#astroderpy

Puzzle Quest games are basically combat Bejewled. You and your opponent take turns matching colored "gems" to get energy resources and beat each other up.

I figured a gem-sliding game would work especially well on the DS, because of the touchscreen and all.

I was wrong. Somehow they made it much more awkward. It's actually possible to miss the gem you're trying to select with the stylus, and if I make an invalid move, I take damage and lose my turn! I guess that's the equivalent of forgetting how to fly the ship and running into an asteroid.

I picked the female character, because the idea of being Sgt. Dudebro of the Space Marines was not appealing at all, and also because I don't pick the female main characters very often.

I ended up regretting this decision. Although the dialogue and story appears to be the same whichever gender you choose, the female character always looks dazed and confused, with her mouth slightly open. Can't unsee!

All this makes me wish I could play as AstroDerpy instead. Can I just do that?

No? Aw, c'mon!

As far as I can tell, the storyline goes like this:

Anne (that's me) is a psychic graduate of psychic school. Sounds cool, but maybe all that intense mental activity damaged her brain a little bit, which would explain the look. That's not cool.

She's sent off to some distant galaxy by her psychic leaders, who don't actually say why they're sending her out there. Her psychic traveling companion Sable says something about "they can see the future and stuff so we'll find out what we're doing here soon enough".

So, what, do I just dick around in space until something happens? How do I tell what the important event we're here for is?

This is either really bad delegation of human resources, or they just wanted to get rid of her. Jerks!

Sable, by the way, is here to help me broadcast my psychic powers at enemy spaceships. Now that sounds pretty awesome, I have to admit!

Oh, by the way: the only psychic power in the game is "run away from fights".

That's right. Puzzle Quest Galactrix took the concept of "psychic spaceship warfare" and made it stupid and un-fun. I wouldn't have believed it possible, but the game's just that special.

The plot shows up soon enough after I start. Something (probably Jenova) breaks out of a restricted lab of some kind, hijacks a spaceship, and flies around killing stuff. It's my assumed job to track it down and bring it to justice! With lasers!

Mostly, though, I just mine asteroids all day. Mining asteroids provides me with cargo to sell or use in crafting, which is nice.

I just need to work out how to win the mining game more often. The board slowly runs out of available moves, and if you run out completely, you're done.

Once, the board started out without any moves. "Hey, let's go mine that asteroid- oh, never mind. It was made of styrofoam."

Along the way, a number of crewpersons joined my... crew.

We've got science lady, mining lady (mining is fun, she says. What moon rocks are she smoking, I wonder), cliche sarcastic robot, and rat bastard.

Rat bastard is literally a rat who is non-literally a bastard. His name is Pezt, which sounds like "pest" and is a very clever joke. I laughed so hard, I forgot to laugh.

The Problem With Pezt is that he's a conniving, greedy, dishonest thief, who brings doom upon our poor ship and is never punished for it. Is there some way I can slide these gems around that shoves him out the airlock, already?

Mining lady is space-racist ("spacist") against the rat bastards. "Nothing good can come of having one of them around," she says.

"Now, wait a minute. That's racist," I said (to myself, because there aren't any dialogue options in the game).

And now I am racist against them, too. Hopefully Pezt is just a bad apple, but his species is actually listed as being "dishonest". Seriously?

The leader of his homeworld had me retrieve a gift before he'd give me any info.

The gift I had to find was a Keck egg. The unborn child of a sentient, intelligent life form.

"Why would I ever agree to be a baby-snatcher!?" I exclaimed at the tiny screen.

Here's why, the game replied: Because this quest is part of the main storyline.

Pezt happily led me around the Keck's galaxy. The Keck, in fact, actually tried to stop me from flying around their planets because I had a rat bastard on my ship.

"You've been warned, human," they tell me. "Leave our planet and take your pet Jahrwoxi rat with you."

Anne's response? "Hey, can I have one of your children? (No, not like that. I mean for selling)".

So yes, in this case it is okay to judge a book by its cover. Anne's a few enzymes short of a petri dish.

The Keck refuse my polite request for some reason, so I check the Keck Bazaar on Pezt's advice, without success ("What do you mean they don't sell their babies here?" he says).

So then I had to just raid one of their ships, killing everyone, and taking an egg by force. I am a hero!

And naturally, Keck ships can use the Keck Shell, which fills all their energy levels to maximum instantly and is total bullshit. STOP DOING THAT

Speaking of bullshit, the A.I.'s favorite trick is to make random gem matches that cause a massive, unpredictable cascade that fills all their energy levels, restores their shield (it took forever to punch through that shield! STOP DOING THAT) and causes gigantic amounts of damage to me.

My favorite trick is to make random gem matches that position the space mines just close enough for the A.I. to make a match with them, causing gigantic amounts of damage to me.

The best option for me, in most cases, is to not take any actions at all. As usual, the only winning move is not to play.

Right now, I'm trying to save up gold bars (which I've sold loads of to many planets, but cannot buy) to craft the Shield Matrix, while valiantly losing repeatedly against a gigantic battlecruiser for a quest benefiting  - surprise! - the rat bastards.

Bad game! No biscuit!

But I'm going to beat it anyway. Just to show it who's boss.

Endgame spoilers: I am the boss