Because of its name, I’ve seen people mistake Puzzle & Dragons for a match-three game in the style of Candy Crush, but that’s not totally accurate. It’s an RPG with puzzle-based battle, and the original mobile version is known for its depth of gameplay and strategy. Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros Edition for 3DS bundles two games in one, and Z at first appears to be the definitive upgrade veterans are looking for — but that is also inaccurate. The Mario Edition is actually the star, and it shines where Z falls flat.
The start screen says that Mario Edition is better for beginners, and it is indeed faithful to the original P&D gameplay. You start with a few allies, build a team, and fight your way through dungeons, clearing elemental orbs in the puzzle portion to attack. It differs from a typical match-three in that you can freely move one orb around the puzzle area for a limited amount of time, which makes the puzzles more involved and real-time than they seem at first glance. It’s a deep, complex system, and the Mario version turned out to be decently challenging. Bosses are hard to beat, and I had to be really engaged with what I was doing. It’s not something you can play mindlessly.
It took a little while for the difficulty to ramp up, but when it did, I really had to pay attention to my team’s stats, type balance, and in-battle skills in order to succeed. Team-building is one of the highlights, thanks to the characters’ complementary abilities. One of my more successful strategies, for example, was to bring Yoshi — who can change all orbs into fire, wood, and dark orbs — alongside another ally whose skill changes wood orbs into fire orbs. In a dungeon where wood orbs weren’t going to be as effective, it was a great way to get tons of combos with only two types of orbs and therefore deal a lot of damage. There are more than a few levels that were really satisfying to beat — so much so that I replayed them for fun.
Simply put, the Mario version is really great. There’s tons of content and plenty to do, and it’s enjoyable overall. The Mushroom Kingdom style works delightfully well atop standard P&D, from the familiar enemies and sound effects (like the 1-Up jingle that plays when you get a ton of combos) to the Super Mario 3D World-style overworld. It’s very Mario, but it’s also very Puzzle & Dragons, and it hits that balance nicely.
Z, on the other hand, first appears to be for more advanced players, but its small battle tweaks and dungeon add-ons ended up making things easier, not more challenging. All the same team-building I enjoyed in Mario is possible in Z, of course, but I didn’t see as much of a need to even look for tricks like this early on due to the low difficulty. I breezed through the first two worlds (out of five main ones, plus plenty of extras), defeating multiple enemies at once with just two or three combos. In the Mario version, I had to really try to get upwards of seven combos in a turn to do any real damage (my record so far is 17 combos in a turn).
More Reviews
Z also adopts an unimaginative and generally tedious JRPG storyline (something not present in standard Puzzle & Dragons) complete with a cliche evil organization bent on destroying the world. What it does have going for it is a sense of humor: Everything’s delightfully punny, and it’s pretty self-aware. I’d be going through a dungeon and get a rhythm going, only to be interrupted by random, yet amusing and sort of charming, dialogue. What should have been a quick dungeon due to the low difficulty became artificially extended with unnecessary breaks, which didn’t help anything. You also have to trek back to a lab after every dungeon if you want to hatch the monster eggs you collected in battle (and therefore get newer and better monsters for your team), further ruining the pacing.
Worse, it’s shamelessly derivative. This might sound familiar: You start your adventure on the second floor of a house in which the only bedroom is yours, where your mom waits downstairs to prepare you for your big day at the local science lab. You then acquire a “D-gear” and battle “Troopers” from the evil organization Paradox. If it were to put a unique spin on the Pokémon story formula it might’ve been forgivable, but Z’s execution is poor and detracted from my enjoyment of everything else it has to offer. I’d rather just have actual Puzzle & Dragons; fortunately for that we have the Mario Edition.Verdict
This two-for-one Puzzle & Dragons adventure is more like a “play one and ignore the other.” The Super Mario Bros. Edition delivers the puzzle and RPG challenge I was looking for; it offers tons to do and requires strong strategizing and puzzle skills without any unnecessary story filler, and that’s the series’ strong suit in the first place. It redeems the low point of Puzzle & Dragons Z, which is bogged down by a generic and forced story that does nothing but disrupt the flow of its too-easy gameplay. There’s plenty of content in both, and I’ll be back for more Mario, at least.
