Mobile Friday is back and the first game i tried outside of Apple Arcade was Puzzle Quest 3. i was a huge fan of the original two games, but i can't say i enjoyed this sequel.
From the beginning you can see how long it took to actually start the game. the point of this series is to see what happens when you launch it for the first time. and for me, it crashed. ultimately i ended up closing it and launching it again. but then it went vertical as well as taking a long time to get to the main screen.
Another reason for this series is to see if there's a long tutorial or additional downloads needed. The tutorial is seriously lacking. throughout the whole experience i ended up asking again and again what things are, why are things where they are. So much is left unexplained and what is explained is done by text boxes, some of which seem to have been in the wrong place. As for the additional download, well there seem to be two options. let the game download what it needs when it needs it, or download nearly 2 GB all at once. As i'm on Wifi, i downloaded all it needed. but neither seem like a great solution for someone starting the game for the first time on a mobile network.
There were other menu options but, like many parts of the game, there were poorly explained or used different terminology to the menu items themselves. This game seems to want "hardcore" gamers who are familiar with games and know how options work. it's not welcoming to casual players. It's worth saying that this game made my phone hot. i've played many mobile games and often my phone gets warm. nearly in all videos i take time to mention how hot my phone is. but i can say that this game made my phone the hottest out of any of them. and know where does it say that by changing the options it'll make my phone hot.
Graphically, it looks great. it has a pleasant colorful style, too. The story is a mess, the biggest example is you start as one character and do some story before having to go to the character select and seemingly continue the story using this new character with no mention of the change. It also felt like the character you picked was getting the same text as any other character would get. this is strange in my case as i picked the lizard man, and yet people used words i'd associate with humans. there are a couple of moments of picking your own response, but this early on in the game it felt like it it didn't matter what you picked as the game was going to keep on going.
So ultimately, this is a game you should start at home first. get everything downloaded. so the next time you play it, you'll be all set and won't have to worry about using up data caps.
