Puzzle + Dragons Z Review

I enjoy puzzle games. They are addictive, fun, and let me use my brain. So, when I found this game, I downloaded a demo for my 3DS. I fell in love with it. So when I went to a GameStop and bought a copy. The game? Puzzle + Dragons Z.

It was two games for the price of one! Savings!

Puzzle + Dragons Z is a spin-off of the series of the same name for mobile devices and tablets. This game is essentially the same as the mobile games, only this version includes elements from RPG games, like towns and sidequests.

In this game, you play a trainee Dragon Tamer from Zed City in the land of Dracomacia. Dracomacia is a land in which humans and monsters, including various dragons, co-exist with one another. The monsters draw their life energy from orbs in the atmosphere of this world. The orbs come in five elements: Fire, Water, Wood, Light, and Dark.

Anyway, what's a Dragon Tamer? Think of it as a mixture of a Pokémon Trainer and a park ranger/police officer, protecting the land from various threats.

You became a Dragon Tamer just in time, because an evil group known as Paradox wants to remake the world in its image, and it does such by capturing the Skydragons of Dracomacia, causing it to break into several pieces. It's up to you to stop Paradox and save the world!

This game reminds me of Pokémon in many ways. You get to make a team of monsters, and by using match-three puzzle skills, you have them battle against other monsters, different types are strong and weak against others, and if you beat a monster, you may get an egg that you can hatch, so you get a monster of your own. There are a variety of monsters besides dragons. Some are like bugs, some are like mammals, and there are even some that resemble knights.

Different monsters have different abilities and effects in combat, allowing for a lot of strategy in how you want to approach battle. That's a nice little feature.

I don't have any major issues with Puzzle +  Dragons Z, but I haven't gotten very far with it yet.

This also had another game, Puzzle + Dragons, Super Mario Bros. Edition. It was essentially a Mario game with match-three RPG elements. The story is the classic Mario story: Bowser kidnaps Peach, and Mario must save her, nothing new there. The thing that amuses me about the game is the idea that Mario and Luigi can create a fighting team composes of classic Mario henchmen, like Goombas and Koopa Troopas.

It's a fun game. The only thing I didn't like was that the choices of Mario henchmen seemed limited, as so far, all I got was variations on the Koopa Troopa and the Goomba. There are a lot of creatures Mario has faced in his long career, like Cheep Cheeps, Bloopers, Bullet Bills, Pirahna Plants, Bob-Ombs, Monty Moles, Mini-Ninjis, Shy-Guys, Birdos, I'm hoping to see more variety in the various creatures Mario can recruit. To be fair, I haven't gotten very far in this version, so maybe there will be more variety.

All in all, I recommend picking this game up, especially if you like puzzle games. It's fun, addicting, and it's two games for the price of one! Can't beat that!