The blending of word game and RPG mechanics has created a game that reeled me in hook, line, and sinker. The gameplay loop of collecting gems, failing, upgrading, and progressing had me returning to this game night after night. The smooth controls and visuals made my addiction pleasurable. I cannot recommend Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey enough. It is an ambassador for the turn-based, word-based, role-playing game. Even if it is the only game in the genre.
With oodles of charm, shockingly-addictive yet easily accessible gameplay, Letter Quest Remastered: Grimm’s Journey is one of the best family-friendly puzzlers on the Xbox One platform.
Do you have someone in your family that loves scrabble or boggle? Do you have someone that loves roleplaying games? Do you have kids that need to work on their vocabulary and spelling? Who won't take time to practice reading, but will play video games for hours? Well for $10 bucks this game is the perfect fix.
I bought this game for my wife as she loves scrabble but hates learning the controllers for consoles. I tested it and it's strangely addictive. It is spelling. But the building up of your character is like many role playing games. You earn hit points, chose a weapon, books, how you level up.
The game is extremely simple. A child can play it. An older person can play it. It seems to easy, but then you open challenges for each level and it shows there is enough challenge. I can't stand Scrabble. I was testing Letter Quest, to teach my wife, and played all day. When my wife got home I got her to try it and she wouldn't put it down.
If you like word games this is great. If someone needs help with their vocabulary or spelling it is great. Honestly I bought Heroes of Iron IV, Stereden and this game for my monthly budget of games. Oddly this game is the favorite. Granted Heroes of Iron is a grand strategy we are new to and will probably be much loved in my house. But Letter Quest stole our interest. For a $10 dollar word game, that is incredible.
Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey Remastered mixes two popular yet very different gaming styles into a single game. By taking the framework of an old school RPG like Soleil or early Final Fantasy games (think Super Nintendo/Sega Megadrive) and turning the battles parts into word games like Scrabble the developers, Bacon Bandit, have managed to pull off one of the rarest of things in modern gaming. They have made something that is genuinely unique but we all know, unique doesn’t mean good.
Letter Quest is remastered as it was originally a mobile platform game that was then ported to PC and Steam a little later. Brilliant programs like the current Xbox One indie developer program (1D@XBOX) have now opened the door for games like Letter Quest to get an outing on the massive console market which can only be a good thing for developers and gamers alike. Letter Quest is brought to us by Bacon Bandit Games who hail from Canada. Made up of just two guys, Mark Smith and Jake Macher, Letter Quest was the first game produced and released by this small company and the remastered version is more than just a graphical upgrade as a ton of new content such as an endless mode and a new soundtrack have been added to the remastered version.
Letter Quest follows a young reaper named Grimm who is on the hunt for a pizza and to make some cash. You control him on his journey which turns out to be more perilous then a pizza collection should be. You also enlist the help of a young female reaper called Rose and between you both you set off to collect jewels and defeat monsters in your realm on your important quest for sustenance. The characters and levels within the game are cartoon like and pretty simplistic in style but in a good way. Rose and Grimm are cute as can be and the bad guys you fight along the way look simple but perfectly suited to the rest of the games style. There are a load of cool character animations when you win or lose with Grimm having some particularly funny ones. Musically, it feels retro but again that seems to fit nicely in with the games design and doesn’t ever get annoying. I must admit I often didn’t notice the music because I was so enthralled in the gameplay.
The controls are supremely simple as you don’t actually move the characters. The way the game works is that you select a level from the main map and that level will have a certain amount of monsters in it. Grimm will walk from left to right across the map, stopping when he reaches a monster. When that happens, battle commences. This is where you get involved but instead of swinging swords and throwing spells you have to put together words from a letter board at the bottom of your screen. Much like scrabble, longer words or words containing rarer letters are worth more points than others and these points are the XP damage you cast against your enemies. Defeat one and Grimm automatically moves through the level to the next one. Sounds simple and it is simple but it is brilliant. A few levels of doing the above should lead to boredom but that isn’t possible here because along with this simple and ultimately playable design is an absolutely huge range of additions that make each level feel like a whole new game. Once you complete a level you open up challenge versions of those levels where you have to beat it again but under a set of constraints like beating it in a certain time which means you have to be quick with your words or beating it while only using 3 letter words or even beating it against massively upgraded monsters.
