PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY
How much does PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY cost?
Prices are current as of 8 Sept 2026.
PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY has no in-app products on record in the United States.
10+ alternatives to PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY
| PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY |   Simon's Cat - Blast Time |   Grindstone |   Disney Getaway Blast+ |   Temple Run: Puzzle Adventure |   Puyo Puyo Puzzle Pop |   Super Monsters Ate My Condo+ |   Garden Tails: Match and Grow |   SUMI SUMI : Matching Puzzle+ |   finity. |   Summer Pop!+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating / 5 | 3.9 | 4.8 | 4.6 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 4.7 | 4.8 | 3.6 | 4.6 | 4.5 | 3.3 |
| Reviews | 579 | 23K | 15K | 13K | 7.7K | 7.6K | 2.4K | 1.3K | 1.1K | 808 | 88 |
| Released | 2023 | 2021 | 2019 | 2023 | 2021 | 2024 | 2024 | 2022 | 2025 | 2023 | 2024 |
PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY reviews
3.9 out of 5, based on 579 reviews.
What people like
- No microtransactions or pay-to-win.
- Core puzzle gameplay is fun.
- Regular updates keep it fresh.
What they complain about
- No way to turn off sound.
- Battery drains incredibly fast.
- Grinding for items is too hard.
Gotta love PAD
While it’s a bit of a departure from the original (and deeply missed) Puzzle & Dragons, the core gameplay loop is as fun as ever. Can’t say I miss spending a fortune on stones either! 🤑 My only gripe is the landscape orientation. It’s fine for short bursts, but it would be great to have a portrait option for added comfort.
Why…
Why are the players held hostage for so long on starting a new game? We’re not allowed to navigate any menus especially the options menu where I would love to turn off the sound and music. It’s such a ridiculous development decision.
ランク上げがキツい
パズドラは周回ゲーなんで、素材数とかは正直こんくらいでいいかなーとは思ってます。毎週ダンジョン更新もあるし、昔のパズドラを思い出せてほんとに楽しいです。ただランク100以降が全然上がらず、200達成がほんとに苦行です。ダンボ付きで周回しても取得経験値はたかが知れています。ここは改善いただきたいかなーと。あとパズドラゼロのように周回用の機能や縦持ち機能も欲しいです。切にどうかお願いします🙏
敵の倒し方がわからない
このゲームに馴染みのある人は、きっと各ステージに合う特性を持ったキャラクターがわかるんだろうが、私のような初心者には、てんでわからない。 アドバイスやヒントもなく、調べても攻略法も出てこないので、負けが続いてストレス。多少の難しさは大歓迎だが、3回程度失敗したステージでは、攻略に向いているキャラクターを教えてくれるとか、そういう救済がほしい。 あと、女性の姿形をした特定のキャラクターの胸が揺れるのが、ものすごく不愉快。低年齢向けでもあるゲームなのに、どうしてこういう表現を入れるの？本当に気持ちが悪いので、今すぐにでも直してほしい。
Remove or alter the level cap
It already takes a lot of time to unlock the characters, so I don’t get why there’s a level cap. It’s frustrating repeating the same levels to get crystals. At the same time, I want to play the new colosseum levels but my units are underpowered.
One of the Best
I never played the original versions of this game but I’m thrilled to play it now. The first thing i do after waking up every day is play this superbly fun game. I think I’m on Story 10 something so far. But it’s awesome unlocking new characters and having to battle to get the pieces to fully unlock and use them. Many thanks to the developer of this for such a fun and entertaining game. Plus for the new updates as well. Thanks so much and God bless.
Bad performance and so much grinds
Title says all. This game drain battery so much and almost unplayable due to the heat. And the game play wise it’s so grindy that you wish quit this game early on. I’d recommend don’t even start this game.
Drop rate up + bind immune pet when? Experience dungeon when?
As a 2 year player, I stopped playing as much when I beat all contents, (1year ago?) Farming is fine but there is no single pet that has both rate up and bind immune is stupid. (It should have bind free and awakening free as skill) Don’t tell me that is reserved for lv200 reward, you guys should add maybe experience dungeon (daily), maybe 5k-10k experience/day? for players to level up quickly, after lv100 it is just not worth the effort to level up.
Long forced tutorial
Be aware that the game forces you to follow each step of the tutorial for quite a while. No option to go to the menu to change the settings (like to turn off the sound) until you complete several levels. Not a great start.
