. The only difference between the hacking difficulty types (for me so far) is the amount of time on the clock, and the number of gems you must match. Apart from that, there's simply no variety in hacking. This is very disappointing.
Again, I suspect those who mastered the first game are going to be disappointed that you just can't play the sequel in the same way. If you try to play it like COTW, setting up huge Supernova combos constantly, then you're going to lose because you don't have as much control over the board. In Galactrix you often have to "play small" and play more defensively and safe to succeed (not everyone is used to that; not everyone will like it).
But speaking as someone who loved the first game but found it frustratingly flawed, it's a step in the right direction for me.
Conrad, all your points are valid. Although I enjoy the puzzle grid. I kind of wish four-of-a-kinds would give you an extra turn though.
I'm curious how the controls are on the PC version. The DS controls aren't always responsive. I've heard rumors they're trying to fix some of that stuff, and hence why we haven't seen the XBLA/PSN versions of the game.
I bitched a ton while playing the first game, so I'm still giving it the benefit of the doubt.
At the same time, I've started playing the original again :/
I also feel like the computer opponents are able to calculate ridiculous chains that aren't even on the board yet. I can at best plan 2 or 3 chains ahead. I like the game but I don't know if I'll end up finishing it.
@Splam: Keck Shell can suck my dick, its up there with gate hacking in terms of annoyance. Beating them just seems to be an exploit in repeating the battle until I get lucky.
the only thing i have to add is that the ds version is even worse than the pc one. every time you want to do anything at all there's a loading screen accompanying it(loading on a cartridge system?) followed by an autosave screen which makes stopping in systems to look for asteroids or stores is even more tedious. that and the unresponsive controls and ridiculous flying mechanic which serves zero purpose in the ds game other than slowing everything down even more (you don't outrun enemies, they just have a countdown timer above them. if it runs out you're stopped dead in the water until they catch you and attack)
puzzle quest is a game that was made for the ds but in this case the ds version appears to be the most flawed.
Personally, I loathe fantasy literature and adore sci-fi. But one requires more work than the other and it felt like Infinite Interactive didn't want to put that effort in.
TBH I could get over the main combat problems, as you can find enough cool items for your ship to make it possible to kick the shit out of the computer most of the time. But you barely ever spend any time in that "main" part of the game with all the boring crap around it.
I think the fact your character no longer has a class hurts the game a lot too. Leveling up feels almost pointless as the benefits are nothing but the nominal gem bonuses for matching. Having a high powered ship and good weapons on it is far more important than your level in the game, and they are totally independent of each other.
Hacking is annoying but I think the worst problems how luck seems like an even bigger deciding factor. The AI's basically worthless without getting lucky, and their health, armor, and energy amounts are balanced for them getting lucky occasionally while you're playing for real. It's ridiculous.
Credit goes to Conrad for the assist.
No other franchise gets my anger up like this one.
But some things are getting sort of bothersome. The lack of well-defined character classes (while I understand the desire for free customization) meant that, at least on my first character, my points are all distributed exactly evenly. And the gate-hacking is annoying as all hell.
Also, it might be nice to have somewhere to go and sell stuff to a faction (raise faction points) without being harassed by the ships I'm trying to make nice with. Can anyone tell me if it's even worth trying to stay Neutral with the Keck? Because their ships are so goddamn annoying.
The hacking minigame is shit and just retarded, a luck dependent game where it falls on the game to give me what I need? Yea fuck that. Its a lot of more fun when I have 999 seconds to hack them.
If you do the story, it gets ridiculous as you'll be at like level 7 and trying to fight a level 40 cruiser(you can't win, go grind, seriously, grinding in a puzzle game).
The A.I can still do a seemingly useless move and suddenly oneshot you.
I'm amazed at just how terrible the game is without the modding, I pity anyone not playing this on the PC because its the only version that's playable and even then you have to mess around with it.
I have no Action Replay so I'm forced with the times on leapgates. What pisses me off is that the timer keeps ticking away when pieces are falling into the board and auto-comboing themselves and I'm unable to do anything! I can't tell you how many times I've gotten to just one more match, a simple one move and win--and I get a friggin' Super Nova somewhere else on the board and of course it doesn't involve any of the color I needed. *rage*
Also, wanna know how the gems fall onto the board? I had to look at a forum for this one. The pieces apparently fall in the direction you moved the last piece to make the change. So if you move the match-making piece of the line up, the new part of the board rises up to fill the blanks. I FINALLY understood what controls the board.
Doesn't help that the enemy still gets more lucky shots than it should--and this is made worse than in Warlords because when the enemy gets a long combo, it gets a 2x multiplier, and then a 3x (and possibly more if that's possible). The problem is if the enemy matches some mines...that can very easily one-shot you. Not fun. And if you do survive, he's got full shields and energy, and is probably going to pick you off anyway.
