Small Giants soft-launches Puzzle Combat

Awesome, the heal at about 6 minutes in is called… (drumroll please)… FIELD AID! :smiley:

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And considering how field aid is our perfect thing :rofl::joy::smile:

What countries has it been released for soft launch

Well I saw an ad for it, realized the art style and gameplay were incredibly similar, then I noted that it was Small Giant! So I tried it. I’m hooked :slight_smile:

Let’s be honest though, Puzzle Combat is just a reskin of Empires & Puzzles, with very slight modifications.

Don’t get me wrong though! That’s not necessarily a bad thing… not yet anyways. Being a fan of fighting games, here’s an example:

Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers by (c) Capcom
Both of them Fighting Games. Both of them published by the same company. Gameplay is very similar.

Empires and Puzzles vs Puzzle Combat
same idea

Yes, if you look closely and if you’re a fan of the games, you’re gonna start noticing there’s small differences, like the armor mechanic, matching options, status effects, weapons… and it’s also true for both of the Capcom games I used as an example, they have minor differences like duck-walking (crouching and walking) and air blocks to make them stand out.

But the differences are small, and they are basically both the same game with different characters and setting. Just reskinned and tweaked a little. Again though, that doesn’t mean the game isn’t fun! I’m addicted.

Small Giant is sticking to their core strength in terms of what they can do… this is only their second game so far, so I’m gonna cut them some slack here.

I am gonna keep playing Puzzle Combat, it’s a lot of fun and I appreciate the little differences. Also it’s just so much fun to start from scratch, no one has a fully ascended 4* yet and I can’t tell you how exciting that is! We’re all learning!

I do hope however that they get something more original for their next game. :wink: I will keep playing this game, but I’m not gonna play the next one they make if it’s the same thing

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Has it been launched to a larger market at this time? I don’t see it in the app store sadly, I’d like to give it a try.

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Canadian here, it seems to have launched across country-wide (I’m in a Canadian alliance and there’s a wide range of provinces for users). Just a day ago it seems.

There’s nothing to do yet though :stuck_out_tongue: No alliance tasks, no titan-like battle… not even an elemental summon (and I really need green lol). So you’re not really missing out or anything.

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Here’s a screenshot of armor which so far is the most interesting thing about the game (for me). Keep in mind the game is still very early though!

The grey bar you see above the hero healthbars: that’s called Armor. Some heroes (like my blue one) add that to other heroes. Basically this is another layer of HP on top of the hero.

If you open the status screen you can see the amount of armor left. This armor health bar takes damage first, and any overflow damage is then subtracted from hero HP.


There are some special attacks that deal more damage if the enemy has armor, and some which have x% of damage pierce through armor. If the hero HP reaches 0 through an armor piercing attack, even if there’s armor left, the hero will still get knocked out!

EDIT; updates about armor

  • Armor can stack! For e.g. using Dougal (the blue hero) who adds 60 armor, and Varvara (red female hero with headphones) who adds 50 armor, that stacks their armor together to all heros; 60+50 = 110 total!
  • Damage over time: Burns inflict damage to armor first, then hero HP once armor is gone. But poison inflicts damage to hero HP, regardless if there’s armor or not! Good thing to keep in mind here :slight_smile: May be other status ailments like this.

That’s all I got for now. Only been playing for a day, so I don’t know all the specifics here. Again the game is still very early, there’s not even an elemental summon. So it’s a bit rough getting resources and good heroes right now.

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I don’t mind having another game to play but my budget is limited to E & P. Not sure I’d want to start a similar game as a free to play, and I wasn’t really impressed with the graphics (cars, etc), on Puzzles.

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where can I find this to download?? this would be good to play waiting on world points to replenish

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I got an add in MV but can’t find it in the store

It’s called Puzzle Combat. I’m also Canadian so maybe that’s why it’s in my Play Store.

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That’s a fair criticism. Not everyone will be into this theme.

A much more startlingly close comparison are the Fire Emblem and Advanced Wars games, (c) Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. Both series are turn-based strategy games, both by the same developer, and both have pretty identical gameplay, with some minor tweaks and differences.