OK, but not OK if you know what I mean
Yeah, sure it might seem good but it’s slow and there’s a timer. It’s not my paste yeah and then might be a final boss. Your dragons evolved into humans but it’s not good. Not that good. That’s why there’s three stars you dummy.
Please add vertical mode!
Extremely awesome to find a non-gacha version of this classic gacha game on the Apple Arcade. Please add a vertical mode to make it easier to play on the go!
Wastes time in the worst ways.
You like Candy Crush? How about we sweeten the deal with less addictive gameplay and some D&D inspired rules? Wait! Where are you going? I haven’t even gotten to the Pokémon rip-offs yet!!! No. Just, no.
Amazing game needs improvements tho.
An idea is a higher luck chance because sometimes you will breeze through everything but when you get to the boss you only do 1 damage like what is that also maybe adding a new element too! I would be all for it if you would add one like wind and maybe another one creature called the opallit like the rubylit and amelit Opal as in wind :) I would appreciate if you took any of my idea into mind and put them into the real game
No sound at all during fights
iOS 18 on an iPhone 15 Pro. Really annoying that there is only sound during non-battle screens.
The update speed of subsequent tasks is too slow
Compared to other platforms, the arcade version of the game update speed is too slow, almost a week to update a small level, and almost no challenge, like to speed up the update speed, the speed of difficult copies, recommend at least two special levels a week, the current level challenge is too low, the reward is too low, the chance of dropping cards is too low, Just let people keep repeating brush a few levels, almost no desire to continue to play, I hope developers can pay attention to this problem, the game itself is doing well, bugs are not a lot, mainly the follow-up additional content is too little, the update is too slow, a little perfunctory.
Endless Fun without P2W
I’ve been playing this since release and it’s perfect for me. Weekly new dungeon releases keep me interested without tying up my life in a game. No in app purchases makes this my transition out of the gotcha P2W games I played for the last few years.
No portrait mode and text is tiny
There is no reason this type of game should ever be released without a portrait mode or adjustable text sizes.
Really good but….
I thought this is a monster game. Really? Anime people too?!
キャラ強化と並行して見直す部分はあるはず
先日のアップデートにより追加された超絶限界突破やシンクロ効果により、広範なクリーチャーの強化が求められ、併せて大量のクリスタルが要求されるようになった。 とにかくクリスタル集めが渋くて怠い。そのためのダンジョンボーナスなのかもしれないが、ダンジョンボーナス持ちで固めるとコロシアム、☆7級の高難易度ダンジョンがクリア出来なくなる。 細かい事は良いのでせめてコロシアムのボスだけでも確定ドロップにして貰えないか。コロシアムステージ2なんて上位の☆7を強化しきるためには素のドロップ率だと100周くらいは最低でも必要になるのではないか？
Too difficult
It’s just too hard to collect all the bits and pieces in the highest levels. It becomes frustrating instead of fun.
Love it, but
Me: New to series. Don’t play match games It does get hard and feels like you need a bit of luck assuming one hasn’t mastered gem maneuvering. I’m stuck with 4 star heroes. Can’t seem to catch the break to get past.
Awful
Terrible UI, game is too hard even with their supposed rebalancing. Some dungeons are impossible to clear even 20x. Ridiculous game and a waste of time. Deleted.
Wish for vertical layout configuration
Wish there was support to change the layout to vertical like the classic PAD. The ergonomics of landscape are a bit odd
Save yourself the time
Fun enough, until it isn’t. You’ll run into monsters you can’t damage. At the beginning of the fight it will tell you how to damage it, but that message pops up for about 3/10000 of a second and you can’t get the information anywhere else. So you’ll either get absolutely stuck and unable to proceed or you’ll try to brute force it until you get lucky enough to accidentally kill the monster. Normally you’d get around this by going to the internet and getting that same information from a useful website, but this game doesn’t have enough of a following to be able to find any information about it anywhere on the web. So you’ll be well and truly stuck. Can’t recommend.
Flawed but fun anyway in the end
Half the story isn't even localized properly and is in Chinese or Japanese or something that looks similar to my western eyes. There are way too many pointless, meaningless, chore tasks that do nothing but waste time. Seriously, why do I need to make a billion useless creatures I will never run on my team? Each with an unskippable creation animation, and needing to be leveled up to unlock other stuff, by tapping the button once per level for each creature. Leveling stuff up is an obstacle early on when you don't have a massive mana stockpile, later it's just a chore (other than stuff that's locked behind the random and lore-unrelated level cap) Everything highlights as NEW, _all_ the time, you can never clear it all out for more than 30 seconds, don't even try. (Drives me nuts.) a lot of the enemies make no sense whatsoever, why am I fighting a bunch of heroes in a continent that is supposedly ravaged by monsters and abandoned? Speaking of which, needs more dragons compared to random humans. I'm here for dragons, not anime heros. That said, the core gameplay loop of match three challenges to do damage is very engaging and easy to get lost in for a while, and I mostly am having fun because of that. In spite of the other things.