It's all right, but I'm not terribly into it like I was with Warlords. I miss my Knight with the Frozen Staff and tons of Blue Mana. D:
I was looking forward to Galactrix until I heard about the gate-hacking bit. I have to say, based on my experince with the first game, matching gems to get to an area where I, you know, match gems sounds about as counterintuitive as I'd expect from Infinite. I really felt like I was playing some cheap Korean knockoff of the game I'd read about when I played the first one, and this one sounds like a Russian freeware knockoff of the Korean knockoff. Except you have to pay the price of a full game for it. Horrible.
Its like... NOW LOADING.... every time.... NOW LOADING... you do anything.... NOW LOADING... it would.... YOU GET MY DRIFT!
#1 enemies only attack you randomly till you finish the mission where you are tracking down the hidden or whatever they are called-
#2 once you hack the gates open you can go all over (though my wife said that some of the gates close none of mine have yet)
#3 the gameplay isn't as random as you would think, it just takes a while to get the flow, you have to get the hang of how things move on the board and you NEED ship upgrades to give you extra turns.
there are problems though and here they are as I see it:
hacking:
#1 - you cannot pause. Hacking the gates is timed and if you have to stop for a second you are screwed because if you pause the game THE TIMER STILL RUNS
#2 - there is no pause to the clock when a chain reaction hits. I have failed MANY of the hacking challenges because I have like one match left and for a good 10 or 15 seconds the chain will keep going from random gems coming on the board and you just lose because the timer runs out
#3 - there are no bonuses for multiple gem matches. They should give you extra time on the clock when you match say a 5 of a kind or 6 or more gems or something but they don't- and as stated above- that is when the major chain reactions usually hit
mining-
#1 you can't re-mine an asteroid once you have mined it. once you mine an asteroid that is it- it gets hard to get resources after a little while
#2 you can't retry a mining- once you have completed a puzzle that is it there is no retry
#3 if your ship is full you just lose resources. There is no quick way to see the status of your cargo hold when you are tooling around and if your ship is full and you don't notice it you just lose all of the resourced you mined and as I stated, you can't re-mine the rock
other odds and ends:
favor- once you attack a ship in a galaxy you fall out of favor with them and it is damned near impossible to regain favor with with them without totally pissing off some other galaxy
saving- the loading isn't so bad, but everytime you do ANYTHING it has to save the game and you get a "saving" screen
cryptic map- sometimes it is hard to see where you need to go on the tiny ds screen, especially when 2 leap gates are on the same side of the screen
it is still a good game though, especially for the DS and also btw: the music is really good and not as irritating as the first game
Very disappointing, but at least I have the original Puzzle Quest to play through again."
Agree 100%, I feel the exact same way. I love Puzzle Quest (still playing it, bought it on PC & PS3 & DS, which is by far the worst version) but the demo of Galactrix is a total disappointment.
I remember playing the demo version of Puzzle Quest for hours, and I couldn't even finish the Galactrix one.
Besides I don't understand why some people think Puzzle Quest is too hard and/or the AI is cheating. Puzzle Quest is an EASY game, even on hard setting. At the beginning you struggle a little to progress but when you have access to good equipment & spell it is easy to be almost invincible (and it's fun because you decide the combination of equipment/spells that works well). The only really difficult parts are the puzzles to learn new spells (the ones that are marked as Difficult or Very Difficult). But you don't need these enemy spells, you can easily end the game without learning even one, and they are still possible to complete.
About the cheating, it happens sometimes that the computer got a great chain of 4/5 in a row and red skulls that seem abusive but you get at least as much as it during the whole game if you know how to play. Besides the game is easy so it's really not annoying.
The movement between zones is not annoying or slow, only if you make people mad at you. As it stands now, I have all but like 5-6 paths unlocked (with only 1-2 ever closing), and the only 2 races that hate me are the pirates and the souless. And even then, unless I happen to stop at the specific zone, they won't encounter you. But even after that, you get psi powers (which you always have PLENTY of power to use) to avoid battles with certain ships.
Mining (and in a way rumors and crafting) is really the core of this game IMO. You get to avoid the 'annoying' cpu, and it really becomes a puzzle of clearing the tiles the best way possible. Mines can be re-mined later. And you can easily tell what systems have what types of shops/mines/planets. Some are labeled as 'administrative' or 'agriculture' or 'mining' etc. Each one of these is usually the same between races in that certain ones always have a shop, certain ones always have 2+ asteroids, certain ones have shipyards.
