Marvel Puzzle Quest Critic Reviews

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

The use of Marvel characters is great, and the core idea of connecting special abilities to matching crystals is just as good now as it was back in the original Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. I was a huge fan of that title, and Marvel Puzzle Quest proves itself to be a worthy new-school successor.

Eventually, you figure the match-3 machine is going to run out of steam. But so far enough developers have been able to find new ways to present it that it hasn’t given up the ghost, and it helps when they can hook specific audiences. For comic fans, Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign can definitely do that. Just don’t tell the heroes they can trade their powered armor and web-shooters for iPads, okay?

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.

Although free to play is the biggest trend in mobile games at the moment, it doesn't fit too well with Puzzle Quest. I'd pay ten bucks for this in a heartbeat for experiencing the campaign, but now I'm left with monotonous grinding and replaying same missions over and over in order to level my heroes to the point, that I can progress to the next fight. Pvp-games are crippled, because the matches are won by those, who are willing to spend money on their hero roster.

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.

How you approach Marvel Puzzle Quest depends on your expectations. It's not complete, and having to pay for stronger characters is a bummer. That said, the concept works, there's plenty of other stuff to unlock and the multiplayer will keep you entertained. Considering it's free, you have nothing to lose by downloading it.

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.

It lacks the original’s elegance and surprise, but as F2P spin-offs go, this isn’t nearly as villainous as you might expect.

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

Still enjoyable.

The game is a match-3 game with Marvel's universe. The gameplay is simple and intuitive and the graphic is nice, but the game is almost pay-to-win. The number of the characters in the game isn't so high either.

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.