Like playing Magic, but always wondered what it would be like to play it as a puzzle game? In Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest, that’s basically what you get to do. You start off the story mode as a Planeswalker with a certain amount of life and have a deck of cards, sounds normal enough. The catch is that at the center of the screen, there are different colored orbs that you can rotate to match three or more like bejeweled. Before you do that, you should determine which card whether it be a creature, spell, or support to play first. Such cards can only be played once you have the necessary mana, much like in the card game of Magic. This is where the match three element comes into play.
Each time you match three or more of the same color/s orb that the cards in your deck are, you can play a card. In the actual Magic the Gathering card game, you need to put down land cards that serve as your mana to play the other cards in your deck like creatures for example. So here, instead of lands, you have orbs that you play only when its your turn. The goal here is summoning creatures that can attack the opposing Planeswalker’s life directly, but there is more to this game than meets the eye.
Another way Puzzle Quest differentiates from the card game is that most normal monsters can just bypass the opponent’s creatures and attack the player or computers life directly. In the card game, you can only do if your creature/s has an ability such as unblockable or the opposing player has no creatures on the field that they could block with. Besides simply playing creature cards, you must put enough spell and support cards into your deck that can help your creatures out. This could be power up cards to raise your creatures attack, cards that give you more mana to play more of your cards, life gain, destroying your opponent’s creatures, many possibilities.
As far as story mode, there isn’t much of the story here to speak of. It’s basically like a fighting game, facing one opponent, winning, and on to the next one. You can play with the story mode deck or if you’re like me and know this game well, make your own deck once you get some good cards from opening free booster packs. You can also buy cards with real world currency if you really want an edge, but don’t ever feel forced to. The game is a free mobile phone game, and it should stay that way. There are also events where you can test your skills against other live players in tournament style matches over an internet connection. I’ve done fairly well here, but it’s always a good thing to go through your deck/s and remove any cards that don’t quite jive with your particular strategy.
It’s nice that a game that was released in 2015 still releases the latest card sets of today. Those cards and Planeswalkers can be purchased with real money for sure, however, you can use your collected daily rewards and mana crystals gained through playing story mode to get the most updated cards and strategies. For a game that combines a match three puzzle game with a popular card game, Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest is a lot of fun and addicting. Just having access to the newest cards and playing online battles is a treat. There is enough here to keep one busy for weeks, then after playing other games, going back to this one after a new set has dropped just to reignite those creative juices once more.
CBK Score: 8.5/10
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