Puzzle Quest: A Role-playing Gem
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The hybrid concept of Puzzle Quest may be one of the major reasons why it's not mentioned with other RPGs. We're used to certain styles of combat, and modeling it after Bejeweled may be just a little bit too abstract. And yet so many forms of RPG combat are abstract. Many MMORPGs and games like Dragon Age: Origins utilize systems of special moves combined with cooldowns. It makes sense from a balance perspective not to let the players use all their best skills all the time, but it's also a thoroughly abstract mechanism for stamina, designed to lead to longer, slower battles.
Alternately, take turn-based tactical role-playing games as an example. Although these seem to be somewhat based in reality, the requirements of taking the chaos of combat and making it work, one character after another, ends up making combat a more abstract puzzle. Imagine that those characters on that grid are blocks, that you have to manipulate into place, and this sort of combat ends up looking less like an RPG and more like a puzzle game. Sure, the characters and progression would make it an RPG, even if they were represented just by blocks of different colors-but that's exactly the case with Puzzle Quest. On its grid, the skulls are abstracted openings in an enemy's defenses, while the mana could be seen as time to concentrate.
Puzzle Quest also derives power from the fact that Match Three-style gameplay is really good. There's a reason that Bejeweled is the only puzzle game to come anywhere where Tetris in the pantheon of "Greatest Ever Timewasters." I had always enjoyed Bejeweled, but attaching a narrative drive and mechanical development to it made this RPG fan extremely happy. And that progression and development also help game as a whole. Early combats can be simple, sometimes painful exercises in tracking down skulls. Fights in the middle of the game offer more variety, and let you develop varied strategies according to new spells, items, or enemies. And by the end of the game, both you and your enemies are so powerful that it almost seems like an entirely different game. It may not be "balanced" to cast a spell that turns a third of the gems on the board into skulls, nuking tough enemies into submission, but damn if it doesn't feel satisfying.