Personally I’m ok if they wanna try this again with a different theme, I just hope they get more original with their ideas in later games. For me I’m ok being F2P, the thing I don’t like is the amount of time lol… 2 games like this to juggle is ok, but more than that is crazy, no way in heck I’m gonna be responsible to multiple alliances like that, may as well just play 1 game if they’re all gonna be the same thing… ain’t nobody got time for that lol

Canadian here and I downloaded it as well. For the most part it is very similar to empires and puzzles but there are some subtle differences that make it interesting.

The biggest difference I’ve found so far is that the tile matchmaking opportunities are different. For example, in puzzle combat you can make a two by two square match. Also, making a match of four tiles in a row creates can a special tile which will take out 5 tiles either horizontally or vertically depending on whether or not the original match was horizontal or vertical. 5 tile combos still create a special tile that takes out all tiles of the same color similar to empires and puzzles. Overall I really enjoy the new mechanics and actually find them superior to empires and puzzles.

On the downside, the game is still in its infancy so there is little variation among the characters and as previously mentioned there are no titan battles or wars at this point in time. There is also nowhere near the diversity of special skills that are present in empires and puzzles but I’m sure that this will be coming down the road.

All of the character cards are human at this point in time so it’s somewhat difficult to visually distinguish the various characters since the differences between cards are limited by human attributes and clothing.

I find the general artistic approach to be somewhat crude and less polished then the world of empires and puzzles. If one considers empires and puzzles to be a AAA title in its presentation then, by contrast, puzzle combat looks more like, and plays like, an indie title. Again, I’m sure this is something that will improve over time.

All in all, I think the game has a lot of potential and in its current state it’s still a great time filler while you’re waiting for empires and puzzles flags to regenerate.

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It won’t bother me if it becomes wildly popular and serves as a “cash cow” to keep E & P growing!

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Been playing some more while I wait for stuff to refill in E&P. Here are some other things I’ve noted:

  • Leveling up weapons and skills uses metal (equivalent to iron), which makes it just as important as food, compared to E&P where food is what you mostly use when your buildings get maxed.

  • Leveling special attacks: you need metal and skill books to level them up. These books vary in rarity, and are awarded through wanted missions (so far). It is a lot slower to level up the special skills as a result, but on the other hand it’s a more guaranteed method, and it uses metal instead of food. They go up to level 10 instead of 8.

  • Weapons are the equivalent to troops, going up to 5*. Leveling up weapons is very different though; you don’t need a building for that, you can just access your weapons from your hero menu. You need metal and weapon parts, the latter which you can get from disassembling other weapons (recommended that you disassemble the 1* and 2* ones). It seems like it’s a lot less grindy than leveling up troops, as this is not experience points based, also another advantage is that it doesn’t consume all your food.

  • Every healer in the game so far will heal a fixed amount of HP now, instead of a %. This makes healing less effective compared to E&P, and the armor boost a much more important component of the game.

  • Armor can stack! If you use a hero that adds 50 armor, then another that adds 60 armor, your heroes get 110 armor!

Game is fun, I do think the look of the heroes could be more polished though. I hope they have more variety in the future; cyborgs, robots, mutants, even aliens could fit as heroes in this world (one of the main characters has a bionic arm). :slight_smile: I like science fiction a little more than fantasy myself, so I personally enjoy this game.

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I just started playing and I noticed one additional HUGE upgrade. I was reconnected to a raid in progress after I was disconnected.

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I am in the US and I was able to download the game. If you have an Android, you can google the game and install the .apk from other sources outside the google play store.

Day 5 of playing now. More info here, may include spoilers of the beginning of the game… read at your own risk :slight_smile:

Starting the game

Tutorial is very similar to E&P, with some minor differences showing the the different special tiles you make from matching 4.

But just like Empires, everyone will get one 3* hero at the beginning, their Bane basically (she looks like him but as a girl, and with Nashgar’s special instead). You will also get one 3* weapon at the beginning, which is very nice.

Weapons

I briefly touched on weapons last time, but I want to be a bit more specific.

Heroes equip weapons, just like troops in E&P. Pretty much all of them are firearms, although there’s a few crossbows too. They give an attack bonus and a defense bonus to the hero who equips it, and they affect tile damage.

