Freemium Perdition: Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest

Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest
Match-3 "RPG"
1 Player
System: Android
Developer: D3PA
Year of Release: 2015

I didn't think I would wind up writing another Freemium Perdition, then something comes along and proves me wrong. I think it's telling that instead of keeping me engaged for a few months, and even longer (though in shorter bursts), this one only held my interest for a few weeks. Although I think I'll continue to play sporadically. Magic the Gathering takes two franchises I'm a fairly big fan of. Magic the Gathering is a rich universe that's been around almost as long as I have, I've been playing off an on for sixteen years now (I hate already being able to feel old) and for anyone who's a fan of tabletop games it's well worth checking. I'll never advocate for organized play, but getting a decent collection and playing with customize decks against friends is ideal (for my friends and I at least). Mix that with Puzzle Quest, which made match-3 puzzle games appeal to me on a grander scale (although the series basically died for me personally after the first when none of the sequels seemed to keep up with it's lofty ideas), and you've got a great idea.

I haven't played any of the sequels to Puzzle Quest due to reading reviews and finding out what I hoped had been a skeleton for something grander to get fleshed out later was in fact as fleshed out as they were going to get. Instead skinning and maiming this once beautiful creature to make it easier to get into I guess? I still yearn for a fully thought out RPG with a match-3 battle system, that could be amazing. Apparently I might wind up going on tangents in this one folks! Anyway, Magic Puzzle Quest strips out all the exploration aspects of the original Puzzle Quest instead consisting of lists of chapters, each broken down into several battles each. They play out like Puzzle Quest, but with the five colors of mana instead of the generic symbols and another planeswalker symbol. The mana symbols are used to be able to summon various creatures and spells that are necessary to win, while the planeswalker symbol gives your planeswalker points to use their own various innate powers.

The overall goal, much like in regular magic, is to use your creatures and spells to deplete your opponent's health down to zero first. You can have up to three creatures out at a time, summoning more of a creature you already summoned powers up the one that is already out and they have many of the abilities from the card game, plus some new ones. I'm not going to get into all that though. Spells are broken up into two categories (from what I could tell at least). Spells that act like sorceries in the card game, one use cards that do something (usually) helpful. Support cards are original to this game and basically enchant one of the mana on the play board, these stay in affect until the mana that is enchanted is destroyed, which can sometimes be quite annoying and lead to you destroying your own support (while annoying I don't think this is a downside of the game). Utilizing all of these things will lead you to victory.

It plays quite well (sadly my device is pretty old and doesn't run the game very well, but I've seen it played on newer devices and it runs like a charm) and with the background flavor of Magic it looks great and the scant bits of writing are standard fare for the franchise. But this games got problems, almost all of them are due to the freemium nature of the game (WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?). You start with a single planeswalker and have four other basic planeswalkers to pick up for the relatively cheap price of 10 crystals. Oh right. This game has two types of currency (oh shit!) one is used to level up your planeswalkers (granting them new abilities, faster recharge times (always got a find a way to keep people from playing longer than short bursts), more HP, etc) and the other is used for buying stuff, crystals. Crystals can be bought for real money, or earned through extra challenges in each battle in the game in small amounts (or if they have server issues they will gift a decent amount after resolving them, pretty standard fare (how am I affording all of these parentheses?). Problem is these guys are fucking con-artists.

Want a non-basic planeswalkers? For a short time you can buy a brand new one, sometimes with more than one color (allowing more deck customization options) for the low low price of 50 dollars. There isn't even a crystal option during this sale period. After an update they added a couple more planeswalkers to the crystal shop as well, but instead of ten they cost two hundred and fifty. Yeah, those bonus bits of crystals you get from challenges? Ten to fifteen. Hmm (Granted there might be other, faster ways to grind crystals I've only dabbled in the single player story content). Even more hilariously, you can buy boosters for varied amounts of crystals (fair from what I've seen mostly, compared to other freemium titles at least) but they sometimes offer exclusive super rare/powerful cards for around twenty to thirty actual dollars, yup, no crystal option for them either. This stuff is right on the front page too, this is the kind of things that annoys the fuck out of me.

It is so frustrating that the game literally begs you to put MASSIVE amounts of money into, I'm not saying a phone game can't be worth full price, but you have to offer something substantial to be WORTH it. Don't nickle and dime me (more actually twenty dollar and fifty dollar me) for bullshit that adds very little to the game. The game does offer the standard daily freebie for logging in, as well as a free booster pack every eight hours (with only three cards compared to the five you get in paid for packs), but it just isn't enough for me personally.

I can't deny that a huge factor for me not maintaining interest is how terribly my phone runs the game, but honestly, even running at full speed, I don't see this game lasting for me at all. I wind up logging in and more often than not, grab the free stuff without even playing a match. When a game is drawing me in strictly to collect the dailies and nothing else it has failed me. While Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest is in no way a bad game, it certainly feels like a rip off and the bits of fun that are there are in no way worth some of those extra fees. Playing it for free can be worthwhile, especially with devices strong enough to run it well. For me though, I'll stick with my DS copy of Puzzle Quest and playing Magic with friends in my mother's basement.