Australian developer Infinite Interactive struck conceptual gold with 2007’s Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. By fusing the gameplay of match-3 style puzzle games with that of traditional RPGs, they created a fun and addictive formula that they’ve been mining ever since. Less than a year after their breakthrough success, they put out Neopets Puzzle Adventure, adapting a similar game system to the characters from the popular kid’s website. This was followed almost immediately by Puzzle Quest Galactrix, which set the action in deep space. Now they bring us Puzzle Kingdoms, which returns the series to its fantasy roots.

Like the original Puzzle Quest, Puzzle Kingdoms is set in the somewhat obscure Warlords universe, created as the setting for a series of turn-based strategy titles released on PC between 1989 and 2003. Suffice it to say, it’s your average fantasy world, with wizards, elves, and goblins. Character creation is as simple as choosing a gender and a name, after which you’re dropped into a pretty nasty situation. It seems that the land has been cursed with a terrible drought and famine, and desperation has plunged formerly peaceful villages into anarchy. Your character finds a magical artifact that seems to remove the curse, and sets out with it to restore the land to happiness.

Character creation couldn’t be simpler. You can’t even choose between multiple character portraits.

Honestly, the plot’s pretty thin and cliché-ridden. It’s mostly there as an excuse to set up the central concept of the game: to conquer progressively larger and more difficult villages, towns, and kingdoms. As in the previous games, combat is settled through a turn-based puzzle game. Like they did in Galactrix, the developers have made some fundamental changes to the rules of puzzle mode. Instead of swapping block’s positions to form at least three gems into a straight line, here you’ll be sliding entire rows of gems up, down, left, or right to make matches of any shape (as long as you have three or more pieces and each piece shares at least one side with another piece of the same color, it counts). Additionally, the game no longer penalizes you for performing a move that doesn’t make a match, and you can’t earn extra turns with especially large matches. While these might seem like superficial changes, they pretty drastically alter the kinds of tactics and play techniques you’ll have to use. Puzzle matches also move at a much faster pace than in the previous games.

The puzzle game looks pretty similar, but some changes in the rules make for very different gameplay.

Your character, as the Warlord, is the strategist behind the combat, but the actual fighting is done by your hero and his troops. Your choice of hero influences many things, like elemental strengths and weaknesses and basic attack and strength statistics, but your choice of troops is more crucial. Each troop type (Peasant, Crossbowman, and Knight are a few examples) has their own attack type, damage, and health. If a unit is killed their attack can no longer be used, and if all your troops are killed then you’ve lost the battle.

Troops act much the way spells did in Puzzle Quest – by matching a certain number of a certain block type in the puzzle game, you can activate their attack, dealing damage to your enemy’s troops. There’s an added layer of strategy here – if you wait until multiple troops are ready to attack each gets a damage bonus, so you can save all your attacks for one big offensive. Of course, ready and waiting troops can still be killed, so it’s up to you to decide if the pay-off is worth the risk.

One crossbowman is ready to attack, but if he waits until his comrades are ready too they’ll all get bonuses.

Like its predecessors, Puzzle Kingdoms has RPG-style depth to go along with its puzzle mode’s addictive nature. By playing puzzle mode with slightly altered rules (like a timed variant, or one where you must clear the board of all pieces) you can do things like search dungeons for treasure and spells, recruit new troop types at taverns, and more. These minigame variations are a nice change of pace every once in a while, but they can get old fast when you’re forced to do them over and over again.

If I had to pinpoint Puzzle Kingdoms’ weakness, it would be the production values. It’s obvious that this game didn’t quite have the budget that Puzzle Quest or Galactrix did, and this affects several aspects of the game. Most notably, the visuals are quite static and lackluster. Environments and characters are represented by simple 2D artwork, with little to no animation throughout. The art direction isn’t terrible (uninspired, maybe, but not terrible) so it’s not painful to look at, but the graphics are pretty bare-bones. The sub-standard multiplayer mode (a simple one-on-one fight, with each player granted a random hero and set of troops) also seems limited by the game’s budget. The one area of production that doesn’t feel constrained by a lack of funds is the game’s soundtrack, which is lush, orchestral and epic.

The map screen is about as fancy as the game’s visuals get.

The bottom line is, if you have any interest whatsoever in the concept of a puzzle/RPG hybrid, you’ve probably already played one of Infinite Interactive’s previous games. This one’s pretty good, too. It’s as fun and addictive as ever, and Puzzle Kingdoms’ speed of play gives it the slight edge over Puzzle Quest in my book. Still, it’s substantially the same as the previous games, so if you’re burnt out on the formula this one probably won’t impress you.

Gameplay: 7.8
Match like-colored blocks to fuel your physical attacks and magic spells. Like the Puzzle Quest games, the combination of puzzle and RPG gameplay is deep and addictive, and the new puzzle rules keeps things fresh and interesting.

Graphics: 6.3
The visuals are about as basic as they come. The 2D characters and environments have little to no animation, though they’re all drawn in a nice (if generic) fantasy style. The only real visual effects are in the puzzle mode, but the overall visual presentation is lackluster.

Sound: 7.5
The soundtrack is full of beautiful orchestral tracks, with an appropriate epic feel to the music. There’s very little voice-work in the game (mostly just in the opening cinematic), but it’s reasonably well done. One cool audio touch: when your troops deal or receive damage, their battle cries are played from the Wii Remote’s speaker.

Difficulty: Medium
Each puzzle is randomly generated, so of course luck plays a role. If you’re stuck, you can grind previously beaten areas for experience points. The computer doesn’t seem to get ridiculously lucky as often as in previous Puzzle Quest games, so it’s a little less frustrating.

Concept: 7.6
Infinite Interactive has proven time and again that RPGs and puzzle games blend to form a potent combination. While it’s not as fresh as it was a few years ago, it’s still a great mix that can easily suck you in.

Multiplayer: 6.5
Fighting against a buddy with a randomly chosen character and set of troops is fun, but they could have done much more (not to mention, the randomness leads to plenty of un-even match-ups). It feels like they ran out of time, money, or both.

Overall: 7.3
Puzzle Kingdoms is awfully similar to its recently-released predecessors, and the bargain-bin production values leave something to be desired. Despite its shortcomings, though, it’s probably my favorite game Infinite Interactive has released yet. If you’re up for another helping of puzzle/RPG this soon after Galactrix, Puzzle Kingdoms delivers.