Puzzle & Dragons Nintendo Switch Edition

Genre: Match-3 Puzzle / RPG

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local), 2-8 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Puzzle & Dragons is a family-friendly Match-3 Puzzle franchise with RPG elements that started out on mobile devices in 2012 and was for a time the highest-grossing mobile app of all time. The game has featured multiple versions and spin-offs, and in 2022 a version of this game has now come to Nintendo Switch.

The presentation here is very good, with a clean look and some nice 2D art animated in “paper doll” style. This is backed by synthesized music that’s decent but somewhat forgettable. All of this stuff is nice enough that the game doesn’t scream “mobile game port”, but it’s nothing truly exceptional either.

The gameplay involves players moving around various-colored gemstones in a 5×5 grid, trying to create lines of the same color to clear them, both using the gemstone you’re moving, as well as using its movement to shift other gemstones around on the grid. These gems power up the abilities of your JRPG-style party, both directly attacking enemies and gradually powering up your characters to perform special attacks. Players can use traditional gamepad controls or touchscreen controls to do this, and I found both of these methods to work well.

My biggest frustration with Puzzle & Dragons is that beyond the color-matching itself, the gameplay seems a bit chaotic, and it’s not entirely clear what the strategy is here. Enemies have an elemental affinity, and clearly you’re meant to match gems that those enemies are weak to, but beyond this I didn’t really feel like I was getting a good grasp on whether i was doing well or poorly, beyond seeing the health bars of my party and the enemies.

While I’ve never been a big fan of the Puzzle & Dragons franchise, there is one gameplay innovation here that I think is really promising, and I wish I saw this sort of thing in more Puzzle games. Puzzle & Dragons of course has various ways to play competitive multiplayer, as you might expect from this sort of game. However, the real surprise is that this game also offers some surprisingly good co-op play, where each player is matching gemstones on a separate playfield, combining their efforts against the same enemies. It’s a really neat touch, and if anything is going to sell you on this version of the game over the mobile version, I’d expect this is likely it.

In the end, I think the Nintendo Switch release of Puzzle & Dragons is a solid and at times even excellent port of a mediocre Puzzle game. The control options all work well, the presentation is decent, and the various multiplayer options are wonderful… but I still feel like the basic Match-3 Puzzle gameplay is merely “okay”. Still, for under $5, this is a worthwhile addition to your Puzzle game collection, especially if you’re curious to try out the game’s co-op play.

tl;dr – Puzzle & Dragons is a version of the long-running family-friendly Match-3 Puzzle game with RPG elements, and overall I think this is a solid port of a somewhat mediocre Puzzle game. It all works well enough, but there doesn’t seem like there is much to the strategy here. However, the cheap price tag and the surprisingly compelling co-op play make this still worth looking into for fans of the Puzzle genre.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Puzzle Game, Best Multiplayer

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