Developed by Infinite Interactive and published by Namco Networks America, Puzzle Quest 2 is the sequel to the award winning Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords. This title is a match 3 puzzle roleplaying game and certainly one of the best in the genre. Your chosen hero is tasked with reclaiming the once peaceful village of Veloren from the evil clutches of the demon Gorgon. Many fans claim that this title is not as heavy on the R.P.G. elements as the first game and that the story is just not as expansive as the first title and I would definitely agree. With that said, roleplaying elements are still present albeit slightly lighter in application. You pick from four different character classes and earn XP as you do battle across the outskirts of Veloren. As you level up, your earned XP will allow you to upgrade a number of abilities such as Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Stamina and Morale. Your character is also able to equip a number of weapons ranging from swords, axes, bows, etc. and even a flintlock pistol...one of my personal favorites I have to say. There is also a wide variety of armors, shields, spells and poisons at your disposal as well, however, some of these items are specific to the character class that you have chosen.

Gameplay is quite similiar to that of Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords so fans of that title will immediately feel at home. The goal is to match a set of three or more gems in order to earn mana and action points. Mana powers the equiped spells in your spellbook and action points allow you to attack with your chosen weapon or devices. At the conclusion of each battle a certain amount of gold and experience points are awarded as well as the possibility of loot. The puzzle battles in this game, in my opinion, are some of the best you can play in this genre. This title is extremely fun and addictive like these games typically tend to be. Some days you could log on and play a few quick battles for fun just to get your fix and other days you could find yourself playing for hours on end in one sitting. The story, while not as grand as the first title, is entertaining and makes you want to continue playing to the conclusion. Aside from the basic puzzle battles, there are also quite a few unique minigames to play where you can earn additional treasure and experience.

Graphically, this game is the best looking match 3 puzzle R.P.G. available even better looking than Gyromancer in my opinion. Visually, it takes everything that Puzzle Quest did and just polishes it to perfection. The isometric game world is highly detailed. You will see lots of interesting things in the backgrounds of the many dungeons, castles and structures that you explore. The puzzle battlefields are gorgeous and vivid. The gems are beautifully animated and extremely detailed. The hand drawn character art and attack animations just look fantastic. Sound effects and music in this game are also implemented just as well. The score fits the fantasy theme of the title perfectly and does it job competently yet I have to say it's still not as great as the musical scores in Puzzle Quest and Puzzle Kingdoms. I actually downloaded those soundtracks and find myself listening to them quite often because they are just that great. The sound effects are crisp and hard hitting. When you make a match three, combo or cause a cascade of gems to drop you definitely know it. Also, when you use a melee, ranged weapon or a spell the sound effects are phenomenal. I particularly love the click click boom of my flintlock pistol...so awesome! A pistol in a fantasy game...don't even ask it's just awesome and you know it is.

I've spent quite a few hours in this game and will continue to do so in the future because it's just so entertaining. Fans of match 3 or puzzle/R.P.G.'s should not be dissapointed in this title. It's definitely one of the better games of the genre and anyone looking to try one of these games for the first time should get either this or the much acclaimed Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords. Game on!

Puzzle Quest 2 deviates in a good number of ways from its predecessor. Most notable are the changes to mana and that you now have a weapon. Overall I'd say it was a good change, as it doesn't feel like a recycled version of the first game at all, while still having the same basic gameplay.

With the mana changes, it's harder to become godly, but it also feels like every level gain is a really tiny improvement. Heavily investing in one stat has diminishing returns (which is fine from a balance perspecive). Enemies scale up a bit faster than you do, and once dead they stay dead, so there's a strange sort of progression going on there since you can't grind forever.

Similar to the first game, the encounter rate is through the roof. Fortunately you can skip a good number of encounters by simply ignoring the monsters. There's far less quests, but most of the quests in the first game were pretty pointless to begin with, so I guess this is can be seen as a good thing.

Fortunately the mini-games are toned down and varied, and luckily opening treasures has no failure. So it's nice to have freebies every now and then to break up the monotony.

The story, as best I can tell, bears no relation to the first game. Not that either one is special, anyhow.

If you like Puzzle Quest 1, I'd say this is a worthy addition. If match-three games aren't your thing, this game won't do anything to appease that feeling. I'll give this an 8.

If you haven't already, play the first Puzzle Quest, where you battle warlords all across the lands, build your castle and tame ferocious beasts and gain their powers.

Unless you prefer to battle hordes of rats after hordes of rats after hordes of rats in someone's damp basement, in which case this game is for you.

The gameplay is of course much more polished and varied, but with the grand atmosphere of the first replaced with you being pest control, it becomes a grind with nothing to motivate whatsoever.

After enjoying the original Puzzle Quest, I thought I'd give this a spin. It's much less fun than it's predecessor, it's very repetivite and not very rewarding. As you progress enemies take longer and longer to kill but offer no challenge whatsoever.

