Overall, I like the core mechanic of this game.
But, the controls feel a little clunky since you have a limited time to slide the next gems.
Most notably. A lot of times when it visibly looks like I am dragging one gem, it actually catches another Gem instead.
Which means that fairly frequently I end up having a clear plan and then having the Gems not move properly causing me to mess it up.
Fortunately, it seems to give a little extra time if you grab a piece before the time goes off but haven’t finished dragging it. And it let’s you finish that drag before ending the turn.
But if you accidentally grab the wrong one even once. Then the time lost completely kills any chance of a streak. Since then I have to unclick. Move the mouse. Then make sure it is in position and click again. Which I can manage if it happens earlier. But it doesn’t just make me lose that one move. It effectively cuts down the gems you can move by 3-4.
So, at most you get like 2-3 if you catch it.
There isn’t that much feedback on it until you start trying to drag the piece of which exact gem is selected.
The sound feedback for when a match completes is clear. So after I check that I grabbed the right piece I can look to the next thing I want to move while I am still moving the last one.
Another small polish things is that when you open a chest after winning a battle you don’t get much of a sound effect when you open the chest.
Just the sounds that hit later of the stuff spilling out which are muted and sound okay. But not that good.
Opening chests later with a minion feels better since I actually hear a nice chest open sound.
It just kind of feels like the “won a battle”
Is drowning out the “got treasure” feeling.
Which for some battles is sensible. But for really easy simple battles. The win battle sound is just repetitive in a meh way. And I am more interested in that treasure.
But, I actually don’t know if you have different sound effects for different chest sizes or not since when I open a bigger chest after the battle I pretty much just hear the “stuff coming out of the chest” sound.
And I might get slightly more sounds playing from a bigger chest. But the sound isn’t any cooler for bigger chests or better items from what I can tell.
Beyond game feel, the game kind of suggests doing side quest both subtly and strongly towards the end of the first chapter/tutorial.
But, the side quests have a massive difficulty spike in comparison to the main quest at that point.
While the main quest is easy enough I hardly have to try on most battles. Like the last 1 or two did take a little to go through. And I actually lost a significant chunk of HP. But most of the others were just completely steamrolled and even when I got a bad board weren’t really hard to beat. It just took slightly longer.
And After I beat those side quests. Which was hard. it became even more exagerrated. I still did a couple main quests. But in chapter 2 they are still really easy. And most battles I am going into them with at least 30 strength more than the enemy. But the second level of side quest is like 80+ more than my score when I first unlock them. So the only medium difficulty option I can think of would be to stop upgrading my equipment for a bit to artificially make the main game harder. Then do a bunch of upgrades at once. As soon as the side quests become close enough to be in reach but still somewhat hard.
(10-30 more points seems to be that range from what I can tell.)
I have only been playing for 2 days though. And I have played previous puzzle quest games before.
In terms of potential solutions.
Adding more feedback to when you select pieces. Or giving a slight refund of time if you grab a piece that has no valid move. So that it still sets you back. But it doesn’t ruin your chances of clearing a decent number of stuff rather than like 2-3.