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The first Puzzle Quest was a devilish combo of classic RPG elements and the best of the puzzle world, resulting in an addictive blend that made many road trips, bank lines, and family gatherings a little more bearable. Puzzle Quest 2 introduces some new mechanics and a more robust campaign setting, but all the additions may be a little too light to convert any existing Puzzle Quest addicts.

At it’s heart Puzzle Quest 2 is still very much the same game as the original Puzzle Quest. Players still have a character that grows over the course of the campaign and combat is still resolved through a turn-based gem matching game. D3 clearly understood what made the first Puzzle Quest a hit, and kept all the necessary elements to keep the game feeling familiar.

It’s the additions though that make a sequel, and though Puzzle Quest 2 revels in more than a few new mechanics none of them enhance the experience to make things feel fresh. The biggest of these additions being an expanded world-exploring mechanic that let’s players travel a fully-animated world instead of simply navigating points on a map like it’s predecessor. The pacing may crawl at text-adventure speeds, but the animated backdrops and characters bring a liveliness to the world that wasn’t in the last game.

This all sounds like brilliance on paper but players come to Puzzle Quest for the puzzle-combat, not to explore an expansive fantasy world. It doesn’t help that the fantasy elements are so terribly cliche. There’s orcs and elves and magic as expected but nothing sets it apart from every other fantasy setting in any other game, puzzle or otherwise. It all feels so bland where more effort could have been made to roll a gem-matching mythology in to the experience for a little uniqueness.

Puzzle Quest 2 also suffers from having to innovate on the innovative. The original combat mechanic was so well designed in the first game it’s clear nobody knew how to take the game to the next level without breaking format like 2009’s Puzzle Quest: Galactrix. The only noticeable addition is the inclusion of equipment, which allows players to store counters and deal damage without matching 3 skull-gems. It’s a nice way of balancing the combat for those unlucky few who just can’t catch a break with the gem drops, but for most it’s just an additional spell slot.

If the game had refined the combat a little more, maybe Puzzle Quest 2 would be a worthy successor, but unfortunately the biggest problems of the original have returned. A single turn can still cause a seemingly infinite number of cascading matches leaving some victories feeling disingenuous and some losses feeling like the computer cheated. It wasn’t a game breaker in the first Puzzle Quest, and it’s not a game breaker in the second but with 3 years to improve the game this is an issue that could have been resolved.

Puzzle Quest 2 is an okay successor to a great game. It’s not a bad place to start for those who’ve never played a Puzzle Quest game, but for those who’ve already tired of the first there’s not enough in the game to make it worth your time. As for those who are still playing Puzzle Quest, the sequel is alright if you want a change of scenery but not much else.

Puzzle Quest 2 was released on June 22 2010 for Nintendo DS and Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade.