Play a match three style puzzler with an RPG style party of pretty ladies as you match jewels in Pretty Girls Pop Match.  It’s available on PlayStation consoles, Switch, and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

Gameplay is your standard match three puzzle fare, so if you are familiar with games like Candy Crush and Bejeweled, you’ll know what to do here.  But instead of moving the jewels with your finger on the touch screen, you’ll use a cursor you move around with the L stick and highlight jewels with the button.  If you match more than three, you’ll get items you can use to clear out more jewels like rockets, bombs, etc.

You can unlock different fantasy RPG ladies as you play, and you can ‘equip’ one to the level you are working on.  Each lady will enhance one of the items you can use, so the knight lady will enhance your sword item, for instance.  By completing levels, you will earn diamonds you can use to level up the ladies’ skills to clear out more jewels, although it’s not much of a big difference when you do that.  You finish levels in the main quest by reaching certain goals like getting to a certain score, matching certain kinds of jewels, etc.  Aside from the main quest, you can do a score attack mode where you try to get a high score in a certain amount of time, and you can place the ladies in scenes in the diorama mode.

One of the main problems I had with this one is that you get a Game Over if you run out of moves, and most match three games will just reshuffle the gems until you can make a move.  The jewel colors also are very similar and people who are colorblind may have trouble.  It’s a decent enough match three game, but I’ve certainly played a lot better ones out there.

Kid Factor:

Pretty Girls Pop Match is rated T for Teen with an ESRB descriptor of Suggestive Themes.  Some of the ladies wear somewhat skimpy outfits but that’s it.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, but not necessary just to play.

Tags: Game Reviews