Marble Duel: Sphere-Matching Tactical Fantasy Reviews

This game is a cheap copy of the old Zuma. It tries to expand the original idea of breaking balls every 3 together. The first stages of the game are fair enough. After that however the AI actually fools and cheats on the player, because that´s the only thing the game can do in order to try to keep you entertained. The result of every game does not depend on the ability of the player at all, it only depends on whether the AI allows you to win or not. It is like playing slot machines. It is not a discussion on whether the game is "diifficult" or "easy", not even about personal tastes. It is simply that the game is bad designed or not completed, probably due to the fact of the developers lacking basic mathematics/algebra knowledge. It is difficult for me to understand how is it possible that games like this one are allowed to be delivered. Do not waste your money with this game, you will end feeling frustrated. It is a complete fraud.

- - - - - THE GAME GOT REBALANCING-UPDATE ON OCTOBER 2018. - - - - There are a lot of negative reviews about the difficulty level after level 50. After the Oct.2018 update, I don't think those negatives apply anymore. The game is now very playable after lvl 50 also. I recommend this. - - - - W A R N I N G ! ! - - - - The game doesn't save locally, it saves on developers' servers (why...?). I just lost 3 hours of progress because the game didn't save properly. Unacceptable.

This is my favorite game in this genre. I hope we get more levels in the future or another similar game. The linux version has fewer levels, but the Windows version works perfect on linux with proton. Este es mi juego favorito en este género. Espero que le sumen más niveles o hagan un juego similar en el futuro. La versión de linux tiene menos niveles, pero la versión de Windows anda perfecto mediante proton.

Zuma versus mode is a good idea (I wonder why Popcap never released one), but in Marble Duel the execution of the idea is terrible. The AI is VERY unfair, meaning you must rely on the luck of the starting draw of marbles to defeat the opponent. Which in turn means restarting over and over again. After defeating an enemy, you are never certain if it was just luck or if the umpteenth respec was the key. The game also has a few bugs, after playing for an hour or so it starts to slow down its framerate until it eventually freezes when you try to quit. Finally, some people on the game hub wanted local 2p versus, but I wouldn't want to submit a friend to this pain.

Beautiful, but [b]deadly boring[/b]. I say this a huge match-3 fan, even addict. It's okay for absolutely non-savvy gamer like maybe someone's aunt — because mechanics are dull and simple in a worse meaning for the word, but visuals are sweet.

Actually not a bad game as a lot have said, sure some minor bugs, but the issue really is the cost. It's way too much for what you're getting, should be a .99cent game.

[u]Recommendation[/u]: Good for a couple of hours of Zuma-style play, but ultimately frustrating. [u]Review[/u]: Marble Duel could be called the "Zuma RPG," because it adds character stats, leveling, and story to the traditional Zuma gameplay of shooting marbles into a moving line to match sets and make marbles disappear. The different colors of marbles each correspond to a different kind of action that your character performs, as each level represents a battle between two opponents. So if you match red marbles, that performs an attack on the opponent, whereas a green match will heal your character. Ultimately, you have to deal enough damage to the opponent to reduce its health to zero, which completes that level. These are all fun additions, and it gives the potential satisfaction of "completing" the game (as opposed to Zuma, which continues endlessly). [u]Critique[/u]: This starts out really fun, because the RPG elements really add something special to most games. But the implementation of these elements ends up being very frustrating, and will eventually result in your being unable to continue the game. You see, you have to level to advance in the game. That's typical for an RPG, of course. But as you advance in the game, the opponents you face have higher and higher health totals, which means that they're harder to defeat. They also start doing more and more damage to your character. So you have to level your character to keep up: increasing the attack skill, so that each red match does more damage, or increasing the Reflect skill, so that each yellow match increases how much damage your opponent takes each time it attacks you, or increasing your Health skill, so that you have more health and are also harder to defeat. This is all standard RPG stuff. But for some levels, you need to have reached certain levels in specific skills, or you [i]cannot win[/i]. But you don't know what those are until you reach those levels and play them, so you will (unless you are very, [i]very[/i] lucky) eventually reach a level where the combination of skill advancements you've chosen is WRONG for that level. In most other RPGs, this would be OK; when you reach an encounter that's too tough, you go to an easier area, grind for a bit, and level up some more until you can meet the challenge. [i]But you can't do that here.[/i] Each level in the game will give you rewards to level your character only once. You get no benefit from replaying levels. So if you make the wrong choices in leveling your character - and [b]you WILL make wrong choices in leveling your character[/b] - you are pretty much stuck. There is the possibility of "re-spec-ing" your character, by discarding skill levels for XP, which you can then save up to use to buy levels in a different skill. But the problem there is that you lose XP when you do this. Say you spent 1000 XP to increase your Armor skill, but you find out that in the next level, you need to have a higher Attack Bonus skill. If you turn in your level of Armor, you only get 750 XP back...which means that you no longer have the boosted Armor skill, and [i]you still don't have enough XP to increase your Attack Bonus skill[/i]! At this point, anything you do is wrong, and there's no way forward. You're left with two options: 1) Take notes of what skills you need for that level, and then RESTART THE ENTIRE GAME, or 2) Stop playing. The game is fun! Or at least it's fun until you reach a point where there is no chance of continuing, and you have to start over from the beginning. Then you start to wonder if it's worth it, because you know that, even if you do start over and play through the first 50 levels again, you might run into the same situation at level 60. It becomes a Sisyphean task, with no end possible. It just feels wrong. I enjoyed my time with this game, but I don't think I will play it any more.

It gets very annoying later, almost to the point where it feels the AI cheats and gives them exactly what they need to win. Avoid. Update, I played a bit more since I own it anyway. Level 46 is complete and utter BS. You'd think they were selling micro-transactions.

I reach level 50 of the game try to pass it for 25 times but the computer is always had better collection of marbles which put it in advance, actually the marbles didn't changed a lot after replaying the round. Note I collected all the diamonds from the previous levels, did the skills upgrades, but didn't get the chance to advance the level or any tips to do that. I recommend updating the algorithm to random the marbles collection which may create a chance to advance the level.

I was just enjoying the game, but after I got the last marble (there are 5 in game: Attack, Shield, Power Boost, Heal and Reflection) the game got so hard and frustrating, almost impossible to play. AI has a huge advantage, always gets the right marbles, and knows what is off screen. You'll find yourself trying to survive deadly combos, and repeating the same stage over and over and over again. The game gives you points to distribute on your stats to increase the power of your marbles, but its also messed up, because every enemy needs a different strategy, and I had to keep reseting my points and distribute them in different ways for each stage. For a casual game, it's too hard and boring. I just want to shoot marbles, and not to calculate things like damage reflection, or defense points, whatever.