For this week's Mobile Friday i tried Puzzle & Dragons 0 from developers GungHo Online Entertainment, @PuzzleandDragons , on my #iPhone 14 Pro.
As a casual fan of Puzzle & Dragons, i'm always interested in checking out their new games. for a company who have been making the same game for such a long time, there's also a degree of expectation placed upon them that the latest version of Puzzle & Dragons will have learned from all the previous ones and therefore should be better. so going into playing Puzzle & Dragons 0 for the first time i was really curious how things were going to go.
From the app store page it's not really made clear what the point of Puzzle & Dragons 0 is. the original game is still played by many people and it's still getting content updates. so it was a little disappointing that from the app store i didn't know what i was getting myself in for with this new game. but the app store does show the two different ways to place. the first way is vertical and the screen is laid out similar to how i took the Switch version and made it into YouTube Shorts, with the gems big at the bottom and the action smaller on top. This keeps information at the top of the screen like the time, phone battery, etc. the second way to play is more similar to the Switch version with gems on one side and the action on the other. what's disappointing is that making this mode right or left handed was in a completely different part of the options. i was also disappointed that the color blind feature didn't actually show what it would do. many games nowadays will put the items on screen and show how the feature works. the approach here in Puzzle & Dragons 0 felt a little old and a little lazy because of it.
The start of Puzzle & Dragons 0 is well designed. it begins with a tutorial that takes things nice and slow. we don't even see the home menu for a while as we're introduced to the games mechanics first, then the characters on our team, how to use them, the enemies, and so on. what is a little disappointing is that the game never reminds us that we can go into the options to check out what we've learned. like so many mobile games i've checked out, the tutorial is great until it abruptly stops. there are things about this game i didn't know because the tutorial stopped before showing me. the currency, terms like RCV, things and terminology that are used in the game were completely ignored by the tutorial. it didn't even show us where the options where or how to change the screen layout, even tho when we initially chose it the game said we could change it but never showed us how.
Thankfully, for Puzzle & Dragons 0 the core gameplay is solid and exactly what i expected from a Puzzle & Dragons game. the graphics do look nice, the music feels like an upgrade over the Switch version, and i do like how they use the phones rumble for the big attacks. But the game is still buggy. i noticed a few times i was getting combo's but my gems were still on screen. this was perhaps the biggest bug i came across. The game has hints and tips during loading screens, but on my phone the loads are so short i can't read them all quick enough. whilst not a bug, it does feel like an oversight by the developers. The "new" feature in Puzzle & Dragons 0, for me at least tho it's possible it's in other games, is how we get new monsters. i don't feel like it's explained as good as it could have been and i don't think how it's shown in the app is as clear as it needs to be. much like how the game has slowly introduced us to features, i feel this aspect should've been simplified for the tutorial and the first times we used it and then at Rank 5, it should be fully expanded into what it is. i didn't fully understand how to use this feature. the side menu stuff was never explained so i didn't know to go there to switch from red to other colors. the whole rank system was never explained so i didn't know that was happening until it told me i was Rank 5. this whole system feels like it's been tact on to the game rather than fully incorporated into it.
for Puzzle & Dragons fans, Puzzle & Dragons 0 is fine. it seems to be more of the same. for newcomers to the franchise, the tutorial will be a great start. but the bugs and abrupt cut off of the tutorial means the experience as a whole is disappointingly average from such franchise.
Version 1.0.4 Played.
