Puzzle & Dragons

I consider Puzzle & Dragons to be the grandfather of all mobile RPGs. While the game itself might feel a little dated today, its mechanics will be very familiar to anyone who has played an RPG on their phone in the past decade. Player levels and stamina, normal and premium currencies, character summoning and fusion, story and event stages, it's all here. Frankly, most of those things are designed more around a player's wallet than their enjoyment, but the addictive tendency of games like this means that people are all too happy to accept the abuse and move on. That usually applies to me too, I did just play Pokémon's take on this formula not too long ago, but I surprisingly just wasn't hooked this time around.

I was actually really excited to play Puzzle & Dragons. I was hankering for some sort of match-3 puzzle game, and P&D's blend of a super unique matching system and RPG elements seemed perfect for me at the time. When I first opened the app, I got major playing-on-an-iPod-Touch-in-2013 vibes, which was super nostalgic for me but didn't speak so highly of P&D's ability to evolve. That's not to say the game hasn't changed since its original release though. In fact, the amount of content that was added over the past decade is largely the reason I didn't latch on to the title. When I started playing Pokémon Masters EX, I received a generous helping of Sync Pairs and resources so I could quickly catch up with the existing players. These bonuses helped me to breeze through the early game content, but didn't ever make me feel like I was too overpowered or like the levels were a waste of time. Puzzle & Dragons attempted the same thing, providing me with a sizable collection of incredibly powerful monsters right off the bat, but it ended up backfiring and ultimately put me off of the game completely.

The idea and execution were very similar to that of Pokémon Masters EX, but the balance wasn't there. With my new team, I was able to complete nearly every early-game combat encounter with a single move, and the rewards were all so small or weak that I didn't have any motivation to keep playing. It's not like I could just blast through the early stages and move on either, thanks to the stamina system limiting my play. The limited-time events offered a little more challenge and some better incentives, but I didn't have enough experience or knowledge of the game to actually play any levels with valuable rewards effectively. I wanted to enjoy P&D, but if everything I do is either pointless or frustrating, then there's not much to enjoy.

If I had played Puzzle & Dragons earlier in its life cycle, I can see how it would've been engaging and fun, but joining so late ended up being a real detriment to my enjoyment. The puzzle-focused combat is still a well-designed mechanic, but the amount of content stacked on top to support this GaaS title over the past decade made it a bit too complicated to jump into as a new player. Luckily, P&D inspired countless other games, and many of them have fixed this unintentional gatekeeping issue, making it easy to recommend that you just find one of them instead.

The game is available for Android here (as of 7/12/22): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.gungho.padEN&hl=en_US&gl=US
The game is available for iOS here (as of 7/12/22): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/puzzle-dragons-english/id563474464

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