総評 : 課金モバイルゲー臭がする有料ゲーム
TLDR; Paid game with a feeling of "a Pay to Win mobile game". (English review on bottom)

マッチ3にクラフト要素があるというのを聞いて購入したが、以下の点で「本来これはモバイルでF2P(P2W)形式にするつもりだったのか」と思えて仕方がなかった。
・アイテムのクラフト回数は有限。その回数を補充するには盾を500個消す必要がある(3個マッチのみで計算すると170マッチ近く)。
・クラフト素材自体はマッチ３でランダム入手。土タイルや砂タイルを掘ったり、宝箱を開けたりすると手に入る。いわば運ゲー。
・馬にはヘルスとスタミナがあり、ヘルスはエサを与える(１回ごとに食料を大量に消費)、スタミナはクラフト品を渡すことで補充する。前述の「有限クラフト」と馬の健康度ボーナス(両方が高いと+10手、両方が低いと-10手)との相性が悪い。
・どうみても課金通貨にしか見えない「ゴールド」でキーを買わないと「完全クリア」メダルがもらえない。ゴールドの入手はすさまじい量の資源と交換するかクラフトするのが主だろうがその入手量は需要(キー購入以外にも消耗品補充、復活の羽の購入、スロットのコイン追加購入など)と比べるとはるかに少ない。
・「デイリーログインボーナス」や「３０分で１回復するライフ(最大５つ、リトライ時に消費)」というモバイルゲームお約束の仕様。
・スロットマシンが運ゲーにさらに拍車をかけている。３つ絵柄がそろう気がしない。

マッチ３自体は比較的オーソドックスだが、次の問題点があるため難易度は高め。手数の問題はリラックスモードで遊べばかなり多くなるが、オンでプレイしたときの意見をあげる。
・手数が200近く与えられるステージもあるが、多くのステージは複数の盤面にわたって繰り広げられることが多いため「１盤面を３０手ぐらいでクリアしないと無理」というバランス。
・マッチ３ゲームではよくある「シャッフル」が手詰まり時以外で行われない上にヒント表示が遅いため、次の一手がわかりにくい時のストレスに悩まされる。
・パワーアップは「3x3爆破」、「３～４つのブロックを選んで破壊」、「残り手数+20」、「1種のブロックを全消滅」、「盤面にある氷・鎖・箱・土をランダムに現在の50%分吹き飛ばす」、「隣接する同種のタイルかお邪魔ブロックを破壊」といった基本的なものばかりだが、補充はポーションを500個消す必要がある。切らした時に限り、ゴールドを支払うことで補充できる。
・4つ消し/5つ消しで作られる爆弾は初動(1コンボ目)でしか作られず、落下コンボでできた４つ(以上)消しでは爆弾ができない。また、爆弾同士をスワップすることで列爆破も行えるがこれも機会が限られすぎていて扱いに悩まされるし、手数の無駄になりうることもある。そもそも盤面が小さすぎて爆弾を作る余裕もないことも多い。
・画面の上側にある順番どおりにスワップ＋マッチすることで資源を追加で得られるが、手数の少なすぎるこのゲームではそんなことをしている余裕はない。
・手数が少なすぎるためステージ評価の3つ星は案外難しく、メダルは「完全制覇」が条件で、「金銀の宝箱を全オープン」「土/砂タイルを全部取り除く」「資源置き場をすべて枯渇させる」「箱をすべて破壊する」となる。前述の「ゴールドがないと金箱が開けられない」問題や、とても少ない手数とコンボ仕様の厳しさからメダル取得は難しい一方で、ステージ進行にはメダル取得が必須である。
・暗い洞窟を掘って最下層の花を取りに行く面はむしろ手数が多過ぎる。完全に見えない場所でもスワップ対象として扱われるため、光源アップグレードのそろってない序盤では「見える範囲でマッチがなくてもシャッフルされない」のは大問題。

完全に「有料の買いきりで出す」つもりで設計していれば面白いゲームになり得たのだが、中途半端にモバイルゲームの要素を入れたまま課金要素をインゲーム資源に置き換えただけという印象を感じざるを得ない内容かつ、その課金要素(になるはず)であるキーの購入やパワーアップ連発によるゲームプレイはとてもスマートとはいい難い。

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I bought the game as I saw a charm with a combination of Match 3 and Crafting, but this game had a feeling of "Supposed to be Freemium but decided to make it a paid game":

- You have limited *times* of crafting, and you need to match and remove 500 Shield tiles to recover one attempt.
- Craft materials are obtained from uncovering dirt/sand tiles or opening chests, but the contents are completely random.
- Your horse has Health and Stamina; feed horses(lots of Foods are used in each process) to recover Health, and use crafted items to recover Stamina. This is a HORRIBLE combination with the forementioned "limited crafting". If you neglect your horse's condition, you get moves penalty or you'll have to spend phoenix feathers.
- GOLD CURRENCY. This obviously look like a paid currency and you must use them to purchase keys for getting Medals(which you receive on 100%'ing a level). Instead of paying real money, you'll have to spend TONS of resources or craft materials to get Gold. Of course, you'll be spending much more Gold than you earn them.
- "Daily Login Bonus" and "Lives that regenerates over time". Only mobile games and online games have them.
- Slot Machines add another layer to "game of pure luck". Give us the exact chance to win ANY matches, and show what each matches will give.

