March 20, 2014

Pokemon Battle Trozei is out now on the Nintendo 3DS eShop

On February 13, 2014, Nintendo surprised us with the announcement of a sequel to 2006's DS title Pokemon Trozei. The new game would release for the Nintendo 3DS with the title Pokemon Battle Trozei.

Well, the game has arrived, and you can now download the E-rated title from the Nintendo 3DS eShop for $7.99. I've put a little bit of time into the game, and my thoughts are mixed. I never played the original, so I had a lot to learn about the fast-paced puzzle gameplay when I began. As I mentioned on Miiverse, I'm having a difficult time grasping the gameplay. I played the first stage 3 times over, only achieving a mediocre B-rank (for the first stage, that's probably pretty sorry) by the end.

I'm not an expert on the puzzle genre, by any means, but I do expect games in the genre to be simple to learn (but with depth) and really addictive. Pokemon Battle Trozei has a simple enough concept: use the touch screen to match 3 or more Pokemon heads to attack and capture (or "Trozei") wild Pokemon. However, performing advanced techniques and setting up combos has me at a complete loss. When you clear a line of Pokemon, the rest start falling down to fill in the spaces, and more lines may match up. This is how combos work, but I can't predict them, and they happen so quick, my brain can't keep up with the madness.

So the addictive quality I look for in puzzle games is not apparent in Battle Trozei. However, I do plan on giving the game a few more chances...just in small chunks, maybe once a day, as it's rather maddening to play a video game I can't fully understand.

No comments:

Post a Comment