Puzzle Quest - PSP - 86/100

This game is extremely addictive, but does get old after a while. While most of the player's time is spent playing bejeweled, the idea of applying a simple puzzle game formula to a role playing game is just brilliant.

To fight monsters, you play a game of bejeweled. As you combine different colored orbs, treasures and skulls, you acquire mana (the orbs,) money (treasures,) experience (purple thingy) and even accomplish non-magical attacks (by combining skulls.) Or you can simply cast one of your spells (assuming you have enough mana) during your turn instead.

The nice thing about playing bejeweled to fight monsters, get items and conquer cities is that you never know what the board will look like next. This is also one small negative on the game. It's possible to get an unlucky combination of stones and be crushed by the opponent immediately. On the other hand it\'s sometimes possible to get a good combination of stones and start of a battle with a massive attack.

There is multi-player, but the character classes seem to be unbalanced. I only played about 50% of the game using a Wizard, but I had a lot of fun doing so.

Another small annoyance are the random monsters that pop up on the screen. They just stay on the map until you reach them. So if you ever want to crisscross the map for any reason you have to fight through numerous monsters.

It's a good game, but there is only so much mileage you can get out of bejeweled.

Console: PSP
Publisher: D3 Publisher
Developer: Infinite Interactive
Review Score: 86/100