Puzzle Quest: I Am the Rat King

If you haven't played Puzzle Quest, get off your ass. It's on like every system ever, so go get it.

Now that I understand how better to use my items, powers, and can more easily recognize patterns in gems, I can stop sucking ass at the game. In fact, I find myself playing battle after battle after battle, over and over again until I pass out and see nothing but colored gems in my dreams and can only think to myself upon awakening, "I need green mana..."

This game is rich. And what I mean by that is all the different ways matching up colored gems can be used to accomplish different things. Battles are the meat and potatoes of the game, but there are parts that I have only recently discovered. I have "captured" two different monsters: one, a Minotaur, who lets me learn his spell, and another, a Giant Rat, whom I have mounted and I now ride around like some sort of mangy, diseased God.

No, really. I ride a fucking rat to work everyday.

The rat allows me to use his spell as well, but I don't have to use up one of my six spell "slots" - apparently, your mount gets its own individual slot for a spell. I assume I can acquire different mounts throughout the game by capturing different things, thereby granting me better powers than "Rabid Bite" (not a joke - it's the rat's actual power).

Oh! I almost forgot to describe the capturing process. Instead of battling the rat until it died, I had to solve a puzzle clearing all the gems on screen (not a full boards worth, there was only like 20 gems). This is a unique little twist on the normal battle mode, and it is nice because (at least on what I've attempted to capture so far) you can try over and over again quickly. The only complaint I could find is that both the battle screen and the capture screen scream for a "Retry" button in the Pause Menu.

Anyway, the game is fucking amazing and you should play it.

(Click here for Puzzle Quest: I Suck at You)