Let me lay everything out right from the start. Puzzle Quest was a brilliant game. It married two gameplay types that are by their nature ridiculously hard to stop playing, and as a result became an unstoppable juggernaut of full-blown addiction. I found it hard at the time to convince people that the game could be as good as it actually was. It played as if it were an RPG that used match-three puzzles as the means of handling combat, and it was amazing. I couldn't put the thing down.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, you'll understand my excitement when I heard that Puzzle Quest 2 was on display at Pax East. I booked myself some playtime with the game, but actually let one of my compatriots play so that I could dircet my full attention to Tim Ramage, the executive producer over at D3 (the publisher), as he described the differences between this game and the last. As he very astutely pointed out, the thing that made Puzzle Quest so completely engrossing was that it provided an untold level of context for something as traditionally simple as Bejewled-style match-three gameplay. This overarching RPG context has been tweaked slightly for the soon to be released title, but seemingly for the better. Gone are the sprawling, nonsensical JRPG stylings of the first game. Instead, we're given a Puzzle Quest-ian take on a dungeon crawler. You are a hero charged with protecting a town from an incursion of monsters that was awakened by something or other. Nothing all that interesting, but simple; and enticingly similar to Diablo.

That Diablo comparison held true as I was confronted with the myriad of differences between this game and the first. Instead of the overworld map progression of the first title, you have control over an actual character as he or she walks through the world. Along the way, you can talk to various people, interact with parts of the environment, and confront enemies. Interacting with the environment usually meant a puzzle-based mini-game not all that different from the normal combat game, although Tim promised that there would be some greater variation for things like picking locks and learning spells. During these RPG stretches, the game is shot from an isometric persepctive, and does vaguely feel like a dungeon crawler. The anime-influenced artistic sensibilities of the first game were also abandoned, making way for a Western-ized art design. I was kind of attached to the out of place manga-stylings of the first game, but I wasn't irked at the change either since fighting is still just as fun as ever, and I was too distracted by this to be bothered by how the characters looked.

Combat itself played largely similarly to that of the first title. We still found ourselves playing something reminiscent of Bejeweled, where gems are slid horizontally or vertically to align with matching ones, thereby destroying all of them. For matching colored gems, we were awarded mana. For matching skulls, we inflicted damage on the enemy. All of this is still entirely intact from the first game, though some significant things have been made. First among these is that the purple gems are now actually their own color of mana, rather than providing bonus experience at the end of battle. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this, but it does seem like it could make things more balanced in the end, so I went with it. A smaller, though still important alteration was that you are no longer penalized for doing an incorrect move. This should help for the DS game particularly, as I often hurt mysef repeatedly moving the wrong block.

These tweaks are small potatoes in comparison to the biggest addition to Puzzle Quest 2's combat: items. These can be equipped to slots and influence your stats, as well as being usable in combat. In order to use items, you have to build up "Action Points," which can be earned by matching up fist-shaped gems. How can a gem be fist-shaped? I don't know, and I don't care. Once you have the requisite number of Action Points, you can wield your weapons and smite your foes. This gives you damage bonuses for a period of time afterward, as well as inflicting status effects on your enemies. In the final battle of the demo, we squared off against a troll (in a church, no less!). To stop his godforsaken skills of regeneration, we had to build up several action points, and then take our newly acquired torch to his face. It all seemed to add an extra layer of strategy to a system that was already fun to begin with.

Although, the weapons we started with at the beginning are fairly straightforward, you will find shiny new tools of destruction along the way. Weapons, like spells, seem to be different for each of the classes, further diversifying them from each other. There is also an upgrade system in place, which allows you to forge better equipment if that's your bag. We only got the chance to try out the Barbarian class when we played, but there were 4 total classes to choose from. These covered all of the standard RPG roles: offensive, defensive, spellcaster, and ninja.

Infinite Interactive really surprised me with the changes it made to the Puzzle Quest formula. I genuinely expected this sequel to disappoint in some respects by feeling too familiar, though that fear is gone now. I'm gonna have to try this out when it hits Xbox Live. I only mention Xbox Live, because I think I'd rather play the game there with the snazzy visual effects and online multiplayer. If you want this game on the go -- and I understand that many will -- the DS version also seems like it could be fantastic. Infinite Interactive really tried to up the ante with the DS version this time, giving it a complete UI overhaul, and making information much more accessible during battle. Unless Puzzle Quest 2 starts to fall apart as the game progresses, I think we are in for a real treat once this one hits. Look for it in May on both DS and Xbox Live Arcade.