Marvel Puzzle Quest

What all of Marvel Puzzle Quest’s interlocking mechanics add up to is a game that's compelling at each level.

For anyone willing to buy into Puzzle Quest’s signature mechanics though, Dark Reign is -- perhaps surprisingly -- more robust than its fan service or freemium boondoggles would suggest, packing in enough content and new ideas to keep devotees matching jewels until the inevitable heat death of the Marvel universe.

Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign does a pretty good job in putting two popular franchises together, and the result is a fun, challenging match-3 puzzle game.

Fans of the previous games and lovers of Marvel's dynamic universe will find plenty to enjoy without having to spend anything.

There's nothing revolutionary here, but Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign does a good job of spicing up the match-three genre for comic fans with its hero-centric nerdiness, tense combat encounters, and strong collecting elements.

Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign isn’t completed at the moment but is still fun to try out for the time being. There will be a lot more levels and things to do as the game is continually updated in the coming weeks, but for now the it’s good enough to give a try.

For the die-hard Marvel fan, the annoyances will be worth pushing through. The puzzle combat is still immensely fun and the storyline loosely follows the Dark Reign plot from the comics, including fights against and alongside the Dark Avengers. The leveling structure is a sticking point that makes the superheroes feel a lot less super, but as fanservice goes, Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign is better than most.

For those that love comic books and puzzle games, this game has both. The goal is to build a team of consisting of heroes and/or villains to battle other teams. The single-player mode does a good job on getting users through the basic play mechanics without any difficulty until the later levels. The player-versus-player mode is a mixed bag of challenge. This is due to the fact that users can customize teams through recruiting and training. On the plus side, the users can always join with others in an alliance.

If you`re gonna buy stuff in this game then it`s a horrendous waste of money and a giant scam. However, unlike many F2P titles it is possible to progress without paying for anything, although it takes a lot of time and is more something to pass an hour or so with a couple of times a week than anything else. If you play it like that, over a long time, it is quite fun. Finding new covers is very exciting and there are always ways to slowly build up the resources you need to buy upgrades and roster slots. If you need something long-term to fill time between other games or while sitting on the bus then this game fits the bill nicely. If you wanna be the best immediately then either look elsewhere or be prepared to waste loads of money.

It's a fun little game to pass the time on your iPad. It's cool to unlock your favorite marvel character and see their abilities. But like I said, it's just something to kill 5mins, don't try to spends money on this game, it;s just another mirco-transaction money drain that is on par of a facebook game.

It's a colourful Marvel-themed match 3. Collect Hero's for $. This is the only Pro. Cons; - Obvious & blatant loot-box microtransactions. The twist is they give you SO many free characters but the ONLY way to add them to your roster is to spend real money, at an ever-increasing price, despicable Designed for you to keep spending money on literally nothing. - Second are the 'battles.' Unblockable attacks from foes through countdown tiles. Unblockable because it's random colour allocation and its impossible to match those tiles. Makes this match 3 even more frustrating because you lose a 5min battle due to unchangeable events you can see coming multiple moves ahead. - The 'purple' currency is useless. Hundreds of thousands accumulated in minutes and you can't trade it for anything. - The subsequent 5 currencies are there to stimulate substance but don't offer anything but confusion and more useless crap to spend real money on. - Random inexplicable scenarios happen when no matter what colours you match you inflict 1 point of damage. Irrevocably ruining the match because your opponent is still wreaking havoc. This "game" is indicative of the abhorrent direction that mobile games are headed in and the more people that support this 'gambling for kids' the worse it'll get. Avoid like the plague

Unfortunately, this game has gone from 'lots of microtransactions available' to 'pay to win'. This game puts a Marvel theme to the tried and true 'Match 3' formula. It starts off innocently enough, giving you a few heroes to play around with. However, being able to make any progress in the periodic story events or the player vs player tournaments requires more and more heroes, which in turn requires that you purchase roster slots. Early on, you are forced to buy roster slots in batches, as opposed to single slots, and the price-per-slot goes up as you buy them. Late game play has roster slots costing nearly $6 each. Powering up your heroes requires you to obtain new comic book covers for them, and of course the best heroes have the rarest covers. Previously, players had the option of spending $20-$30 on a 'pack' of ten covers, which would guarantee you would get at least one of the rare featured hero. However, sensing that they could make more money, D3 changed this 'guarantee' to 'increased chance' to get a featured hero. That 'increased chance', which in their defense they are at least transparent about, is only about 10%. So yes, you could spend $30 and have absolutely nothing to show for it save for some common hero covers. Player vs player is atrocious, pitting your team against another player's team controlled by the terrible computer AI. Pay-to-win is especially noticeable here, as players who outright buy covers for high-powered heroes ($13-$23 each, with 10 possible buyable covers, plus well over $100 worth of ISO points for hero levels after that), will simply dominate. D3 implemented a 'shield' system that allows players to keep their team from losing points on a defensive loss. High paying players exploit this by playing matches that reward a lot of points, then buying a shield while they recover and/or look for another high scoring match. It requires spending a lot of Hero Points, and you won't reach the upper ranks without doing it. While it *is* possible to acquire all the heroes and even roster slots without buying anything, it will usually take a very, very long time to do so, and I'm speaking in terms of years, not weeks. It's a shame that the Marvel license sees so much F2P abuse, and MPQ is no exception.