Jewel Link Chronicles - Legend of Athena (Nintendo DS) - Review by Andrew

Introduction

PopCap's Bejeweled is an incredible 10 years old this year and, like Tetris before it, the casual puzzler has had it's fair share of imitators. In fact even our games database reveals a surprising amount of 'jewel' inspired DS titles and the few that we've reviewed certainly take a lot of inspiration from this gem-matching pastime. Jewel Link is clearly yet another 'homage' but have the developers poured in enough 'added value' to separate it from the rest of the pack?

Gameplay

Puzzle games don't really require a storyline and some of the greatest brain taxing titles have always relied on a simple 'pick up and play' quality. However, if you happen to be releasing a game which is incredibly similar to a fair number of other titles then it's probably a good idea to make yours unique in some way. Jewel Link Chronicles bases it's gameplay structure around the 'Legion of Athena' with your challenge to reconstruct the architectural wonders of Ancient Greece. To do this you must collect valuable resources' including gold, food and, of course, building materials. How do you do this? Well, you indulge in a number of puzzling levels where you must match three or more jewels. Sounds familure?

There are four sections in each area and you'll be required to play each one repeatedly before unlocking and moving onto the next. There is at least a bit of strategy involved here though and you can choose to concentrate on any one of the required resources or simply attempt to complete the levels as quickly as possible. It's not until you manage to fulfill all your requirements though that you'll be allowed to move on and you'll also need to acquire the all-important building plans. Once you have all of these you'll move onto a simple slide puzzle. Complete this and the building is magically constructed before your eyes and it's onto the next section.

In order to tap into Greek Mythology you'll also be required to battle it out with some creatures in order to protect your town. This is a case you clearing a collection of icons which relate to your current opponent. The Cyclops, for example, will be a single eye. These can be a little more challenging as you'll now notice that the actual shape of the playing area has changed significantly so there isn't always the required room to match up 3 tiles. You'll also have to deal with 'locked' titles, which require you to solve puzzles repeatedly to 'break the chains'. You'll quickly find all of this becoming completely immersive and you can easily kill a couple of hours with a single session. If you're a little pushed for time though, the 'Relax Mode' allows you to indulge in your favorite puzzles (if they have been unlocked) any time you wish.

Controls

Surprisingly smooth but all touch screen so what did you expect.

Graphics

We're not entirely sure why but the jewels just don't sparkle in Jewel Link. In fact the whole game just doesn't have that creative flair you'd expect from a DS puzzler. Now we're not saying for one minute that cutting edge visuals are important in any puzzler but when you place this next to Bejeweled, it just fades in comparison. The rest of the game isn't great either and the various historical scenes just aren't that interesting. In short: budget visuals for a budget game.

Sound

Let's face it, no one has ever bought a puzzler for it's gripping soundtrack and Jewel Link is no exception. The soundtrack here is background music in every sense and after a while you won't even notice it's there at all. More essential here are the various alerts such as 'level completed' and the more common 'time running out'.

Dual screen

These types of games work so well on the DS largely because they began as PC based titles. That means that the stylus and touch-screen comfortably takes over the job of the mouse so swapping jewels or tiles is simplicity itself.

Final comments

It goes without saying that there's very little here we haven't seen before and even with the addition of the historical storyline and slide puzzles it's still essentially a Bejeweled clone. Still, if you happen to be a fan of these types of games you do get plenty of gameplay for your money and with over 100 levels plus the ability to replay any puzzle, thanks to the 'Relax Mode', this would be a worthy addition to your collection.

Pro: Loads of Levels,
Con: Not Terribly Original, Very Average Visuals.
Final score: 7.1

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