{"id":6350,"date":"2017-11-27T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/letter_quest_remastered"},"modified":"2017-11-27T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T13:00:00","slug":"review-letter-quest-remastered-switch-eshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/11\/27\/review-letter-quest-remastered-switch-eshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Letter Quest Remastered (Switch eShop)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"\">\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 1 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86342\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86342\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Letter Quest Remastered08\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>As many a great philosopher will have once said (we imagine), \u201cwords are the world\u2019s most powerful weapon\u201d. Taking that statement rather literally, <strong><a class=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/letter_quest_remastered\">Letter Quest Remastered<\/a><\/strong> is a game that is built around using words and spelling to dish out damage to opponents \u2013 longer words with rarer characters within them can net you bigger success (\u00e0 la Scrabble) but things actually go much deeper than that. We really enjoyed this game when it first appeared on <a class=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/wiiu-eshop\/letter_quest_remastered\">Wii U<\/a> and are happy to report that it still feels just as fun as it ever was now that it&#8217;s on the Switch.<\/p>\n<p>Like a beautiful amalgamation of a hardcore, dungeon-crawling RPG and the world\u2019s most intense spelling bee competition, Letter Quest Remastered sees you slaying monsters, ghosts, and particularly nasty bunnies with your knowledge of language and efficient purchasing of skill upgrades. Levels play out as turn-based battles; you\u2019ll spell a word to deal damage to your opponent, then they\u2019ll hit back and take a chunk out of your health bar. Most levels contain anywhere from one to six-or-so enemies and you\u2019ll have to defeat all of them to progress.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 2 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86336\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86336\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Letter Quest Remastered04\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Things get much more complex rather quickly, however &#8211; enemies can attack your spelling tiles as well as your health (sometimes restricting their use or even causing you damage if you need to use them); some opponents will have specific requirements such as \u2018only takes damage from four letter words\u2019, or \u2018takes double damage from words containing two vowels\u2019; and there is a whole shop containing various skills and upgrades that you\u2019ll need to purchase and equip to stand any chance of winning. The game\u2019s harder levels will make you really think seriously about the words you are using and, on certain occasions, you might find yourself needing to save certain available letters for enemies that are coming up next.<\/p>\n<p>The in-game shop we just mentioned can provide you with the skills and attributes you need to progress through the increasingly difficult levels. You can buy upgrades for your starting health, base damage, base defence, chance of dodging enemy attacks, and so on, as well as one-use items such as healing potions that you can take into a level as a safety net. There are also skills that level up with experience that can be equipped or unequipped at will such as \u2018regain a small amount of health when the letter \u2018E\u2019 is used\u2019, and you can also choose between a wealth of different weapons that contain different bonus qualities.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 3 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86335\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86335\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Letter Quest Remastered05\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>It is an odd blend of genres and activities but it all comes together really nicely. The game is made up of 40 levels that need to be beaten four times each (with different end-goals and rules in place) totalling 160 in all, and the core idea remains the same throughout all of these. Luckily, though, the variety of ways in which you must defeat opponents, the inclusion of time trial rounds, and super-difficult rounds where the enemies can deal much more damage than usual help to prevent the game becoming anything less than fun. Even if you find yourself needing to grind through earlier levels to earn currency for shop upgrades when you get stuck, you\u2019ll still be able to have a good time doing so as long as you enjoy the use of language.<\/p>\n<p>In a way, this use of language might suggest that Letter Quest Remastered works as an education tool and, if you want to use it in that way, it could act like one. It never pushes that upon you, though; definitions pop up for each word you use and a strong knowledge of \u2018bigger\u2019 words would definitely give players an advantage, but you can just throw words around and work on dominating through upgrade powers if you wish. As you play through the game and start to reach the trickier stages, you\u2019ll likely have started to get a hang of spotting potential words from the letters that begin to appear and might even find yourself relying on similar tactics that suit your specific knowledge and play-style.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Screenshot 4 of 4\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86339\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/86339\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Letter Quest Remastered03\" \/><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>If you\u2019re wanting a break from the game\u2019s story mode, you can also blast your way through an Endless mode (where you fight through as many monsters as you can before eventually being wiped out), or you can try to work on clearing achievements. Some achievements are in place to give you in-game rewards whilst others are purely for fun (and would have acted as trophies\/achievements on other consoles).<\/p>\n<p>Everything looks and sounds rather lovely, too; character models are presented in a very crisp and clear cartoon-like design and the letter tiles stand out nicely (and can be changed should you want to). You actually have the option to choose between two soundtracks for the game \u2013 the Remastered version or the original game\u2019s version. We\u2019re partial to the Remastered one ourselves, but having the choice is a nice touch all the same.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the only thing we found to be frustrating across the entire game\u2019s feel and aesthetics was the fact that button presses aren\u2019t always registered when you are moving between buttons really quickly. Usually this doesn\u2019t cause any bother, but when you are rushing through a time trial and the directional buttons aren\u2019t making the cursor move with every rapid press, it is easy to get slightly frustrated. We should point out that this is only a very minor inconvenience and doesn\u2019t cause issues very often at all, but we do feel it is the one disappointment in an otherwise flawless design for usability.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Letter Quest Remastered not only manages to successfully combine the wild pairing of Scrabble and RPGs, but also manages to make it incredibly fun. You\u2019ll find yourself doing little other than furious spelling and the purchasing of skills and upgrades throughout the entire 10+ campaign, yet these things remain enjoyable and keep you interested from start to finish.<\/p>\n<p>If your confidence in using the English language isn\u2019t as strong as it could be you shouldn\u2019t feel threatened by the idea of this game, it&#8217;s worth noting that you can steadily work your way through levels at your own pace and by using the weapon upgrades provided \u2013 although we would suggest that people with a natural linguistic flair might get the most enjoyment out of it. Either way, a lot fun is waiting for you in this title and we\u2019d urge you to give it a go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As many a great philosopher will have once said (we imagine), \u201cwords are the world\u2019s most powerful weapon\u201d. Taking that statement rather literally, Letter Quest Remastered is a game that is built around using words and spelling to dish out damage to opponents \u2013 longer words with rarer characters within them can net you bigger [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}