Gather round, children, It’s time uncle Jeff told you about a dark period in his life.  A period in which he sat, a huddled, unblinking mass, completely oblivious to the outside world, observing with rapt attention the subtle shifting and moving of colored shapes in front of him; alternately laughing and weeping at odd intervals, screaming with joy and agony at seemingly no one in particular.  Now I know what you’re thinking, children, and no, uncle Jeff didn’t have a heroin addiction.  Uncle Jeff was addicted to a game.  A game called Puzzle Quest.

The original Puzzle Quest completely fascinated me with its incredibly simple gameplay, layered over a deeper system that allowed in RPG elements without getting you bogged down in a lot of min-maxing, making the game easy to pick up and play and set back down 15 minutes later (Note that given how addictive the game became, especially at higher levels, this was actually physically impossible, but still…)  It was a good game all around.

So it was with a great deal of excitement that I shook off the cold (apparently they haven’t invented “heat” in B0ston) and hiked down to the D3 Publisher booth to take a look at the sequel to one of my favorite XBLA titles. I sat down for a demo, presented with some initial story background, and then given the opportunity to pick a player class.  Our presenter informed us that much like the original PQ, each class will have advantages, disadvantages, and unique powers, but that after this screen, we’ll see a lot of the similiarities end.

Boy, was he ever not kidding.  Gone is the overhead map, and instead I was treated to a 3/4 perspective overhead view of a town, and an actual visual representation of not only myself, but the townspeople I was interacting with.  This view, we were told, was a result of an effort to bring the players more into the story’s world, instead of having a narrative disconnect when the players just see themselves as dots moving around a screen. While we did not have it demonstrated, as we were situated in a small demo map, we were told that players would be able to unlock portals that would transport them from town to town, thus alleviating a lot of the “backtrack” that was one of my biggest issues with the first game.

That was all well and good, but i wanted to see some combat, Puzzle Quest style.  As I approached the first enemy, a pack of rats, I was given the option to engage in combat, or “move along.”  This was another response to player complaints, and now every battle in the game is avoidable (aside from story combats).  These random encounters are still present on the map, we were told, but now players have an option to skip them.

While the core mechanics of the combat system were largely unchanged, I did notice that the “gold” and “experience” tiles had been removed from the battle map.  This was done in order to make every move “combat related,” and to make it so that the players simply receive a set amount of gold and EXP for winning the combat, instead of worrying about building up their winnings inside of the combat itself.  I personally think this is a welcome change, as it also eliminates a lot of “dead moves,” in which gold and EXP are being acquired, but the combat isn’t being moved along at all.  In addition to this change, the developers have also introduced a new equipment system.  In addition to armor and other body slots for weapons and items, you can also equip weapons and shields in each hand.  As opposed to the original game, where they just granted a stat effect, these weapons can also now be used for immediate effect attacks by matching “action point” tiles on the battle board.  We were shown an example of this with the longsword, which did a set amount of unblockable damage just by expending action points.

In the last part of the demo, we were shown the “challenge” system, which would appear at various points throughout the game.  These functioned much like the regular combat system, but with varying rules depending on the situation.  The challenge we were shown involved putting out a fire in a building in the town, which was done by first matching up blue tiles to put the water in the bucket, and then matching action tiles to use your “equipped bucket” to put out the fire.  It was an interesting twist on the standard formula, and should work well to break up the regular gameplay.  The second challenge involved picking a lock by matching colored sets, thus creating “bash” tiles which could wear down the door’s strength.

Needless to say, I left the booth very excited about this title, and will be looking forward to having a full review upon the game’s release in the spring.