If I had to choose a game from the Nintendo DS era that best defined my love affair with it, that was Puzzle Quest. Somehow taking the experience of match-3, which I had never particularly enjoyed, and marrying it with skills, RPG elements and overly dramatic fantasy plot points made it a serious addiction back in the heyday of the system. Not only did it make for incredible pick-up-and-play action, it also offered a shocking amount of longevity that was just never palpable in the many, many sequels that came to pass. Perhaps understanding this, the current holders of the IP decided to simply take the already existing game that’s almost 20 years gone by and resurrected it for modern players. Once again, Nintendo is the place to be for these remasters, as Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition is the peak puzzle trap for players new and old.

If this screen just gave you a wave of nostalgia, congratulations! You’re reasonably old!

Feeling and looking like a throwback Dungeons & Dragons campaign, Puzzle Quest allows the player to choose one of several classes to enter into this fantasy realm. While each of the characters has some individuality in terms of story beats and progression, the broad strokes are the same throughout. You’re a hero trying to be cool and save the realm one quest at a time. Sometimes you’re helping out a queen who I’m pretty sure you’re super into. Sometimes you’re just doing patrol duty and fending off roving bandits. And, on occasion, you’re doing something worthwhile, like rescuing a person from marauders or trying to break an evil wizards’ curse. In any case, you are off to make the world a better place the only way you can: combining rows of shapes and colors into matches that give you boons and occasionally trigger chain reactions. Just like the Romans.

Let’s get out in front of the main criticism of Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition, which harkens back to the complaints about the original iteration. The story, plot points and narrative elements therein are wooden, barebones and often laughably bad. The script is stilted and oddly broken, like an attempt was made to capture real conversation in a fantasy realm. Instead, it comes across like a high school play, complete with actors who either a.) dream of Broadway and b.) are doing this for an Arts credit, and they’re both on stage at the same time. If you ever were channel surfing and ended up watching some B-grade fantasy made back in the 70s, you’ll understand the appeal of what’s happening here. It’s hokey and laughable, but the action and the landscape make it captivating, and you’re also wondering if this one has nudity (Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition contains no nudity).

Sick comeback, Osrik, did you rehearse in the mirror?

But also, do you think Bejeweled, Candy Crush and HuniePop got their success from story points? It all comes down to the mechanics, and this is where Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition is absolutely brilliant. It could be straightforward enough, just asking players to match up different icons to get combos,  but it goes so much deeper than that. Besides getting XP, gold and dealing damage, each of the colored gems creates mana of different types that then gets used in spellcasting. So if you’re a druid-adjacent character, you’ll want to stockpile green on your turn, whereas the barbarian/warrior class probably wants red, because you call a spade a spade. Spells can do direct damage, sweep pieces off the board, alter your own mana stores, and so much more. The character you choose dictates your potential spells, so choose wisely.

The same board is shared between you and an NPC combatant, so you need to plot out what you’ll do while also anticipating what your opponent might do on their next turn. The AI is all over the place, and that only seems to have an arbitrary correlation to the difficulty level. When you’re battling a troll, a zombie, a giant rat or a minotaur, each of these beasts has an equal chance to either be locked in and creating incredible, devastating combos while spellslinging with the best of them, or making some pithy match that makes no sense. As a result of this, players need to approach each and every encounter like it’ll be the fight of their lives. You might get blessed by RNG and have a couple of fantastic combos, or you get stunlocked as you watch your health plummet under constant, unrelenting assault.

I love that defeat is almost as rewarding as success.

What’s incredible is that Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition really allows players to approach in any style to get the most out of their game enjoyment. If you’re super into minutiae, you can dig down into the mechanics that are beneath the surface of Puzzle Quest. Spend time to grind gold so you can buy better equipment for optimized combat. Try to capture multiple beasts to ride as mounts and get passive benefits, or imprison some enemies and analyze them in the mage’s tower to gain their spells and use them yourself in battle. If you really want to, you can even keep running sidequests, like the aforementioned patrol duty, to grind out the XP and gold so you can spend even more cash to expand your city (of course you have a city!) and unlock further metagame elements. Minmaxers can have an absolute field day if they want to.

Or…you can match puzzle pieces. While you can’t be totally aloof on your character builds and how you want to progress in the game, you don’t need to overthink Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition in any major way. The very nature of the game takes into account both skill and chance, so players who understand the fundamentals right away can progress far, and people who are just stupid lucky can get even farther. A dedicated player can focus on the right stats to highly improve their mana pool, their damage dealt and the most resistance possible to certain elemental strikes, and you can still just get positively wrecked because a Mana Storm (no moves left) seems to occur every few turns, just for you, and sets up the enemy with a string of spectacular and dreadfully unfair wins.

The orc waits patiently as I figure out the right puzzle combination to kidnap him. Seems legit.

That might be my only real complaint is that the chaos nature of it all can lead to real frustration. I ended up fighting the same opponent ten times in a row, despite being a higher level and having an excellent array of attacks, because the random elements completely screwed me. I couldn’t make a move without setting up the bastard for a positively devastating counterattack that then left me with nothing to do but hope I could grind enough yellow to either Cleave or Wild Lore the board into the right position. Spoiler: it never happened. Though I will admit, it was rather funny to keep losing to something that clearly wants to kill me, but being told “You lost, so go do it again!” Find any other game where you can be beaten to death and then just get tossed right back into the ring. It was madness.

When it comes down to it, it’s all how this version of an already well known game lands, and I think Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition does right by the legacy of the game series. While many complain that the franchise went off the rails with subsequent iterations (Galactrix was certainly an odd duck), the core idea of mixing fantasy combat with match-3 has always been a good one, and it comes across exceedingly well on the Switch. Yes, the graphics have been updated and polished, giving us an HD version of something that came out during the GW Bush administration. The soundtrack has been given a more robust sensation but hasn’t been totally overworked. But the decision to make sure the Switch version has touchscreen interactions puts you straight back into the ever-deepening well of tiles and time sinks. 

If I just grind for another four hours, I can buy a statue! Oh boy!

I love a game where you can literally pick up and play for a few minutes and put it down without consequence. I love being able to sink close to an hour at a time, doing the same rewarding actions, and then walk away without needing to get another move, another turn. It’s the most ideal way to casually enjoy a game, and Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition keeps players locked in for the most viciously enjoyable cycle that I could imagine. If you loved it the first time, you’re going to adore it the second.

Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition is available now on Steam, Epic, GOG, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series One X/S and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Puzzle Quest: Immortal Edition was provided by the publisher.