Match-3 part is quite orthodox, but it's generally hard for these problems.
(The moves problem can be ignored with Relaxed mode as you will have much more moves, but I turned that off) :
- Sometimes you get 200+ moves, but most levels consist of multiple boards, so basically you'll have to solve each boards within 30 moves or so.
- Shuffle is only available when you have no more moves. Other Match-3 games usually let you use it every few minutes.
- The "hint" that appears when you don't make a move for few seconds, takes too much time.
- Powerups are quite common, but you need to match and remove 500 potions to get one. You can pay Gold to buy powerups if you run out of them.(P2W, huh?)
- The bonus bombs on removing 4 or 5 tiles can only be created in first move, unlike other Match-3s where you can get them from combos. Swap two bombs for bigger explosion, but it's much harder to actually do so and there won't be much space to make multiple bombs.
- You can get bonus resources if you swap & match in certian order(shown on the top of screen), though it's nothing but a waste of moves.
- Getting 3-star gets difficult due to very low moves, and Medals require 100%'ing the boards(Open all chests, remove dirt/sand tiles, deplete all resource stockpiles, destroy all crates). This means YOU MUST PAY GOLD TO GET MEDALS, because Gold Chests are also counted for the Medal.
- As for Stars and Medals, you will NEED them to progress.
- The cave levels have TOO MUCH moves available. And in earlier level without light radius upgrades, it irritated me often when I don't "see" any matchable blocks, but the game knows there are matchable blocks IN THE DARKNESS.

The game has potential and could've been great if it focused on "pay for the package, and everything else is free, no currencies ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥".
I can't really understand why they made decisions to make the game less engaging, by adding lots of "Gold contents" that basically slows game down, and ignoring the standards of Match-3 games(such as bombs creation in combos and shuffles).

This is a match-3 game with light RPG/narrative elements and the engaging component where every match gains you resources to utilize in progressing through what appears to be an extensive game. By its basic design, it's all rather enjoyable.

Unfortunately, the game is utterly ruined by the fact that, despite being an entirely single player game, it's filled with the most negative implementation of online-multiplayer-game mechanics. You log in daily? Good, you get daily rewards. Miss a login? Whelp, there goes your streak, sucks to be you. You don't log in daily? Whelp, your horse (which composes a significant portion of your stats) effectively dies, and requires rare items to be revived. Even if you log in early enough to avoid that outcome, it'll still require special items to bring back the horse back to proper health. The entire game is designed as thoroughly pay-to-win-online-game as possible, and yet, as what is either a saving grace or an additional condemnation of the design, there's not any way to purchase in-game elements.

The game is filled with elements that could use improvement (the other negative reviews go into detail on what some of those elements are), but they're ones that, as far as I made it in the game, could be overlooked in the general satisfaction of being able to play a rich match 3 game that plays out to a 'connect-the-dots and actively explore the map via those connections' vibe reminiscent of Peggle (along with some light, easy Match-3-based mining levels thrown in every few levels as palate cleanser).
But any "casual" game relying on a strict daily login requirement had better be free-to-play, because paying $7 to get told you can't play a game the way you want is bad enough even when the way the developers want you to play doesn't completely go against what is suitable and expected for the style of the game.



If you think you'd want to play an extensive casual puzzle game just a few times daily, but still are willing to login daily without fail for however long it takes to beat the game at that slow rate of play, and you're into Match-3, then by all means, pick this up for a couple of dollars (it has also been bundled, so you can look around for cheap copies from that). (To be clear, you can still play the game just fine without daily logins, but it does feel like you're being unnecessarily punished into additional, excessive grinding for no discernable reason.)

Everyone else should reciprocate the middle finger the developer is giving us, and walk away until the developer fixes the design to accomodate the fact that people have actual lives and preferences outside of the developer's whims, and the fact that they're running against genre-typing for no reason but to be jackhats (or, presumably, because they went for an inherently bad, but fairly typical P2W design from the start, and then just gave up and posted the game with a purchase price but failed to remove the P2W elements.)