As well as that, within each level there are huge variations in battles where some enemies have the power to mess with your letters freezing tiles so you can’t use them, poisoning tiles so you take damage if you do use them and more. The monsters themselves range from being ones that you fight using any old words you can find, ones that only take damage from words of a certain length or one that only takes damage from words starting with a corner letter and so on.
There is a reasonable but not harsh rising difficulty level as you progress which also stops any boredom from setting in and it is this challenge that really pulls in the RPG elements. Every time you beat a monster, a level or a challenge you win gems. You use those gems in the store to buy upgrades to your own health, ability to take damage, strength of attack, add perks to words (like 2 x damage for using a double vowel), add power to your weapon and even buy health potions that you use in game, as a last throw of the dice.
Just like the variation in monsters and their specifications, there are a load of upgrades which unlock as your progress and it is extremely satisfying to fail on a level, go back and play a few challenges on earlier ones to earn gems, upgrade yourself and then kick monster butt in the previously failed level.
Letter Quest's Xbox One Achievements actually make it a better game by providing so many goals to work toward. If you want to play on the big screen, you can't do better than the Xbox version.
Going into it, I didn’t expect much from Letter Quest: Grimm’s Journey Remastered, but I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoy a good word game now and then, and the unique twist that Letter Quest offers with brawler and RPG elements makes this a truly engaging and addictive title.
In all of this, of course, I should emphasize that Letter Quest's core gameplay isn't all that bad. If you're like me, you'll get excessive amounts of joy out of playing a round or two and seeing all the crazy words you can come up with. It's easy enough to figure out, and the controls are a breeze.
Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Letter Quest is the fact that it really doesn't feel like it makes that much difference when you craft an unusually long or complex word.
A perfect role-playing word finding game with a lot of things to do. It’s brilliant for short or long play sessions alone or with the help from friends. I salute developer Bacon Bandits for delivering an awesome one-of-a-kind experience and receives a very deserved LifeisXbox’s Recommended tag.
Letter Quest Remastered
About as fun as a spelling test.
Letter quest remastered is a puzzle game where you play as a little grim reaper dude out to grab some pizza
and I love pizza as much as the next guy... but coming up with words for 8 hours to get some? No thanks
there’s a bit of charm here in this RPG meets scrabble game...
You’re given a bunch of random letters and you do some turn based combat with enemies using those letters...
Your goal is to come up with the best word possible, and you know your boy superken from superkengaming has the vocabulary of a 3rd grader, so this wasn’t the best game for me to flex my spelling skills on..
The bigger the word with the better more challenging to use letters the more damage you do to enemies, and enemies will attack back.. However not with letters... they just get free damage... and their can do things like mess with your letters, giving them poison effects or breaking them so that they give you no points for a certain amount of turns..
Definitely stacking the deck against you...
and as the game progresses more effects are put into play and enemies get spongier and spongier... this is how the game challenges you... with sponge…
thankfully enemies drop gems when you beat them allowing you to upgrade your weapon, health, and armor... you can even buy spell books to give you an advantage such as the letter e giving you health every time you use it, and these bonuses are leveled up while using them…
But its apparent with its boss battles and later stages that this game wants you to replay the same levels over and over... to grind for gems to upgrade your gear…
As boss battles for example will have a ridiculous rule attached to them like the enemy only takes damages from words that start with vowels…
again I only know like 3 words that start with a vowel.. rough time for me…
so I threw my gems at the shop for some health potions to give myself a better chance because I wasn’t about to go back and replay levels to grind for gems… levels are samey enough as it is
Why grinding is ultimately a problem is that this game gets old insanely fast..
The different tiles and effects don’t keep it interesting... the battles don’t get more interesting...
there are 40 levels total here, and all of them are just defeat enemy after enemy, occasionally get a shop to refill your health a little or do a wheel of fortune style game for a perk before the next battle..
And if you die you have to restart the level all over again...
it’s a spelling test that never ends
And if you want that... there literally is an endless mode…
Letter Quest starts cute, but gets really challenging and really tiring fast
it’s a play a level once every few years kind of game more than it is beat in sitting kind of game
it’s that repetitive
I give Letter Quest Remastered
a 5/10