Seriously Conrad, did you just get mad that it's not the original? You put in value judgements based on the fact that YOU couldn't do it. For exacmple, you claim that it's "highly unlikely" to be able to outrun ships during an encounter. That is completely 100% flat out WRONG! Notice that ships have a speed? Notice that battleships are slow as hell? Notice that transport ships are fast as fuck? Switch ships, and I guarentee, you'll stop caring about the few 'encounters' that you can't just psi your way out of.
I'll take galactrix over puzzlequest any day, if not only for the fact that galactrix isn't completely broken in terms of balance. If you play the original, and don't have lvl 100 red, with all the +red starting gear, you can't play online. Everyone and their mother just uses the 'add 1 mine per X red...' which fills the entire board, and gives a practically infinite damage.
If there's 1 piece of advice to give to people, it's this: Mine the crap out of everything, and sell to you ENEMIES. They will be your friends fast enough and make movement around the map that much easier.
I complained about the demo, which is really not as appealling to me as was the Puzzle Quest one. But I didn't play the entire game so I have to take into account the positive points from someone who played much more than me.
Let's wait for the reviews (this is not one) from people who finished the game.
The problem with your first point is that finding the Lost takes you damn near all over the entire universe and that means lots of Leapgate hacking.
And for mining:
#1.) You actually can re-mine asteroids. I'm not sure if it's after you mine the third asteroid or after the third new one (that is, 1 2 3 and 1 is back, or 1 2 3 4 then 1 is back). If you can stomach the gate for Beta Centauri, you can mine the ring of asteroids to your heart's content. And this is a good place to get a ton of materials to sell too.
#3.) Um...access the menu (Select on DS, and whatever on PC) and click on the rectangle. Bam, inventory screen of what you're carrying. And also to note, your inventory % full is based across all three of your ships, in case anyone didn't know.
Favor: Ever try selling stuff at port? When you sell so much at once, you get a Faction+# bonus which means you become friendlier with the faction represented by the area. When you fight most ships, you lose 10 faction points so trying to become green with, say, Pirates, you're going to have to work, but many missions will have you fighting quite a few different people even if you're already friendly with them.
I'm still playing it. It's still an okay game and all right when compared to its big brother, but it hasn't turned me off. ...yet.
I didn't see that you could re mine after so many are mined- it would have made the firs mission with the the ship repair a lot easier- I ended up skipping it till later and I went around everywhere trying to get the materials I needed since I would mine a galaxy and then go to the next and then go back and you still couldn't mine and figured I had to hack a bunch more gates and go on- got frustrated and just got the materials as I went all over the place- the battles were difficult with my little crap ship, but I got through them till I had enough materials-
and what I mean about the access menu is that you should just have a readout on the upper screen- there is room and it would make things a lot easier than constantly switching menus- you could easily have it @ a glance
But I don't want to have to be a Goddamn gem-matching master to win against a freaking rat. It's entirely possible (hell, probable) that I don't know how the game works and/or suck at it. I'll give you that. My point is that the game DOES cheat. If it "seems abusive" all of the time, guess what? It's probably cheating. I love plenty of hard games like Ninja Gaiden; the difference there is that I know it's MY fault when I die. In PQ, it's impossible to do anything more than guesswork. I'm not in control of what gems fall next, the computer is. I can plan ahead, sure, but the computer KNOWS what's ahead. Maybe there's a pattern to the gems I'm missing, but I shouldn't have to learn that, should I?
Look, I played the game for damn near twenty hours and maybe found five locations out of 80+. I never knew WHY I was doing what I was doing, if I was doing what I thought I was, etc. Even if my cheating complaints are bullshit that I told myself (and I like to think I know when I'm being screwed), I still think there's gotta be something amiss there.
I'm actually miffed that the buttons do nothing. I mean, ABXY and the + should at the very least scroll the damn map because I find myself visiting galaxies on accident trying to do the above search-for-quests thing.
That's total garbage. In the second and third levels of the DEMO, I was killed in one turn. From full health to zero. In one instance, (which I timed), the computer had a 1:56 long turn.
I wanted to like it, but jesus, as the review states, it's basically the first game, with all of the problems magnified by ten.
So THERE...
The other stuff: I admit it's harder to plan chains out, but it's not impossible. With each move you make, you now have a choice between two ways the gravity can pull the stuff. I'm a little miffed that four of a kinds don't give you a free turn any more, because while they may be easier to come by in this game, the five of a kinds are certainly more difficult.
One last note, on the random encounter thing. The last Psi power you get allows you to avoid all random encounters. This actually helps two-fold. Not only are you able to go directly where you want to go without being stopped in between, but you also then are required to hack fewer LeapGates. Given the choice between hacking one new LeapGate or just taking a roundabout path to a place I've already been, I'll almost always take the roundabout path, knowing that I won't be stopped midway.
Just reading about the overly-complex map system turned me off of Galactrix.