When comparing Puzzle Quest vs Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed, the Slant community recommends Puzzle Quest for most people. In the question“What are the best PC RPGs?” Puzzle Quest is ranked 74th while Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed is ranked 88th. The most important reason people chose Puzzle Quest is:
The core of Puzzle Quest comes down to its combat. You make a move, then your opponent gets a move. If someone runs out of life, they lose. If you matched four gems or more in a row by the time your turn ends, you get a second turn. Gems have different colors. Matching gems of a color gives you that color mana, and instead of making a match, you can choose to cast a spell, which costs certain kinds of mana. Not too complicated. Until you realize that your opponent is wearing an item that makes him regenerate life when his yellow mana is full. So you decide to steal all of the yellow mana on the board to fuel one of your yellow-colored spells and to prevent him from regenerating life. He casts a spell that siphons your yellow mana and gives it to him. You both go back and forth, retaliating against the other's strategy, until only one person is left. The game is limited by your ability to play it. Not only does your chosen class dramatically effect your playstyle in the game, but so does your gear, often times changing how you play your character entirely.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Combat, perfected in a match-3 game
The core of Puzzle Quest comes down to its combat. You make a move, then your opponent gets a move. If someone runs out of life, they lose. If you matched four gems or more in a row by the time your turn ends, you get a second turn.
Gems have different colors. Matching gems of a color gives you that color mana, and instead of making a match, you can choose to cast a spell, which costs certain kinds of mana. Not too complicated.
Until you realize that your opponent is wearing an item that makes him regenerate life when his yellow mana is full. So you decide to steal all of the yellow mana on the board to fuel one of your yellow-colored spells and to prevent him from regenerating life. He casts a spell that siphons your yellow mana and gives it to him. You both go back and forth, retaliating against the other's strategy, until only one person is left.
The game is limited by your ability to play it. Not only does your chosen class dramatically effect your playstyle in the game, but so does your gear, often times changing how you play your character entirely.
Pro Good PvP implementation
The game supports PvP, where fighting an opponent who is just as smart as you can be challenging due to the great balance of play in multiplayer for evenly matched players. What is even better is that there are optional handicaps for matches between players that have different skill levels.
Pro Tons of fan service
For those that are fans of the Neptunia franchise, Action Unleashed should be appeal quite nicely. While not a main franchise game (this is a spin off made by a different studio), the game retains all the fan service one would want in a Neptunia game. Plenty of inside jokes and familiar references.
Cons
Con AI "luck" is unquestionably unbalanced
There are many instances that see the player questioning the insurmountable luck the AI often receives as it will skip obvious moves that any person would play that end up resulting in a match 4 extra turn when more tiles fall down, as if it knew that would happen. Sadly this can happen often and is how the game increases difficulty.
Con Weak plot
The plot of the game is no one of the series best, while this is a side game not pertinent to the main franchise, it would have been nice to see a stronger story.