Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Edition Review for Nintendo 3DS

Match-3 Goes Hardcore

Call them “casual games” all you like, but we know that the competition between pick-up-and-play titles is particularly hardcore. Though upstarts like Farmville and Angry Birds claim the spotlight from time to time, there’s one genre of casual game that rules them all: the Match-3 puzzle game. Between the aging monarch Bejeweled, the newcomer juggernaut Candy Crush, and the many imitators and permutations in-between, you’d be hard-pressed to find any gamer who hasn’t swapped gems for hours on end at least once.

That’s why it’s easy to overlook Puzzle & Dragons at first. Another Match-3 game? Meh, been there, done that. Except Puzzle & Dragons is different. Instead of simply swapping two gems, this Match-3 permutation allows you to freely drag a single gem around the play board, rearranging the entire thing to your liking until your time runs out. That seemingly simple change makes the game far more strategic than luck-based, and the RPG systems baked into the game turn it from a casual affair into something designed for hardcore gamer sensibilities.

This cocktail of strategic puzzle gameplay and RPG-style party building has snared millions around the world in the game’s mobile incarnation, and now we have the chance to experience it on the 3DS without the artificial barriers designed to inspire you to part with some sweet, sweet microtransaction money. In fact, we have two chances to do so, the Pokemon-esque Puzzle & Dragons Z and the slick Puzzle & Dragons Z Super Mario Edition, both baked into one big package of gem-matching mania.

Let’s talk about the basics that you’ll see in both editions of the game. You’ve got to gather a team of monsters by defeating them on a gem-matching battlefield. Each monster has an elemental affinity that corresponds to one or more gem color, and matching gems of the appropriate color causes your monsters to attack. Enemy monsters will retaliate, taking chunks out of your team’s shared hit point bar. You can heal up by matching heart gems or using a monster’s healing skill.

The secret to Puzzle & Dragons is proper team-building and mastery of gem combos. If you only make a couple of matches, like you’re accustomed to doing with most Match-3 games, you’ll do piddly damage. If you want to get very far in these games, you’ll have to learn to make at least 3-4 matches per turn and have a team that’s set up to multiply the amount of damage that it does per match. There are numerous ways to do this, from running a single-color team with a leader that multiplies one color’s damage to a so-called rainbow team with a leader who multiplies damage based on how many different-colored matches you make. You’ll ultimately need to have a few different teams at the ready in order to tackle the various challenges that the games throw at you.

Newcomers to the world of Puzzle & Dragons will probably want to start with the Super Mario Edition . It’s light on story (in fact, the perfunctory “oops, Peach got kidnapped, go match gems to rescue her” story would probably be best left out entirely) and does a good job easing you into the Puzzle & Dragons mechanics. Your team leaders include various versions of Mario heroes like Super Mario, Fire Luigi, and several colors of Toads which are, in true Toad fashion, rather pathetic in comparison to the powered-up versions of the Bros. Your grunts are various Super Mario baddies like Goombas, Koopas, Thwomps, and Bullet Bills.

Only issue is that the staple of Mario baddies is a bit thin. Instead of the increasingly badass-looking dragons that Puzzle & Dragons Z provides as you evolve your team, Mario’s developers were hampered by an apparent decision to only portray monsters in ways you’ve seen them in Mario games. Thus, while some evolutions make sense (Koopa becomes Koopa Paratroopa and Spiny becomes Lakitu), others are kind of silly, like a Blooper becoming a Blooper with a Cheep Cheep friend. On the upside, some Mario monsters have branching evolutionary paths, so you can choose to evolve a monster into a single-color powerhouse or a flexible dual-color beast.

You’ll progress. Both games feature attractive graphics that make good use of the system’s 3D feature. Everything in Super Mario Edition looks crisp and fantastic. The 3D art really makes the scrolling Mario backgrounds pop, and works great when a Giant Cheep Cheap leaps at your party to attack. Puzzle & Dragons Z is less impressive in general, but makes up for that with fantastic monster art. The elaborately designed monsters are often gorgeous to behold and have great pop-up book style animations.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.0 Graphics
In their own way, both games make great use of 3D graphics to make their monstrous casts come alive. 4.0 Control
The stylus is a great choice for gem swapping, being more precise than your clumsy ol’ fingers on a smartphone touch screen. 3.5 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Puzzle & Dragons Z sounds fairly generic, but Super Mario Edition is bursting with Nintendo goodness. 4.5 Play Value
Not only is this two games in one, it’s two games with tons of content and increasingly interesting challenges to beat. 4.0 Overall Rating – Great
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.