Puzzle Quest 2: Rats, Rats Everywhere

Puzzle Quest is a mix between a role playing game and a match-3 developed by Infinite Interactive and published by D3 Publisher that arrived on platforms like Xbox Live and the PC, with a version for the PlayStation Portable handheld also in development.

I hate Puzzle Quest 2 because I died while battling a rat. Repeatedly.

I really appreciate how Puzzle Quest 2 managed to take players into the experience one step at a time, with a nice lady, her face always obscured, talking about how the game works, explaining each new mini game and talking about how to best approach enemies.

But I really wished that all fantasy game developers, including the people at Infinite Interactive, would ditch rats and all their relatives as possible enemies, especially in the initial stages of the experience.

Unfortunately Puzzle Quest 2 is one rat pack after another for the first few hours, with an occasional Goblin, who in my mind has become a sort of rat relative, thrown in to change things up a little.

And there are at least two sequences where rats are involved as the player battles another enemy that controls them.

The problem with rats in Puzzle Quest 2 is that they are pretty tough and, to make things worse, they are way tougher than one would expect after rat experiences in other role playing games.

The biggest problem for my rogue character was the Scatter ability that rats can use if they get enough green mana points.

The effects is to raise the defense rating of the pack of rats to astronomical levels for the early game and make them near impervious to damage for a number of rounds, which means that the player can only work on collecting more mana points, saving his offensive actions for later.

The problem is that Puzzle Quest 2 seems to have significantly more moments when there are no movements possible on the gem board, meaning that a Mana Drain happens, wiping the slate clean for both opponents.

This basically means that I am left needing to build up mana for attack spells again while the rats again Scatter and make my life miserable.

Let's hope that Puzzle Quest 3 starts the game with some skeletons.

We also have a review of Puzzle Quest 2 that you might want to check out.