Avoid!

Takes the Puzzle Quest formula into Diablo-like dungeon crawling. Started out addicting, but became really repetitive - too often fighting the same enemies over and over. Not nearly as good as Puzzle Quest 1 or Puzzle Kingdoms, and doesn't hold a candle to Might & Magic Clash of Heroes.

And, at least as the Assassin, it was too easy. Switched to "Hard" difficulty shortly after starting to play, and almost never lost a battle.

That said, there's still fun to be had here if, like me, you like the match-3/RPG genre.

6/10.

ENG:

Really entertaining and relaxed puzzle game, definitely the best puzzles, puzzle game in the classroom and is now even better Linux system. Things to do enough is enough, the suggestion!

FIN:

Todella viihdyttävä ja rento puzzle peli, ehdottomasti parasta puzzlea, puzzle peli luokassa ja nyt vieläkin paremmin tehtynä. Tekemistä riittää kylliksi, suositteluni!

Okay, imagine Puzzle Quest with new classes and abilities and equipment except there's no world map (everything is zoomed in and room-based), EVERYTHING is about 3x slower (walking speed, combat animations, unskippable messages), 80% of battles are just cannon fodder, and there's not much dialogue or plot. Also there's no main base, which means no research, mounts, sieging, or crafting.

In my opinion this is the premier match 3 RPG game on the market.

Game features:

- Good storyline
- Variety of characters to choose from
- Variety of spells and abilities
- Variety of encounters and enemies
- Puzzle challenges (like clearing a set board of all pieces by solving the matches in a particular order)

Game difficulty can fluctuate a bit and at times some enemies seem to be undefeatable, but this will not usually hamper progress of the main story-line.

$10 seems reasonable, though this is an older title now, but if on sale I would recommend grabbing it immediately for $5 or less.

(Also recommended by me via the Headache & Migraine Gaming Group)

(6/10)

I am a huge fan of the original Puzzle Quest, having played through it back in the day on a nintendo hand-held. That game was broken in some ways, but not in a bad way, more that if you were careful and managed things just right, you could eventually create an amazingly over-powered character that could 'lock down' the whole board and win by the first or second turn.

Sure that made multiplayer pretty unmanagable, but for the single player game it actually gave a certain level of domination satisfaction of 'here is my incredibly over-powered end game character let me just splatter the fields of puzzle-battle with the remains of anyone foolish enough to challenge me'.

I mention this because I guess having seen how over powered people could become in the first game, it seems like they made it a priority to 'fix' that in this second outing.

While the core gameplay survived intact, it seems like they have gone to great lengths to reduce the utility and natural meshing of the various skills and secondary mechanics to the point it honestly feels less like an RPG dressed in puzzle elements, and more like a basic match 3 game with some very light rpg traces sprinkled in.

The 'overworld' is now quite limiting and slow. While there are a number of options to go and do, they are often so removed and seperated that you will spend as much time wandering slowly from screen to screen as you will actually battling bad guys. Additionally it feels like a number of the areas you 'could' possibly go are more or less artificially blocked by bad guys way higher level than you to the point that in the end there really is only one fairly linear line of progression along the enemies that won't just smash you routinely.

Its not truly *bad* in that the core matching and fighting is ok, it just seems like here in the second outing, the overall rpg tone is honestly a net negative, not positive like it was the first time around.

Coming after the complete mess that was Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Puzzle Quest 2 returns to the tried-and-tested Puzzle Quest formula we know and love with some enhancements to the gameplay and a streamlined story/quest mode. It's a good game (I wouldn't have played it for as long as I did if it wasn't) but leaves some things to be desired.

First things first: the game is *incredibly* slow compared to its predecessor, both in character movement on the map screen and within the gameplay itself. And whilst the story of the original didn't set any new records in originality, Puzzle Quest 2's story is both completely unrelated to the first and so boring that I just skipped it entirely. They have also stripped out large chunks of the sidegames in the first game (castle building, mount training, item creation, etc) and replaced them with laughably easy "unlock doors" and "disarm traps" minigames.

The addition of the new weapon system makes things interesting, and opens up a new strategy to the game. But towards the end of the game I found this just made the game a cycle of building up weapon points, and unleashing them on the enemy - ending the fight within a few turns of doing so and reducing fights to a monotonous routine. The armor/blocking mechanic is also interesting at first, but to be honest it just makes the game slower.

That all said though, it's still a good game. Three-in-a-row game mechanics are simple and addictive, and I don't feel that the time I spent playing the game was wasted, but I don't see myself replaying it any time soon due to its slow nature (compared to the first game that I completed at least five times.)

If you like three-in-a-row games then you'll like this. But I would recommend the first Puzzle Quest a lot more than its sequel.