Puzzle Quest 2 Reviews
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Looking at screenshots, you might get the impression Puzzle Quest 2 is a full-on dungeon romp, but you don't actually do much exploring. The dungeon screens aren't much more than glorified menus where you click on doorways or characters you want to interact with, and your character merely moves along predefined paths between these points of interest, fighting the enemies that get in the way. This limitation didn't bother me much, since you're still getting to see new areas and enemy types on a regular basis, and there's still a decent amount of freedom to explore the parts of the dungeon you want to explore.TheGamersHub didn't try the original but likes this one, giving it a 4.5/5.
What did sort of bother me was the presentational issues the game has. The DS game is a fair sight smoother and better-looking than the original DS game was, but it can still bog down a bit when a bunch of gems are moving around at once. The minigames on the XBLA version use smaller gems and game boards than the battles, for no apparent reason, and they can be hard to see if you're sitting far from your TV. Neither version communicates information as thoroughly as it should; you're presented with a bunch of arbitrary numbers on the interface around the board, and you have to intuit what they mean over time since there isn't any notation to fill you in. There are a few other nagging issues, like the way tooltips take a second to pop up every time you highlight an item. None of this stuff detracted too much from my enjoyment of the game, but it would be nice if it had a cleaner visual impression.
It's bejewelled with (light) RPG elements. You explorer villages and dungeons and all those other places medieval games love to take the player, killing goblins and skeletons and half man, half cat paedophiles (I'm not kidding). (Killing) isn't quite the same in Puzzle quest as it is in other RPG's as all the combat is done within a puzzle game. This puzzle game plays a lot like bejewelled with a turn based twist. The aim is simple, line up 3 or more same coloured (or shaped) blocks vertically or horizontally to achieve a variety of effects. Lining up 3 colours for example blue means you get 3 points added to your blue mana bar. Yellow blocks add to yellow mana etc. Lining 4 or more up give bonuses such as an extra turn on the playing field whereas lining up 3 skulls causes 1 hit point for each skull lined up.
