Welcome to DS on DS. This is where I'm going to be taking a look at the Nintendo DS and all of it's games. And when I say all, I mean it. We will be going from Metroid Prime: Hunters to Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. From Tetris DS to Barbie 12 Dancing Princesses. Yes, I said Barbie.  Every Friday, I will write a review on the game I have chosen for the week.

This week I am going to be taking a look at Puzzle Kingdoms.

Some say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  That is well and good, unless the imitator is a very poorly done knock-off.  And that brings us to Puzzle Kingdoms.  I knew from some early looks that the game was very similar to Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, and after reading that this game was created by the designer of Puzzle Quest, it became abundantly clear where this game drew nearly everything about itself from.

When the title screen came up, I almost thought I put in the wrong game.  Of course, it was missing the obnoxious music from Puzzle Quest, but the screen is very similar.  Even the menu looks familiar.  It has the same layout, and the only thing different here is the color scheme and the lack of lightning.  After selecting Campaign from the menu, I then went on to create my character.  Wait, no, I only get to give him or her a name.  Yes, much like Puzzle Quest Galactrix, you are only allowed to choose between a generic male or female Warlord.  After starting my save file, I ended up on the map screen.  And guess what?  It too looks very reminiscent of the map used in Puzzle Quest.

From here, you are instructed to tap on your character.  Doing so brings you to a scene where you talk about the drought that is sweeping the land, and how you can't be a good leader if old people are falling to the ground from the heat.  You pine for your lost father, tell your elderly companion to gather the men, and off we go into battle! Yes, I get to fight for my first kingdom!  You get a new hero (the old guy you were just talking to about other old people falling to the ground), and he is who you play as.  You can recruit other troops too, but I'm choosing to stay as the old man.  Maybe I will get ahilarious cutscene of him falling to the ground?  I start to move where it was implied we should go, and my Warlord appears.  He sees a creature by the ruins!  I go to the ruins and the instant my geezer stops moving, BAM!  There is a quick flash of a screen that says "To Battle!" and I am thrust into war.  And what's this?  It's a grid filled with a vast array of colored stones, waiting for me to match three or more of the same color!  The difference here is that instead of swapping two adjacent stones, you slide the whole row or column over.  Oh, and the matching stones don't need to be in a row, they just have to be touching each other.  This is the most important part of the game, and it is also the sloppiest.  I thought the gameplay in Puzzle Quest Galactrix was bad!  This makes Galactrix look like Tetris Attack by comparison!  Everything is just a mess.  There is a "tutorial" the first time you enter battle, but all it consists of is telling you how to move the pieces and that you need to match three or more of the same color.  If you want to figure out more of what is going on, you need to click on the little tiny question mark nestles right up at the very top of the touchscreen.

And those troops you can recruit?  Well, you take them into the battles with you!  That way, when you fail with a character, the next one moves in to take his place.  All of the troops need to be defeated in order to claim victory.

The sound isn't too horrible in this game.  In fact, when you first start your game and sit through the exposition of the events that led up to where the game starts, there is actually a pretty good voice over to accompany the text.  I was very surprised by this.  In fact, the only thing off about the voice was the way he said "cruel".  You remember Cruella from the 101 Dalmations?  Take the "a" off of the end of her name, and that's how the guy says cruel.  Other than that, the music is less intrusive in this game than Puzzle Quest.

Stay far, far away from this game.  If you could only choose between Puzzle Quest Galactrix and Puzzle Warlords, I would tell you to go with Galactrix.  And I really disliked Galactrix on the DS, so that's gotta tell you something.

Final Score: 2/10