First Thoughts: Puzzle Quest 2

On June 30, Infinite Interactive released Puzzle Quest 2, a follow up to the highly addictive Puzzle Quest on the Xbox Live Arcade.

Coming in at a hefty 1,200 Microsoft Points, or $15, PQ2 plays very similar to PQ, but with a couple of small changes. Like PQ, you point to where you want your character to go using an overhead view and the character walks to that point. In PQ2, however, you are a little closer to the game play compared to the really high overhead view of PQ, so the detail is much better.

This game was billed more as a dungeon crawler, and I found there was a lot more exploration than in PQ.

You walk your character up to NPC’s, doors, treasure chests, and enemies to get your quest or to do battle. As in PQ, all battles are played on the gem board in a Bejewelled fashion. Matching gems will get you mana you can use for spells, matching skulls does immediate damage to your foe, and putting four or five gems of the same type in a row gets you an extra turn.

What is new is the “iron fist” gem, which allows you to swing a weapon you have equipped from your inventory doing instant damage.  The money gem has been removed from the field of play, so money is gathered at the end by looting the treasure chests. (To the victor go the spoils!)

Another new feature uses the gem board to disarm traps, open doors, bash through ice, and (my favorite) looting treasure chests.

At the beginning of the game you select your character and class — templar, barbarian, sorcerer or assassin — and as in most RPGs, each class has its special abilities. As you advance in the game, you level up your character by choosing which attribute to boost, and as you advance your foes will be more difficult to defeat. It’s amazing how many times I almost lost to a pack of rats on easy mode!

You are presented with the main quest as well as some side quests, but they all kind of blend in as you play the game. I haven’t found any difference between the two.

The music and visuals are very nice, though the gameplay a bit frustrating at times waiting, unable to move, for the text screen to appear and tell you about the story. About as inspiring as it was with PQ. Something about helping the helpless villagers get rid of all the bad guys roughing them up? Am I really the only person in the land that can kill an orc, troll, or goblin? Let’s just get on with the battles, shall we.

Again, these are just some early thoughts on Puzzle Quest 2, which was one of my most anticipated game of those I saw at PAX East in Boston back in March. I never did finish PQ, let’s hope I can get my money’s worth on PQ2 and finish it so I can bring you the full review. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to tackle the goblins.

Puzzle Quest 2
Infinite Interactive/D3Publisher
Xbox Live Arcade
1,200 Microsoft Points ($15)