Customer Reviews

Puzzle Quest Galactrix

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First, i'll say i'm a huge fan of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords(COW)(for PC and DS). While this game is plenty different and slightly addicting, it doesn't have the same quality of gameplay.

Differences:
The major difference for Galactrix is hexagons, instead of linear up & across gems in COW. You can match gems in many different ways, which can be slightly confusing at first, but it's easy enough. Instead of castles in COW, you have galaxies and planets in this one. The map is huge and would take a HUGE amount of time to complete all the missions.

Upgrades:
The only way to progress through the game as COW players know, is to get upgrades for everything (skill points and special gem abilities). Compared to COW for gameplay battle, upgrades don't feel as useful or straight forward. What I mean is, there are very few 'attack' abilities as compared to a huge number of shield and gem powerups. Your abilities are also limited by the size of the ship you have (I didn't figure this out for a while). For example, you can't use 2 laser beams if you have a small ship.

Gameplay:
As a result of what i've mentioned, gameplay can be a bit sluggish, although it's addicting because you want to see what kind of upgrades you can obtain next. That said, leveling up in this game appears to be MUCH slower than for COW. It's easy to get stuck if you're in the "red zone", and this can get very frustrating. Imagine getting waylaid by an enemy ship and not being able to beat them, then getting sent back to another galaxy where you get waylaid there too, if beaten there again, you get sent back to the planet you were just beaten(like a loop). Sorry if that was confusing! One last thing i'll mention is travel. This gets very old and repetative. You have to Hack into galaxies to go to a new one. For this you have a limited amount of time for matching a sequence of gems. Imagine doing this for EVERY 50 + galaxies that are in the game.

This review has been pretty negative, and the game frustrates me, yet I continue playing to see how I can upgrade my ship, skills, and abilities. For that, it's a decent, playable sequel of Challenge of the Warlords, but I like COW much better.

I wanted to like this- I really did. Graphics are beautiful, the sci-fi concept is fun, and I was all set for Challenge of the Warlords 2: 5,000 Years Ahead. Instead, actual play reveals a frustrating game of far too much random chance, pointless timewasting, arcane rules and conditions, and a plot that would have looked pretty good for an Atari 2600 game. I can't seriously believe this ever saw playtesting of any kind.

Assuming Aspyr wants to fix it, what they'll need to do, in order:
-The "hacking leapgates" mini-game needs to go back to whatever Stygian hell it came out of. If it can't just be removed, ED24 needs better options for dealing with it. Experience points for the crew would help here- maybe every time ED hacks a gate, he gets a bit better at it and can eventually buy abilities like Time Stop or Destroy All *whatever* Gem.
-Similar considerations apply for Mine, Create, and even Haggle. What, you'll do something a hundred times and get no better?
-Combat is constantly pointless and unavoidable. Why is a pirate ship half my size determined to attack me? Could it be that the designer just wants to waste game time to make up for a lack of story? The other possibility is that the pirates are religious fanatics who want to die in hopes of being reincarnated in better video games. I'd say their chances are pretty good.
-The plot is overly contrived. This was really kind of sad- plots are vital to games and don't have any set game loadout cost- their value is not measured in megabytes on CD. Maybe more detail on just why all these people trust you with their lives, or why you can get blown up and come right back, or why random alien ships are automatically hostile- that these things were convenient to a designer does not make them justified.
-There is no real game economy. Credits buy you things, but you can't just buy better equipment, plans, or information. After a while, they're meaningless. Even buying better ships is barely a justification for having to apparently pick most of your plans and equipment up from an expanding cloud of plasma and pirate ship pieces. Shouldn't friendly systems be willing to sell you things? They don't even have to have a pretty picture for the gizmo- a name and some basic attributes would be fine, just like most items in CoW. This would also get you past rough patches- you could grind for cash until you could buy an anti-pirate cannon or something.

In sum, this is terrible. I generally expect and get better game play and plotting from free Flash. Don't spend anything until some kind of patch comes out, if then.

I enjoyed the original Puzzle Quest so much so that I bought it for several platforms. I was really looking forward to a space-themed version of the game. I am extremely disappointed in Puzzle Quest Galactrix.
The game starts out fun at first but you soon realize that all the charm and fun of the original have been sucked out and replaced with needlessly monotonous and empty gameplay
Having to hack every stargate is cheap, repetitive and boring. Also the balancing of the game needs major adjustment. I've never seen so many miraculous comebacks from an AI opponent in my life! Could the programmers make it less obvious the AI knows what pieces will show up next on the board? As someone mentioned above, having to use PSI points to avoid battles, again, seems cheap. Also has mentioned above there is very little reward for getting chains or defeating puzzles/ships. You might get a few points of cargo but nothing really satisfying.
I figured the Xbox 360 Arcade version of this game would be a "no-brainer" purchase. Needless to say, I will not be picking Puzzle Quest Galactrix up for any other platform.
I'm glad I only spent $10 on this from Amazon. I would be angry if I had spent a full $20 on this waste.
Avoid this game, unless of course you enjoy pulling your own hair out.

