Puzzle Quest 2 – More of the Same but Much Prettier

Some time ago I man­aged to beat the final boss in “Puzzle Quest 2″, thus fin­ish­ing the game. Just like the pre­vi­ous instal­ment, it is a mix of a puz­zle game and a sim­ple RPG title where every fight or event like open­ing a closed door or pick­ing a lock is por­trayed as a puz­zle solv­ing prob­lem. This time, how­ever, instead of trav­el­ling all over Etheria, you dive deeper and deeper into dun­geons below an ancient citadel located near the small town of Verloren. I am not going to get into the game’s plot as it is com­pletely irrel­e­vant and unwor­thy of mentioning.

The game­play is almost the same as in “Puzzle Quest”. Many ele­ments, such as town sieges has been removed due to com­plete focus on small area dun­geon crawl­ing, but oth­ers, like dis­arm­ing traps or search­ing for hid­den objects, has been added instead. The game is less com­plex but it does not feel like it has been dumbed down.

There is a lot of char­ac­ter to the game’s art style and it is surely much more pol­ished than its predecessor’s, remain­ing sharp and crisp even at higher res­o­lu­tions, includ­ing 1920×1080 (or full-HD). Animation is almost absent, although this is coun­tered to some extent by sparse but good-looking spe­cial effects, trig­gered dur­ing fights and mini games.

That being said, buy it only if you want a casual “Bejeweled”-style puz­zle title with added RPG twist that can be played in short bursts last­ing no more that twenty min­utes. If played for too long at a time, “Puzzle Quest 2″ quickly becomes bor­ing, not only because of the monot­ony but mostly because the game poses no chal­lenge at all. Even though I have cho­sen the high­est dif­fi­culty level from the very begin­ning, my hero was still over­pow­ered most of the time, reach­ing the level cap a dun­geon before the final fight. There is def­i­nitely some­thing wrong with bal­anc­ing here.

The screen­shots below con­tain light spoil­ers but there is really noth­ing cap­ti­vat­ing in the game’s plot. It barely pushes you for­ward so there is no harm in look­ing at the pictures.