Best games maybe this year
Only BG3 could beat this
Still feels like pay to win
Only with no payments so the game is one big grind chore. Feels like game should have come out 20 years ago with how basic the ideas of the game are and the lack of any interesting graphics. Worse the game uses language without describing what it means. Powers say things like orb erasure or orb destruction and no idea what the difference is. Do we erase by matching? Or do we destroy by matching? What is ability bind or any of these status effects? No help file or tutorial to explain even the most basic ideas and it feels like lacking that you can’t really play the game competently.
A few things could make it better
An optional auto mode for when you want to progress but don’t have time. Frankly I’d prefer the gacha of the f2p games but with only in game earning. And lastly, portrait mode would have been ideal for me on a cellphone. Without those it’s a bit too involved for my tastes in mobile gaming.
Too grindy.
A freemium game without any way to buy anything. Starts off OK, then you hit a metaphorical pay wall. The game expects you to replay missions over and over for random drops. The balance is just so screwed up. Definitely feels like they took a free game, took out the MTX, and called it a day. Not recommended.
Power drainage
Every time I play the game on my iPad and iPhone (14 pro max) the battery drains extremely quickly.
So happy it’s back!
Puzzle and dragons was my favourite phone game back in the early 2010’s, then it got taken down and I really missed it, so it’s great to see it again! Even if the mechanics are a bit different because of no gatcha, I’m enjoying the card system instead
The drop rate is extremely extremely extremely low
The drop rate is extremely low, sometimes I've been playing all day and haven't gotten a single piece of fragment. It's really really frustrating, please stop poisoning others......
>PAD Stories >Looks inside >No story
I find PAD’s core gameplay to be quite addicting on its own terms, so it’s great to have another game without the gacha elements outside the 3DS. While gathering new units can (and will) be quite grindy when that one crystal you need refuses to drop, I find there’s less of a focus on grinding since you’ll hit the level cap fairly early on leaving you lots of excess exp to spare, and the linear story effectively limits the units available for a while. That said, the game gets tough when the training wheels fall off and only continues to get tougher, so be prepared to get good alongside your grind. Ultimately, the biggest gripe I have is that for a game called “Puzzle and Dragons Stories”, there’s basically zero plot with only one character of any relevance you meet several chapters in.
Weak game
I get the idea that this is a matching game with some pokemon-like creature collecting, but it feels like it was made for people who had already played the game. First, there is no real education on the terms of the game. The help button helps not-at-all. There are these 'help' screens that are supposed to pop up when a dungeon is loading but the ipad works so fast I can barely read what the help is. So I am left with a ton of basic questions like is orb erasure different than orb destruction and what constitutes erasure? A ability or is matching considered erasure? Most of the powers and abilities are not easy to understand which leads me to think that this game was made for gamers who had already played in the P&D franchise. Lastly, the reason this has two stars is that the game seems to be pay-to-win and they didn't change that aspect for Arcade. I'm stuck at a place where I can no longer progress because I either don't understand a mechanic of the game or there is a pay-to-play feeature I am supposed to have unlocked to be able to survive the later rounds. I guess the people rating this highly played the franchise before because there is nothing in the tutorial that helps you understand how the powers work.
Way to hard and puts you in impossibly hard groups of monsters
The game is good but t there is no balance whatsoever I’m stuck on floor 11 and it’s all by luck and with even luck it’s not enough specially for the boss for that section they need to weaken down these monsters a lot and I’m stuck with 4 stars can’t catch a break can’t even imagine how hard floor 14 is so I can finally awaken might never happen at this point tbh see how this game is going it will be impossible
Hard but fun
Good game
Can’t change audio settings
Can’t change my audio settings without completing the tutorial.
I want to play this in a portrait mode too.
Like others, I wish I could play this in a vertical orientation. Overall this is fun and quite challenging at times.
掉落率真的是噁心
打了十幾場愣是半個都沒有。我真的搞不懂，掉落率設定的這麼低到底對你們有什麼好處？這是單機的也沒有課金選項，是想要我花多少時間在刷素材？
seems fun, but…
I’m barely into playing the game (heading into the fourth boss), and already had to grind to get there. Also, the controls are very clunky on Apple TV; it’s “cursor based”, and many of each touch targets are small and hard to select with this method, making the game feel very sluggish. you can change the cursor speed in settings, but then it moves so fast that you can’t tap on anything. This game needs some re-working.