For the price, Galactrix is a good puzzle game. It was fun to figure out strategies, and the game became addictive. However, while the puzzle were initially interesting, they soon became repetitive and monotonous. Mining asteroids for example was exactly the same thing every time, and you need to do it a lot in order to generate enough cash to be effective in combat. Maybe I got lucky in the order that I decided to complete the quests, but pretty early in the game I earned a reward (I'll put that info in a comment on this review) that made the game pretty easy. After that the only challenge was in fighting the largest battleships. Even with them, there is no consequence to losing the battle because the game just lets you just try again. The enemy AI has a big flaw in that it will often neglect an obvious attack and do something of questionable benefit. About half way through the game I just wanted to get it over with, so I skipped reading any of the dialog, and just worked to complete the quests as fast as I could.

Wow I like the first puzzle quest so I fugured cool a sci fi version. Id love to tell you how this game is but every 10-15 minutes the game dumps you to windows without saving so what can I say but Was this game finished and ready to sell on the pc platform? I think not.

I bought this game because the original Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords was an incredibly fun game. A lot of sequels fail because they change too little, and the gameplay ends up feeling stale. Galactrix fails because it changes too much.

You can no longer choose your character class. There are fewer skills, you see much less improvement in them from level to level, and they have a negligible impact on gameplay. There are less items (which now double as spells, eliminating an entire level of customization), and most of them are useless. Essentially, character customization doesn't exist anymore.

More seriously, while the original focused on combat, in Galactrix you spend most of your time in a mini-game used to hack leap-gates, which allow you to travel between the game's solar systems. Unfortunately, there are a huge number of systems, with very little to do in each, so a simple quest can easily have you playing the leap-gate game many times. It gets thoroughly boring by about the second time you play it, so the fact that you have no choice but to do it tens of times (and it gets longer as you progress) gets incredibly frustrating.

What little combat you do enter is also less fun. The addition of shields as a second form of hitpoints was great. And although other reviews have trashed the way the game uses hexes instead of squares, I rather like that. The real problem is that Galactrix mostly does away with free turns; you no longer get a free turn upon matching four gems, and (after many hours of play) I have yet to find an item that gives you an extra turn.

I suppose this makes multiplayer matches more fun; it could be frustrating to sit there and watch someone else take so many turns. But multiple turns was the key to what made the original game fun. You'd see a match of four, use the mana to cast a spell giving you an extra turn, then use that to set up a row of skulls over the next two turns. Planning and executing these strategies was what combat was all about.

In Galactrix, you can still be a little clever in how you match, but overall, you have much less control over what happens. It's mostly just reacting from turn to turn and hoping you get lucky with the new tiles dropping in. It destroys what was most fun about the original.

I wish I had waited to read the reviews before buying the game. The original was fantastic, and I still highly recommend it. But Galactrix eliminates most of what was fun about it.

I have played Puzzle Quest Warlords before this game and I loved both of them. Each game had his pros and cons but overall I still like Warlords a little better. Here is my breakdown of the game:

Pros:
-> New game playing with hexagon pieces instead of squares.
-> Can gain and lose favor with different Factions in the game
-> At least 3 New challenge modes I don't remember in Warlords including: Not blow up any bombs for 10-25 turns; When mining for resources there are spaces you can't destroy which makes things more challenging; Destroying colored pieces in a certain sequence
-> No time limit for determining your next move in battles and every challenge except matching color pieces in a sequence
-> Ability to not have to use PSI to avoid battles with a 'glitch' I found in the game.
-> New pieces fall on the map from any of the six directions (depending on how you moved the pieces last). This leads to some strategy on which way to move and clear pieces out (which is slightly more advanced then puzzle quest warlords in my opinion).
-> Basic trading system where you mine/fight for resources that others will buy from you at various prices (or you can use to make yourself ships or equipment for your ships).
-> An intriguing story about war and evolution

Cons:
-> Warp Gates go offline as you're playing and you have to complete the puzzle on them again. The only thing you get when completing the puzzle is the path reopens (ie you don't get any experience or goods for hacking a gate).
-> Having to use PSI points you gain in battles to avoid enemies. These enemy fights yield little reward and get annoying after awhile.
-> Music gets old after awhile.

Glitch:
There is a way to avoid fighting enemies everywhere you go without having to travel back to the planet you just came from. You need to do the following:
1) Defeat an enemy ship in a hostile planet area.
2) When you are attacked by an enemy ship in another hostile planet, click the button to enter the battle.
3) Once in the battle, press ESCAPE on the keyboard and exit the battle

You'll still be on the same planet area and you'll have avoided the battle without using any PSI points. After doing step 1 once for the game session you can repeat steps 2 and 3 for the rest of the game session. This helped me avoid TONS of annoying battles without having going back and forth between planets to avoid battles and is a lot faster time wise to do. I also didn't have to waste any PSI points to do it. You only need to do this trick until you get the last LOST people PSI power which makes your ship invisible to enemies (and might be nice to have early on in the game).

Overall, I think you'll really enjoy the game as long as you don't expect the exact same experience as Puzzle Quest Warlords (and do your best to avoid the Cons i mentioned above). If you want a game that is more like Puzzle Quest Warlords then you might want to wait and see what Puzzle Kingdoms is like.

Story and action makes this different than most Match 3 games. Strategy required as enemies use different resources to battle.

I got this for myself, and the DS version for my son.

It's harder than the original Puzzle Quest as the map can shift in all of the 6 directions of the hexagonal map.

The game does need to be patched though, as it gets almost impossibly hard to move from system to system without the patch, which you can then open with PSI points.

Its a good challenge to keep you busy.

This is a great game. I loved it so much that I got it for my DS to. Greaat graphic, challaging, but lots of fun