After a whole battery charge and a half–which translates to about ten hours–I’ve yet to feel truly engaged by Puzzle Quest Galactrix. Sure, it’s still plenty addicting, but I don’t feel as if I’ve really accomplished anything. I’ve only engaged in about a dozen or so battles, unlike its predecessor Puzzle Quest Warlords where the roads are littered with enemies interrupting your travels.
Instead what serves as gates in your progression are literal gates. There’s a large overworld map dotted with star systems you travel between. Each star system, in turn, has its own free-roaming mini-map which contains some combination of planets, space stations, factories, asteroids, and the aforementioned jumpgates. Since each star system can branch into several different directions, there are generally between three to six gates.
Each gate is locked to begin with and requires to you play a “hacking” variation of the game in order to be able to unlock it for any travel. Rather than battling back and forth with some sort of opponent, the “hacking” game is a timed affair in which the player is presented with a series of colored gems that must be eliminated in the prescribed order.
The major problem is that the timer continues ticking while your combos rack up as new sets fall into place. Usually in puzzle games, this is a matter of of chaotic enjoyment, but in Galactrix it often serves to impede progress and just eats up precious seconds waiting for it to end. Sometimes the cascade contains the next color in the series. However, (what feels like) more often it doesn’t. It is truly infuriating to restart puzzles constantly because of what would normally be a welcome event in any other context.
To borrow a term from Resident Evil, I feel like the “master of unlocking,” a traveling galactic locksmith. There are some missions asking me to do battle, but I feel completely overpowered. I can purchase weapons and new ships, but I can’t figure out how to earn money, aside from selling the results of my mining (and perhaps winning battles?). Mind you, asteroids are finite resources and are “destroyed” whether you win or lose the “mining” game. It does seem they reset after some period, but I haven’t seen any indication of how to tell how long that cycle is and nor are there asteroids in every star system.
Oh yeah, and there’s a totally aggravatingly lengthy combination of loading and save screens between what seems like every action you take. I don’t know what’s so much more complex in this sequel, but I remember the original being pretty much instantaneous in every regard.
I’m still hooked thanks to the rapid consumption of individual rounds and the general gameplay, but I’m coming away unfulfilled within the greater scale of things.
Would I recommend it? From what I’ve seen so far, no. Stick with the original.
