Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition (for Nintendo 3DS) Review (2024)

For a possible hint of Nintendo's phone gaming future, look no further than Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition ($29.99). This puzzle/RPG hybrid for the Nintendo 3DS ($260.00 at eBay) not only combines Nintendo's most popular franchise with Japan's most popular mobile game series, it also combines two whole games in one package. Quality varies between the two halves, and both suffer from occasionally unbalanced difficulty, but this supersized take on Puzzle & Dragons definitely trumps its free-to-play mobile game predecessors.

A Dance With Dragons
As the lengthy title suggests, this collection includes Puzzle & Dragons Z and Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition, two wholly separate games youlaunch from the main menu. Regardless of which flavor youpick, the fundamental Puzzle & Dragons formula remains the same. The games are structured like classic, Dragon Quest-style Japanese role-playing games. Adventurers journey deep into dungeons and encounter monsters in a first-person perspective. Instead of using typical turn-based combat, every action, from attacking to healing, is controlled via match-3 puzzle gameplay. You move colorful icons on the touch screen to form lines of three or more matching gems. Basically, you fight monsters by being good at Bejeweled.

Miraculously, the mash-up works. The RPG elements give the puzzles weight and purpose, while the quick, addictive puzzles make the RPG elements less tedious. While there's an inherent randomness to match-3 puzzle games, the game has a surprising amount of strategy, too. As youprogress, you'llrecruit monsters to their team to serve as helpers, leaders, or plain old grunts. Outside of battle, youthen tailor yourteams to take on upcoming challenges. Party members have certain elemental affinities and will only attack when their respective gems are matched. Well-balanced teams ensure no turns are wasted and combos are plentiful. Levels display which types of enemies lie within, so sometimes it's better to frontload your team with Light magic users to tackle a dungeon crawling with Dark monsters. Beyond that, each team member has their own specific spell, like shields or stat boosts, that charges over time. Weaker monsters can also be sacrificed to quickly power-up stronger monsters.

Super Mario Bros. Edition
More than a cynical veneer, Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition infuses the franchise with an appreciated Nintendo aura. The artwork has a bootleg look to it, and the map screens seem to be ripped straight out of New Super Mario Bros. 2 , but everything else feels like an authentic Mario product. Instead of being a meandering RPG, the game has a pace that recalls a snappy platformer. Progression is straightforward and in all there are eight worlds to tackle with a handful of levels each. Drafting familiar foes like Goombas and Koopa-Troopas to your team is more entertaining than just collecting generic monsters. Different costumes, like Ice Mario and Fire Luigi, provide options for different elemental affinities without breaking the rules of the Mario universe, as do gems featuring Tanooki leaves and Super Stars. As far as Mario spin-offs go, you could certainly do a lot worse.

Puzzle & Dragons Z
Compared to its Mario counterpart, Puzzle & Dragons Z approaches its source material from an opposing, and ultimately less fun direction. Whereas Super Mario Bros. Edition uses its RPG components to enrich a pick-up-and-play puzzle game, Z tries to be a full-blown RPG that happens to center around puzzles.

The result is a plodding Pokémon rip-off full of uninspired kiddie anime art more suited for the Game Boy Advance and page after page of time-wasting exposition about the unengaging Armageddon plot. The puzzle battles remain enjoyable, but they're separated by worthless filler and nonsense about the world being ripped apart "piece by puzzle piece." The sluggish pacing cripples the game's ability to provide brief burst of handheld joy in-between boring commitments.

Phoning it In
There are also a few issues that affect Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition as a whole, mostly having to do with its roots as a free-to-play smartphone game. Originally, youcould only progress so far so fast. You'd either run out of energy or encounter a monster so difficult that the only options were to pay or wait. That's a gross, and all too common, mechanic, but the game was intentionally balanced around that horrible mechanic. In this paid retail product, playersfortunately don't have to put up with those kinds of limitations. However, playing the game in marathon sessions reveals that sudden difficulty spikes still crop up. Since youcan't pay to circumvent them this time, youeither yourto adjust yourstrategy or go back and repeat earlier stages to manually increase the strength of yourteam. Grinding is an RPG staple, but it should feel like an organic part of the experience, not an artificial roadblock.

Two inOne
Puzzle & Dragons's genre crossover is a cool hook. Super Mario Bros. Edition successfully capitalizes on that hook with charm that gives us hope for Nintendo's smartphone fate. Z squanders some of that potential, but not enough to totally ruin the package. Whether you're looking for a meatier puzzle game or a casual RPG, Puzzle & Dragons Z + Super Mario Bros. Edition has something to offer.