Marvel Puzzle Quest for mobile and PC was an exciting concept marred by free-to-play mechanics. Coming later this year, the console version of Marvel Puzzle Quest adds multiplayer and ditches free-to-play.
Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign will hit Xboxes 360 and One and PlayStations 3 and 4 later this year, and aside from eventual full-fledged downloadable content, that’s it. No buying packs of coins or ISO-8 to level up your characters or purchase a chance at rare heroes. Just puzzle role-playing progression and heroes as mission rewards.
All that and, for the first time on any platform, local and online multiplayer superhero battles. Wayforward Technologies is handling development of the console version.
With the free-to-play stuff out of the way, this finally could be the Marvel/Puzzle Quest crossover I’ve always wanted.
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9 responses to “Marvel Puzzle Quest Coming To Consoles Without The Free-To-Play Nonsense”
So I guess that means it will cost money to buy then?
I thought that the article is saying that it will totally be free?
Hopefully its successful enough to encourage the devs to reconsider free to play. I love the puzzle quest series, but IAP killed this one for me. Ill buy it for sure.
I’d have paid $10+ to buy this outright on on my phone. Hell, maybe $20.
But I wouldn’t bother even trying a game with IAP anymore. It just sucks all the fun out of everything.
So it looks like you can level characters powers up to a full 5/5/5 rather than having to choose where to spend 13 points. The trailer also shows the characters at level 300 with no differentiation between the star rankings of the original version.
The character select screen looks like it also has Iron Patriot, who was always hinted at in the Dark Reign storyline but never appeared in the game.
Not having to drop hundreds of dollars on character slots? Sign me up.
I’ve been playing Puzzle Quest for most of this year, and I made it my mission not to be pressured into buying points. I did buy points at one stage, but that was a token amount to compensate the creators for what I think is a pretty good game.
Having said that, I was very tempted to buy points on a few occasions. Stuck to my guns, though, and now I have every 2 and 3 star character, a good number of 4 star (and one 5 star). So, it is possible to play the game and not pay. It’s tough, though!
When I was playing heavily and getting some 1st-places in some of the events, I had more characters than I could actually keep. I also dropped some dollars for what I felt was a fair ‘box price’ for the fun provided so far and anticipated, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with my character acquisition. I had to very carefully ‘game out’ which characters were easy to acquire and thus ditch them til I had enough free/earned currency to buy slots for them vs which of my event-rewards needed to be held onto because they were ultra-rare and hard to acquire.
It turned into more of a chore than a game, setting timers for when to log in to maintain my ranking in order to get what I needed to keep my roster happy.
That’s a stress that crept up on me which I DID NOT need, so I gave it up. The console version without those constraints? Sounds like exactly what I wanted. All of the fun, none of the chores and busywork.
That’s the game within the game. Cutting characters, managing rotating slots, making effective use of what you have. It has become easier over time, with the increase in the time period before unrecruited characters expire, and the Deadpool event, which can give you bonus points. But I guess that is also balanced by the increase in the number of characters.
Yep, I can understand the feeling of it being a chore, especially if you’re aiming for a top 10 position! I generally go for top 50, which I can usually get with 3×30 mins play: in the morning, during lunch, and just before bedtime. I’ll also skip the 7 day events now, or play them casually.