Blissfully Addictive!
Never played any P&D games prior to this but I’m loving it!
Needs balance
Game just gets to hard cant even advance to unlock higher level monsters all mine are maxed and its completely luck based now and im no where near the limit break level to make new or higher level mons to advaced i pretty much stopped playing. NEEDS DIFFICULTY ADJUSTMENTS
Reduce the difficulty of the subsequent level
Sorry, although I am a novice. But I think this game is too unfriendly for most novices, and the strange blood bars behind the 11th floor are too thick! I was very happy to play, but I was stuck on the 12th floor and three days, and I couldn't clear it at all! I hope that planning can weaken the difficulty in the future, so that we novices can play this puzzle game happily, I wish you a better and better game!
Too Flashy but fun concept
The general idea of the game is really fun, but unfortunately the flashing yellow and blue numbers gives me a headache. I’d love to have the option to reduce the flashing.
Okay but grindy
It starts fresh but falls off hard due to grind. In a Gacha, you have rewards and daily missions to look forward to. Here, your rewards for victory is a paltry amount of currency, no story and a harder mission to beat next.
The Definitive Single-Player PAD Experience
I've been a long-standing fan of the Puzzle & Dragons franchise, and played a fair amount of the mobile game and all of its Nintendo console ports, and within two hours of playing PADS I'm already in love with this latest entry. Story takes the core puzzle-RPG-hybrid gameplay of the original, the crafting-based teambuilding of Puzzle & Dragons Z (on 3DS), and the quality-of-life and general UI of PAD: Nintendo Switch Edition, and mingles it with a rather refreshing new experience set in a desolated fantasy world. Be warned, though, the training wheels are taken off around stage 4-1, so if you are new to the franchise, beware of a difficulty spike around there. If you have only ever played the original PAD or the 3DS version, you may have mild disorientation when you first start playing this one, as the phone is held horizontally, and the game look itself is very similar to Nintendo Switch Edition. (Which does mean Story also has the option for button controls, even if they may be a bit clunky, but hey, if you want to play on your Apple TV or otherwise dock your phone or tablet, the option is there) All in all, the game holds true to what Puzzle & Dragons was meant to be: a puzzle game with light RPG elements that bloom as your skills and progression do.
Sloppy port! Basic controls broken
How did this get through app approval? You can’t get to settings. You can’t change the volume or turn music off. They block off all access to anything but jumping into the game. Lots of other minor UI bugs all over the place.
Tons of fun, small critiques
This game is a great time. Since it is on arcade, there are no microtransactions like in the main game which is completely gacha filled. The only real issue is that it can be incredibly grindy to get certain pices you need to make new characters. There is no way to craft, so you're essentially left grinding the samel levels over and over again. There is also a lack on information after the start of the game. There is no tutorial after the first few levels showing you how to do things efficiently / properly, and just expects you to figure it out. I am many hours in and still feel like I am inefficient/not using my comp how I am supposed to. All in all, some small changes would easily take this to a 5 but they are quite inconvenient. In the meantime I am enjoying this game quite a bit and suggest you check it out.
本家よりいい作りで、悪いところも継承
パズドラもう古いので、改修できなくて、今の技術で精一杯に作ってみたらこんな程度まで作れた感じ。 でもarcadeにしたら、周回要素は消して欲しかった。だるい
Fun but destroys your battery
Haven’t seen an app drain your battery faster than PAD.
PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY FAQ
- Is PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY free?
- Yes. The app is free, in all 172 countries it sells in, and it sells nothing inside it.
- Does PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY have a free trial?
- No. None of its offers (US) come with a free trial.
- What are the best alternatives to PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY?
- Simon's Cat - Blast Time (4.8 from 23,402 reviews), Grindstone (4.6 from 15,108 reviews) and Disney Getaway Blast+ (4.8 from 12,776 reviews).
PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY download
Last updated 1 year ago.
PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY sells in 172 countries. It was released 2 years and 10 months ago, on 5 Dec 2023. It holds a 3.9 rating from 579 reviews.
Supports 10 languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese, Spanish.
How much does PUZZLE & DRAGONS STORY make?
Third-party estimates for the last 30 days, worldwide — not the store's own figures, which Apple publishes for nobody.