I must be honest and say I bought this game for a dollar from one of those infamous Steam sales everyone keeps hearing about. However knowing the regular retail price is $20, I will evaluate the product from that price point. Keeping that in mind the game is good but lacks certain features that would have made it a more worthwhile purchase. I am breaking my own code and writing mostly about what's in the game instead of my qualitative impression. However playing through it, there's no real way to recommend it on its own merits without understanding exactly what is inside.
The great thing about the game is that it gives you the RPG/gem matching hybrid of Puzzle Quest but manages to distinguish itself is refreshing ways. Firstly the actual puzzling is slightly different. It's not a match-3 style game. Instead the square grid of the field is surrounded by different colored block types. White, purple, blue, red, green, white, yellow, damage blocks and stones blocks that just take up space. By clicking on the edge symbol, you make that color block appear from that point and pushes the row in the direction it came from. Shifting rows works because the matches can occur as long as three blocks are connected. It doesn't matter how it's oriented. That means tetris-looking pieces emulate matched blocks.
I guess the other important thing to note is why you want to match certain blocks. Unlike Puzzle Quest, you have a maximum of four troops that require a certain number of a given color blocks to be matched before it attacks. A 3-gem match gives you one point of power toward a troop's attack pool. Once you fill that pool, an icon can be pressed to attack the opposing team's troops. An enemy is defeated once all the health points of all the troops are depleted. Of course matching damage blocks also does what you expect. Your encouraged to wait however because for each troop ready to attack, the ready ones get a +1 attack bonues. If all your troops are ready to attack, each one gets a +3 attack rating for instance when they do. It makes for interesting fights where you hold off until your enemy are close to filling his troop pools. It gets even more tense when one is filled and you are waiting for it to attack but not knowing when.
Similar to Puzzle Quest however there are spells that can be used for different effects. These can be direct damage, extra turns, converting gem colors, buffs, debuffs and so on. The matched gems that don't go toward troop pools all fill your hero's mana pool defined as "power".
The other half of the game is what happens outside of the puzzle fighting and that's where the game does some interesting things as well. Your start off with one hero and his task is to fight a famine borne by some hell-demon-king-thing guy. The world map allows you to pick a kindgom to overtake and within that kingdom is a map of owned nodes/castles that have enemy troops. There are also tombs which, once defeated, give you a cash reward for taking down it's demon or dragon. That cash allows you to buy more troops to add to your army in a battle map or replace dead ones. Gold can also be used to recruit new troops or obtain items or spells once the corresponding mini-game has been completed. Luckily you only spend them monies if you win the mini-game and you're told how much it is to unlock the random troop, item, or spell. This is really where Puzzle Kingdoms gets interesting because you have a given kingdom you can outfit with different troops, heroes, and relics. A kingdom has a certain point total that fills up the more relics, troops, or higher level heroes you equip. A kingdom also prefers certain gems which reduces the point cost of saying equipping a red troop but increases the cost of equipping a blue one. As long as it's under the total, that kingdom can be used in the next battle area. You can select from any kingdom you want in the menu to be your default so you can customize ones to work well against certain enemy kingdoms.
I know this all sounds very complicated but I'm not finished. The hero you equip first is your default and clicking on him/her/it allows you to equip items and spells that can be used in a puzzle fight. Items give you benefits to defense or attack ratings, prevent damage, provide buffs etc. Both spells and items are gem specific and also cost points to equip onto your hero which adds to the kingdom total. The good thing is equipping multiple heroes just means the first one that dies gets replaced by the second one in battle. It's only that first hero that contributes to the points.
As you can see there is a variety of elements and mechanics that can make this game very compelling. The minigames are not excluded but this is where the game starts to show its downsides. I'll start off positive and describe the best mini-game. This is the relic, item, and spell mini-game. You are given a grid of colored blocks excluding one (yellow in my experience). No new blocks fall once you destroy them, the goal instead is to empty the board of blocks. Depending of the rarity of the thing you are bidding for and the gold amount, the number of moves you can make is limited. The fun part is that once all of one color is eliminated, it will no long appear on the edges of the grid. It also better helps your puzzle fighting because it better visualizes how to match gems. If you want to match a pair of connected gems, you send in a block from the opposite edge for it to not go past it and strategy develops from pushing blocks with other blocks to line them up to get eliminated. Significantly lower on the quality scale is the the troop minigame. It is timed and you have to get a certain number of matches of each color type. Unfortunately the solution to a higher difficulty in this mode is simply giving you more blocks and less time but speeds up the blocks falling speed to compensate. This makes for super-easy matching or requirements so frantic you'll often fail. It's just a hassle once you've mopped up the easy ones and you're hoping random gems don't stop matching when they fall.
The worst mini-game of them all represents what is most at fault with this game. The third type requires this horrid mini-game to be played in order for the next kingdom to unlock and the subsequently the story to progress. It emulates the item mini-game except there are no move restrictions which may sound good at first but then you realize the border blocks are random. This means you are sitting there making new matches just to maybe get the block you need for that position. These mini-games can go on for upwards of 200 moves, are very tedious, and my least favorite part of the game. The story itself is dully written, not voiced ever, and I started skipping it after the third kingdom. The problem with the story is it brings out the general lack of polish the game has. It's just a very dull game to look at and listen. Some may shrug off the idea that $20 games are allowed to be unpolished, but Puzzle Quest was $20 new and that is clearly the superior game in polish. The part that really drags this game down is that you work your way up to figuring out the best way to outfit your kingdom and I've found myself rolling over kingdoms. It makes the game more automatic, especially if your hero reaches the level cap of 20. Defeating a kingdom only recaps the reward of dealing with those mini-games once again and once I have my optimal kingdom they too become even more tedious. Tedium is this game's m.o. in the back half. The final disappointment is the multiplayer. It's local pass and play and you can't import anything from the single-player. A friend of mine and I were all excited to play it until we learned there was no online and let me tell you that was a big bummer.
Puzzle Kingdoms does cool things with what Puzzle Quest began but even that new formula can only last so long without follow-through. Thinking about what you can get for $20 it's a kinda decent purchase if you're sick of Puzzle Quest but that's all I can say. It doesn't have the polish, longevity, nor multiplayer of Puzzle Quest so for the same price it's not the clear winner. If you can find it for $5 I say it's worth it. Not a bad impulse buy with good ideas but it's a "budget" title and it shows.