[b]huntress: the cursed village[/b] is a fantasy match-3 focusing on battles, while also getting rid of a curse on the titular village and helping your father. [b]77 levels[/b], often more than one building or level within is available, so progression is somewhat non-linear. weirdly enough, you can even ignore a few in the final area and still complete the game.
5 enemies with their unique mechanics, the sorcerer has all the attacks and spreads curse tiles on the board as well. if you can't stop them taking over every cell, you lose, plus when there are no more moves or spells left. enemies do their thing every few turns, once their bar fills up, so it's [b]turn-based except for curse tiles spreading in real-time[/b]. not an uncommon mechanic in this genre, unfortunately, but even that isn't as annoying as the ghost-spamming enemy, covering the board really fast.
there's a hint button to show a valid move but [b]no idea about the difference between [i]normal[/i] and [i]relaxed[/i] modes[/b]. you can switch between them by restarting levels, but there's no timer or turn limit to begin with, curse tiles spread just as fast and [b]levels can be difficult pretty early on, regardless of game mode[/b]. tried a few in both modes and didn't notice a single difference.
you can [b]match while animations are happening and cascades create, trigger and destroy stuff[/b], the way it should be. matching 4 of the same color creates a bomb, 5 of the same results in a power-up that destroys tiles in that row and column, and there's an undocumented black hole kinda thing from even bigger matches that basically re-deals the whole board. these have to be matched to their color to trigger.
there are also spells, charged by matching stuff: magic arrow destroys a tile, fire bird gets rid of an entire row and arrow rain obliterates a bunch of random tiles all over the board. most things can be destroyed by matching next to them and most are also switchable with an adjacent tile, but there are exceptions. in those case you have to use spells and/or work around them.
graphics are nice, audio is the usual unintrusive, unmemorable deal. there's a help section with enemy and matching info, but nothing about game modes. separate volume settings, custom cursor and a windowed mode toggle are all the settings, the window is resizable. it'd be great if the 'well done' banner and the purple fog when you lose were clickable to make them go away immediately, as they take pretty long.
the game [b]gets repetitive really fast[/b], you've seen everything after the first few levels and they overstay their welcome with high numbers to reach for. be prepared to replay them many times, but it's not too bad otherwise. matching and cascades work as they should and make for some spectacular chain reactions. so it's [b]recommendable on sale if you don't mind repetition[/b].
