Puzzle Quest is an interesting series that slips under the radar of a lot of players. That’s astounding considering the popularity of Match-3 games both in general and on mobile devices though. It first came out in 2007 for absolutely everything but was particularly popular on PSP and DS. There was a later expansion to the game called Revenge of the Plague Lord, two direct sequels, a sci-fi spin-off called Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, and a remake of the original on Nintendo Switch with additional content. Whew!
As you might assume, Puzzle Quest is back with a new iteration. While previous versions have been all over the place in terms of quality, Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition from publisher 505 Games is the original true-to-form release with the addition of the Revenge of the Plague Lord expansion and all of the content from The Legend Returns for Switch added in as a bonus. In fact, as of now, Puzzle Quest: The Legend Returns (the Switch remake) has actually been delisted and replaced with Immortal Edition.
That’s a good thing for Puzzle Quest fans as The Legend Returns had some issues that honestly didn’t do it any justice. Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition on the other hand has a number of QoL updates, some fancy new visuals, and some solid options available that make it a better overall experience while including all of the content from both updates to the game. If you’re confused by the nomenclature, keep it simple – Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition is the ultimate version of the first game. Puzzle Quest 2 and 3 are not included in this version and neither is Galactrix.
In Puzzle Quest the core component of gameplay is Match 3 gaming. Match 3 or more gems of various colors (red, green, yellow, blue, purple, gold, and skulls) and they disappear from the board, dropping the gems above them down into their former position. Purple gems provide additional experience, gold provides you with gold (assuming you win the match) and skulls do damage to the enemy you are fighting. Colored gems add to your pool of each, shown in a bar graph on the left hand side of the screen. Your enemy has the same graph and you each have access to a number of spells and/or abilities that require the use of various colors of gems to work. Abilities and spells do a host of various things from immediate damage to enemies to healing your HP to crippling the enemy. As you level up by winning battles and gaining XP, you gain additional spells and abilities as well as points to allocate to boost your stats and improve your battle performance.
Simple, right? But Puzzle Quest is unique among Match 3 games in that it is far more story based and creating the right loadout of spells for each character determines whether or not you can succeed as the game becomes harder and the enemies become more powerful. Spells tend to have a variety of complementary abilities, so you might be able to boost certain types of mana and then use them for attacks for example. Or weaken others then use your spells to hit them while they’re down. Effective use of spells is essential for success in Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition. Between matches and spells, there’s a lot going on in combat but that’s not all there is to Puzzle Quest!
Once you’ve got a few battles under your belt, chances are you’ll have a fair bit of gold. That gold has a number of uses in the game including unlocking areas in your Citadel, buying additional information at the tavern, and buying weapons, armor, and items in the various stores around the kingdom. Unlocking areas in your Citadel is by far the most important here as it allows you to capture enemies, capture mounts to ride, manufacture your own weapons and armor from runes you acquire and more. Once you’ve captured an enemy (using a Match 3 puzzle solving game), you can then gain access to new spells from those enemies with the Mage tower. Conquer the spells in a different Match 3 sub-game and you can then use them in combat, broadening your abilities.
You can even siege cities in order to gain additional income and staging areas to operate your Citadel from, though sieges are tough and lock out all access to a city until you defeat it. Along the way you’ll also pick up 8 different companions that lend their abilities to you in addition to the boosts you get from your mount. Each companion has a backstory as well, so there’s a wealth of dialogue to go through that sets the stage for the wider plot with tons of detail.
The overall plot in Puzzle Quest is remarkably well-done as well. While there’s no real voice acting in the game, you are trying to stop Lord Bane, the god of death from wreaking havoc on the kingdom of Bartonia. While it isn’t a complicated story, there are a ton of characters, lots of in-game dialogue between matches, and some excellent world-building going on here. The script for Puzzle Quest is more than a bit cheesy, but it’s fun as well and there’s a surprising dedication to the RPG background of the game here.
Naturally, this isn’t the fanciest looking game around, but Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition has definitely had a facelift from previous iterations with its transition to 4K. Character maps, overworld, the GUI, and even puzzles look crisper and are much better in HD than the last version of the game on the Switch. The character portraits and monsters look especially good now, the gems and skulls have been redesigned, and the game feels subtly more polished all around. There haven’t been any noticeably changes to the music or sound effects though, and while Puzzle Quest doesn’t have bad music, the songs do get tiresome after a while, as does the crashing noise of exploding skulls. This isn’t a remarkable soundtrack by any means, but it’s more than serviceable.
The quality-of-life updates are the other bonus that really makes Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition worthwhile. In addition to the jump to 4K, the game runs much more smoothly and has a host of options that allow you to speed the game up by accelerating various parts of the gameplay. That speeds up the battles considerably but it’s not the best change. Puzzle Quest has always been a bit cheap when it came to the computer AI, but now if you’re having trouble with a fight, you can just lower the difficulty from the default normal to the lower easy mode in order to keep things moving along. This was always a sticking point for long-time players because the computer tended to be rather unfair, forcing you to grind already completed quests and the overworld until you could level up, squeak a victory through, and keep going. Now that’s no long an issue and if you’re an absolute masochist, you can always switch to hard as well!
There really aren’t any major negatives with Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition. It loads up fast, runs great on the Switch, has full touch support for portable gameplay, a host of neat little upgrades, and all the additional content from previous releases of the game and DLC. This is the definitive version of Puzzle Quest and it’s still just as fun as when it came out. It’s also only $15 for hours and hours of entertainment (and only $12 until Oct. 3rd on the eShop)! That’s some pretty great bang for your buck and old fans and new alike are going to have a blast playing Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition.
This review is based on a digital copy of Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played even better with touch controls in undocked mode than it does with a controller in docked mode. Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition is also available for PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Xbox Series, and for PC on Epic and Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.