After playing the legendary Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords on PSP back in the day and absolutely loving it, I had to give this a try. Seemed like the next best game from this developer based on reviews, and caught it on sale for cheap so why not?

Game starts out a bit rough around the edges, with a UI that is somewhat difficult to figure out, but the in-game tips help, and I started to figure stuff out as I went along. It's nice not having everything so simple. After all, this is a puzzle game!

Gameplay is fun, and you move the rows in up/down/left/right directions to match colors instead of swapping two pieces. Somewhat different than Challenge of the Warlords, which was a nice change.

Here's where I fell in love: UNLOCKABLES! So many great items, skills and troops to earn through the side-quest puzzles, and it feels so rewarding when I solve some of the higher level ones. These items can be used to customize your Kingdoms and Heroes, with all sorts of RPG-type stats and effects to play with.

My only complaint is being unable to exit a Kingdom once you enter it. There have been times when I wanted to tweak my build, but had to complete the entire Kingdom first (about 30-60 minutes) before I could go back to customize. Maybe there's a way to do it (without dying), but I haven't figured it out yet.

All in all, I'd give this an 8/10 and estimate about 25-50 hours of gameplay.

Co-op does not work. Servers appear to be offline. DO NOT BUY!!!

Nice graphics and fun game, but really needs controller support in menus. The controller works fine once in a race but I have to get up and walk to my computer from across the house to start a race using keyboard & mouse. Please add full controller support!