If you don't want to play just a traditional RPG, this game is for you with interesting gamplay and graphics
Good: Graphics are basic but fun | Battles can be challenging but fun at the same time | Has some of the basic RPG style mixed in | Can see the map and characters better
Bad: The difficulties are a bit off at times | Wish there were more character to choose from
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Back in March of this year, the DS hosted Puzzle Quest and found some good success in a small amount of fans that found the game to be "out of the ordinary". Seven months later, the quest finds its way to the XBOX Live Arcade section and many fans rejoiced: "hurray..." Even though a small amount of people took up the 360 "challenge of the warlords", I would ask you to give it a try if you are hungry for from old school looking RPG action.
The game is pretty simple and should only take a good 15 minutes (give of take) to understand the basic idea but you will have an adviser to help you through with the game's challenges. To start, you must create a player and you have a choice of 4 classes to choose from: Druid, Warrior, Magician and Knight. All have their own special characteristics that will help you in battles and when you level up. Once you do this, you are set to go out and battle away. There is a Quest area that would be the best to start off with to get use to the game and level up. The quest is consistent of a map and cities/towns/areas that you will travel to and find battles to fight. The fighting is what makes this game interesting as it takes a game like "Jewel Quest" and makes it into an epic battle arena for one-on-one action. The battle board consists of green, blue, red and yellow jewels with money, experience and skulls (those represent how you hit your opponent) and you have to match 3 or more to receive its ability. As you gain these jewel points for yourself, your character will have special abilities that they can use if the jewel amounts are enough. You can only have 6 enabled abilities at a time and will get new ones every time you level up. You can organize, remove and add new abilities before every battle. Gold will give you money while battling and will not lose it if you lose. This also goes for experience while in battle. The skulls that can be matched up are for a basic attack. There are also red flashing skulls which will give an extra 5 damage and blow up a 3x3 radius around that skull and you receive the abilities that were destroyed in the explosion. Those skulls can turn a match around or make it harder to come back depending on what's happening in battle.
Graphics: Its basic and it's nothing special as it feels like they didn't want to change much from the DS version. The characters do look better and the animation has been improved but nothing that will give the 360 any trouble. Even with these basic graphics in place, the game has the fun factor that make the graphics not as important as other games out there.
Gameplay: The basic RPG will have a main character with its companions fighting evil monster on random occasions or in plain site. This game has that also but the battle system takes an existing game (Jewel Quest) and places the RPG look into it. Its never been done like this before for a console and that's why people are becoming hooked. You want to gain experience, complete quests, battle monsters while have some sort of strategy in the mix. The game also has a bit of luck when you start to make moves on the board. Sometimes a match you made will cause more damage to your enemy or give you more turns/jewels which you sometimes have no control over. Sound: Not much to the sound in this game as there is some background music and some sound effects for matching jewels or attacking your enemy (or visa versa). This is probably the lowest point of the game since you really don't need it to play (when characters talk, the dialog is all text based).
My Thoughts: RPG's are kind of limited now and we (RPG fans of the 360) need to dig our teeth into anything that looks promising. This game is just that and for the price (about $15.00) its a great buy. The game will keep you entertained with classic RPG gameplay mixed with an interesting battle system when fighting. There are also features like building your citadel, capturing enemies/monsters, completing quests and unlocking achievements for your 360 gamertag. If you have some extra money to spend on some Microsoft points, give this game a try and I think you will not regret it.