There are six other bonuses, but they’re only given by 4* and 5* weapons:

  • Piercing: increases amount of damage that penetrates armor
  • Accuracy: Increases the chance of hitting enemies
  • Dodge: Increases the chance of avoiding damage by enemies
  • Resistance: Increases the chance of resisting status ailments
  • Crit. Chance: Increases the chance for critical strikes
  • Crit. Damage: Increases cirticial srike damage

Furthermore, leveling them up is resource based only, there’s no experience points for them. You dissassemble weapons and get parts from them. Each weapon needs specific parts to level up.

What you get from dissassembling seems to be RNG. But I have noted that up to 3* weapons don’t seem to require any ludicrously difficult to find materials, just a lot of metal for this point in the game.

Also, finding weapons is a lot more common from map levels than it is to get troops in Empires; no specific numbers yet but I’ve been getting one in almost every single level, so I can already tell they’re way more common.

Finally; weapons can ascend in this game! Yeah, that’s gonna be the grindy part here.

Special Skill Speeds

Charge speeds for skills are represented by numerical values in this game.

But don’t let that confuse you, skill charging mechanics are basically unchanged. Here’s the translation for Empires veterans:

  • 36 = slow (12 tiles)
  • 50 = average (10 tiles)
  • 64 = fast (8 tiles)

Ghosting tiles – which I proposed to call “cover fire” in this game :smiley: – works the same way too, charges skills twice as fast.

Do note however, that there are no weapons that increase charging speed!

Ascension tiers (Promotion & Upgrades)

Promotions are used for heroes, which is the term used to ascend them to the next tier. Weapons also have ascension tiers, which are the upgrades.

Materials for promoting do not seem to be as straightforward though as E&P… it doesn’t seem like it’s based on color and star rank anymore, it seems to be more individual. No clear pattern here yet to make that call though. But luckily, all 3* heroes and weapons can be fully maxed with farmable items, regardless of what they need.

Ascension tiers are based on the star rank of the hero or weapon: a 3* will have 3 tiers, a 4* will have 4 tiers, and a 5* will have 5 tiers. Applies to both heroes and weapons.

Promotions

No matter the hero rank, each tier goes like this:

  • tier 1 = level 20 max
  • tier 2 = level 40 max
  • tier 3 = level 60 max
  • tier 4 = level 80 max
  • tier 5 = level 100 max

In other words, heroes don’t have different max levels per tier, like they do in E&P. Comparisons:

3 star heroes end up requiring the exact same amount of levels in both games:

  • Empires = 120 (1.30, 2.40, 3.50 – 30+40+50=120)
  • Combat = 120 (1.20, 2.40, 3.60 – 20+40+60=120)

4 star heroes require less levels :slight_smile:

  • Empires = 220 (1.40, 2.50, 3.60, 4.70 – 40+50+60+70=220)
  • Combat = 200 (1.20, 2.40, 3.60, 4.80 – 20+40+60+80=200)

5 star heroes take longer to max :frowning:

  • Empires = 260 total levels (1.50, 2.60, 3.70, 4.80 – 50+60+70+80=260)
  • Combat = 300 total levels (1.20, 2.40, 3.60, 4.80, 5.100 – 20+40+60+80+100=300)

Both good and bad here as you can see. Do note that all 3*, 4* and 5* heroes all cap at level 20 on ascension 1 in this game. On the one hand this does mean everyone will have a viable team of 4* much faster, but on the other hand… it’s gonna take a more resources for the 5*.

The difference is not as drastic as it initially seemed, but it’s still there and it’s significant.

Weapon Upgrades

Weapons also work more like heroes in this game in the sense they have ascension tiers:

  • tier 1 = level 10 max
  • tier 2 = level 20 max
  • tier 3 = level 30 max
  • tier 4 = level 40 max
  • tier 5 = level 50 max

Because the system to level up weapons is completely different from E&P – you don’t feed troops to train, instead you disassemble weapons and use those materials – I can’t really compare the amount of time it takes to max them, like I did with heroes. This is still a massive, massive grind though

Upgrading weapons requires feeding another weapon to it, once it reaches max level. All you need to feed it is 1 weapon of the same color and grade for that promotion.

Concluding thoughts

Games fun, basically E&P with another coat of paint. I don’t have any alts or anything like that, so I can afford the time to play two games.

It’s a grind but we’re all doing it. If you are curious, then try it when released in your app/play store :slight_smile:

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E & P with guns? Yes please!

Will this ever be available in the USA?