A few months ago I got ridiculously excited to hear that Puzzle Quest 3 was coming out. Puzzle Quest, Puzzle Quest 2, and all the various branded spin-offs were all pretty outstanding. VERY high play times on the original games on the DS. Super enjoyable. So after all these years a real sequel? Sure, bring it. Switch? They did a remake for Switch, maybe it’ll be there.

Then it launched. In early access. On Android. And it’s a watered-down free-to-play pile of crap.

Ok so they took Puzzle Quest, then they cut the board in half because they had to crowd the screen with 3d models and other crap. Then they distilled the core gameplay to like 30 second long little fights that have nearly zero difficulty until you hit the sheer cliff face of “you haven’t paid enough”.

Then you wrap around it a rich tapestry of every needlessly complicated predatory free-to-play mechanic there is (except gatcha, I haven’t found any gatcha stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if I just haven’t found it, though). The game truly does have basically everything. It’s got multiple tiers of chests, each of which requires its own type of key. It’s got multiple capped currencies. It’s got six or seven distinct types of progression grind, including needing to grind 10 different pieces of gear (all gear drops at level 1, regardless of quality). It’s got 24 hour chest unlocks, with 24 hour cooldowns for your pet to “rest” after unlocking a chest! It’s got multiple types of paid currency! It’s got $99 macrotransactions! It’s got a battle pass! It has it ALL.

And yet the actual gameplay is fighting the same six enemies with the same three abilities across three thrilling tile-sets. There’s years worth of development sunk into all those free-to-play mechanics, and then maybe an afternoon picking some assets from a marketplace and barfing out the most generic match-3 gameplay in existence.

HARD pass.