...it's not Puzzle Quest 1. And mind you, Puzzle Quest 1 wasn't even perfect; it was really great but still had some weird flaws, like "they had no idea how to balance the items", and "the last boss is complete bullshit and unfair unless you use the most broken items and skills possible". Puzzle Quest 2 is a burning pile of garbage covered in anthrax, where the art and writing are awful and nonexistent, respectively, and all of the items are just straight damage or damage reduction, instead of being interesting perks like the first game. And they dropped all the cool stuff like sieging castles, training mounts, crafting items, etc.

So back to Scurvy Scallywags. It's a match-3 RPG like Puzzle Quest. I like that the loose premise is that you're taking part in some sort of goofy pirate-based musical/play. It has a goofy sea shanty that you collect over the course of the game, appropriately sung by a pirate...choir?

But the gameplay. Your pirate character exists in the gem grid, and so do enemies. If you touch an enemy with lower power, it uses up some of your current power to kill that monster. If you touch an enemy of higher power, you lose a heart, and use up most of your power to bring the enemy's power below yours, meaning you can then safely finish them off (this time not losing a heart). Let me elaborate:

• GOOD: The abilities are neat, but are on a crazy long cooldown, meaning they're unreliably slow to use against enemies (whether to attack, run away, or do some other utility).
• VERY BAD: If you touch an enemy more powerful than you, you lose a heart, and getting back even one heart is an enormous pain in the ass that either requires 5K gold (I think, it might even scale up as you buy each one), or the completion of a collection sidequest that takes like 5-10 stages to complete (and gets longer every subsequent time you need to regain a heart through this method). If you lose all your hearts, there is a resurrection fee of a fair amount of gold (possibly scales up?). If you don't have the sum of gold, presumably your character is permadead and you start the game from stage one again. I get that it would be cheap if you could purposely sacrifice 2 of your 3 hearts each fight to weaken an enemy you haven't even bothered to try to get more powerful than, but it's just completely stupid that the sidequest to restore a single heart scales up every time you have to make use of it.
• BAD: The dodge and crit chance, which start at 0%, and you can raise by like 1% each time you level up. As far as I can tell, they only come into play when fighting enemies more powerful than you. If dodge procs, then you just don't take damage (or deal damage), I think. If crit procs, you hit the enemy without taking a heart of damage, even though you should. The issue is, you should basically act as if dodge and crit don't exist, because even if you dump a bunch of points into them, there is still like an 80% chance that any stronger enemy costs you a heart, and as I said before, losing a heart is an enormous pain in the ass.
• BAD: The match-3 part feels like most of the matches are irrelevant. On the board, the sword gems are the ones that actually raise your power, letting you defeat enemies. Aside from that, each match has 2-3 gem types that just give you items that are vendor trash. Then there are gold gems, which give you gold if you match them. Then there are quest items you have to try to get your guy to touch, and enemies you have to avoid until you're more powerful than them. Basically, unless you're matching swords, every match is pointless in your current survival against the enemies. If you're on a board with like 4 swords, all scattered away from each other, all you can do is just keep on making matches just to move your guy away from enemies as best you can, as the game frustratingly doesn't spawn more swords. Compare to Puzzle Quest, where you were collecting different colours of mana, which you needed in different proportions for different spells.
• BAD: The game doesn't explain the stats very well. I've explained crit and dodge, and there is a gold stat that just increases how much gold you get for a gold match, basically. But there is a power and damage stat, both ambiguously worded. I think power increases how many points of power you gain when you match swords. Damage might affect how many points of power you must spend to reduce the enemy's power, but that's just idle conjecture on my part. And it seems to not affect all skills that deal damage?
• BAD: Quitting a battle to go back to the map (say, if you realize you don't like the skills you've equipped) is actually a skill you must equip in a slot, instead of just being a menu option. WHY!? For example, I fought a boss whose power was to turn all sword gems into useless vendor trash stone gems (SEVERELY limiting your ability to gain enough power to not be murdered by every enemy in sight). Had I been able to quit the battle, I would've gone and equipped a skill that converts gold gems into swords gems (which wouldn't even break the battle, because remember, I cast that skill and then it's on cooldown FOREVER). Instead, the battle took ages because I was denied swords constantly and was just running around doing nothing trying to scrounge swords once every like 20 moves (regular vendor trash everywhere + bullshit boss vendor trash that used to be swords). Compare to Puzzle Quest, where you can quit out of a battle if you want, BECAUSE THAT FUCKING MAKES SENSE.
• GOOD: Instead of gems always dropping down, the gems drop...whichever way you swiped on the touchscreen. If you swiped left-to-right to make a vertical line of 3, then the void left by those 3 gems will be filled in by the gems sitting to the left of that void. Effectively, the gems will fall left-to-right because you swiped left-to-right. It's pretty neat, and it's the only way the game's mechanic of "oh god, evade the enemies" would actually work, because otherwise your character would inevitably get stuck at the bottom row of the screen if it worked the way match-3 games usually work. I think Puzzle Quest: Galactrix might've also done stuff where the gems don't always fall straight down.

It feels like they're trying to make this a scary permadeath game, but instead of seeming tough, it's more like "We made this match-3 game where most of the matches don't help you, and we made it unnecessarily tedious to regain health ever so even though you have 3 hearts, you should just avoid ever taking damage to save yourself a headache". I like the aesthetic of it, and I'm just so desperate for more match-3 RPGs that I'm willing to stick with it, but Jesus, even roguelikes don't make health regeneration this tedious, and it frustrates me in a match-3 game when only 1 or 2 gem types are the "good" gems you want and the rest are useless.