Turns out it's actually a lot different than what I thought it was. It's definitely a match 3 game, but it's equally an RPG and a puzzle game. The gameplay itself involves a lot more input than the standard match 3. Instead of just moving an icon (orb) to where it needs to go to make the match, when you pick up the orb it shifts the position of all the orbs you pass on the way to its destination. So rather than focusing on where you want to put your orb, you're more focused on how you want your orb to get there. Once you move your orb you're given about a 5 second counter before you can't move it anymore, so you have to quickly move it through the screen matching up as many combinations as you can in one motion. The more matches you make in one move, the more damage you deal to the enemy, as ultimately it's a turn based RPG. it involves more planning and strategy than I thought, which makes it more rewarding.
Each orb colour signifies a different element, and each enemy has their own elemental attribute, so it works like a standard rock paper scissors triangle where water beats fire, fire beats wood, wood beats water. And then light is more effective against dark, and dark is more effective against light. And there are also heart icons that are used to heal you. You also have different skills you can use based on what team mates you brought with you and how charged your skill guage is. These skills don't take up a turn, so you can use multiple if you have enough charge. Their effects range from dealing simple elemental damage, healing you, letting you attack with group attacks for a set amount of turns, changing the attributes of the orbs on screen, ect. It ends up being a pretty good battle system.
You'll earn eggs and other items for beating enemies. Eggs can be hatched to make new dragons/beasts for you team, or used as a resource to power up your team mates. You can also find items to evolve your dragons/beasts into more powerful forms with different skills. It's a bit like Pokemon in the catching, evolving and trading aspect. The story itself in P&D Z is actually kind of a parody of RPG's, starting off almost identical to a Pokemon game
The Mario bros. edition is about the same, with a few changes in how you use skills and evolve your team mates. Team mates are standard Mario enemies, as well as bigger ones like bosses as well as Toads, Mario, Luigi, Yoshi ect. The game also progresses on a standard Mario world map which is kind of neat. It's actually the more challenging of the two games surprisingly.
I think Z is more enjoyable than the Mario version, but mostly because there's a little more to do and it was easier to get into, and the Mario version kind of suffers from NSMBU music and visuals. There are some other music tracks thrown in from different games, but I've heard and seen enough of NSMB for a life time, so I'm kind of disappointed they didn't try to mimic the Mario 3D Land style or something. Both are enjoyable, and look to have a lot of content each. I'll go back to playing the Mario version once I'm done Z.
Not sure if anyone else here picked up the game, or if there are any fans of the smartphone titles?