In the end, it all boils down to a question of what your playstyle is and what your demand for a decent match-3 game amounts to; inherently, however, this game just can't be recommended with its incongruous, unfun design elements.

This game is nonsense ! It's one of the best match-3 i have ever played, but your horse looses its energy even when you are not playing. I played another game for a few days and when i wanted to play this one again, my horse was dead !!! I can't accept a game which give me no choice but to play it everyday ! So it's a thumb down !

Well, that was a long 12 hours...
The only thing that kept me going was the mini-quests with the wizards. They had some funny lines, although most of their humour was based on them forgetting something or not understanding us regular humans.
The rest of the game was absolutely dreadful. The stages were unncessarily long. And because they're limited in moves, you can't help but think, "this board has 500 moves allowed; does this mean if I finish in 510 moves, I'll have to redo it from the start?"
Do you realize how long playing 500 moves is? Not only that, but the animations are super slow.
About 20 stages into the game, I fired up CheatEngine so that I could set the game speed to x2, and thus enjoy it a bit more. Then I started giving myself more gold so I wouldn't have to grind. In the end I gave myself a bit of everything. So I was able to finish everything in 12 hours instead of, I can imagine, 40 or so. And it was really NOT FUN. I should have guessed the ending would suck. It was even worse than that. It took time to say that basically, the main character rushed to finally give a potion to the king. Wait, what? Everyone in the kingdom was asking for my help! I was asked by the game to build a gazebo for somebody! A gazebo!! Can't that wait? Nope, need a gazebo. The king shall wait.
My recommendation shall wait, too.

PS: at least it's better than the studio's follow-up game, which reuses the same assets and somehow manages to be even more frustrating, long and annoying. That's really too bad-- they had a good match-3 system in place, with nice animations. They just did everything else incorrectly.

Nice Match 3 puzzle game. You need to match pieces at specific tiles to progress the level. A level can have several rooms. There are also obstacle tiles that you need to overcome and power ups you can collect. There are 200 levels, as Ive heard, so should have a large amount of playability.

The problem is .... its a mobile game. That is, the game mechanics are built around mobile spending, you have several types of currency, which has no point of being there. Different types of chest keys, way too many different crafting items, gold, etc.
You have a couple of trackers for hunger and fatigue of your horse, which run in real world time, meaning, if you stop playing for a week and come back, your horse is dead. Its important, because it influences how many moves you have to complete a level.
There is crafting of buffs, but you cant craft them without commendations, which are absurdly hard to earn. The stamina for the horse is acquired mostly through crafting, but you are always lacking these commendations.

I really dislike being forced into playing games/having game sessions and being penalized for not doing so, especially considering how big the gaming market is today and the absurd amount of choice there is. While the match 3 gameplay aspect is solid, in my opinion, the mobile market mechanics undermine this game a lot. Keep that in mind when considering the purchase.

4.5/10

Average Match-3 game. Nothing really exciting. Prefer the free Gems of War or Puzzle Quest.

Bad game. Can be very irritating by the bad designed levels.

After verifying the integrity of game files, I always get 1 corrupted pop up which proceeds to delete all saved game data.

The best I can say about this game...is that it is an okay time killer, but otherwise it gets a little irritating after awhile, way too many game mechanics, and the playfields eventually get so cluttered up that it becomes more of a chore to clear a board than being any fun.

As for the horse that you choose at the beginning, may as well be able to leave it in the stable, especially after you have to collect five hundred, 500, of those damned shields to even craft one single item, and guess what? You have to craft stamina items for the aformentioned horse, so, more grindfest that just becomes irritating and you eventually lose the horse bonus for moves when it dies, unless you happen to be lucky throughout your run, or, unless you happen to have one of those increasingly difficult to get phoenix feathers, or whatever they are called. Oh, I forgot to mention that the poor animal's hunger and stamina bar decrease even when you aren't playing, Fun huh?

In short, could be a good, or even great game if it weren't for the dodgy mechanics that bog it down way, way too much.
As for my rating, can't really recommend it, unless you have a penchant for getting past the troubles mentioned.

Addendum: Got to level 32, I have been stuck due to the board layout and insanely poor game design that makes the portal keys react like they are a legitimate match 3 or four when they line up and nothing else on the board does on top of everything else gone wrong with this waste of drive space. The only way past this I can see is to waste time grinding for gold to buy enough Bombs to nuke the level into oblivion.

Not going to waste my time on that, got better things to do/play, consider this one on the uninstall and remove list for me. -_-;

Standard free-to-play match 3 game where it starts out easy and then the levels become such that you need a bunch of powerups that can only be purchased with money. Not worth playing. Play Gems of War instead.