Now after the success of Puzzle Quest you’d think they’d make a simple sequel and carry on where they left off, wouldn’t you. But once again proving that the success of the first was no mere fluke the people who brought you Puzzle Quest came back with a sequel that takes the series out of the middle ages and the realm of sword and sorcery into a new realm of the deepest corners of space and a sci-fi puzzler meets RPG status… and to begin with they have changed the puzzle theme that the game is based about! (Of course if you’d rather stick to the fantasy element then you’d be playing Puzzle Kingdoms for the DS and not this).

No longer taking it’s cues from Bejeweled, the new Puzzle Quest now gets it’s marching orders from newest Bejeweled inspired puzzler Hexic, which used hexagon pieces instead of square blocks for rotating and matching. This brings on a new level of gameplay, which is furthered by the fact that the pieces now fall in from all directions (instead of coming in from the top of the page ala the original Puzzle Quest) adding more strategy and thought you put into each swap of pieces to make matches.

Galactrix is still combined with an RPG format (now changed for a more spacey feel replacing the Citadel with starships you upgrade and different tasks like mining for resources and data hacking sealed warp gates) for another

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most addictive, easy to learn hard to master, filled with abit of variety and things to do with a full set of options once again packed with many missions to undertake RPG Puzzler addiction worth trying out on the DS (sadly there doesn’t seem to be a PSP port of this version of the game).

The game boasts of a new story of good vs. evil… but once again we’re here for the gameplay instead of the story so don’t worry about that (oh, and along the way you pick up crew for your ship if I remember right but that’s an addition that you don’t need to worry about as, again, it’s the core gameplay you’re here for).

The one chink in this game’s armor is, probably once again, the lack of online multiplayer since this game should have been experienced over WiFi so you can find opponents far far away (since this game is just screaming for that option). Maybe it had it and I missed it, but I’m sure this game didn’t feature online multiplayer (again that would have been so nice). During your quest to stop a brand spankin’ new evil, you’ll find yourself engaged often in the life and death (though you can’t actually die in this game again) struggle of Hexic style icon swapping and matching. Only this time instead of different colored jewels and bombs you’ll have to line up colored pieces each representing a different

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power for a different thing on your ship, or attack points to deal out damage to the enemy ship. Once again the more you line up (4 or 5 at a time) you gain an extra turn, and the more combos you make in one move is also good, again just like the original Puzzle Quest. What? I’m not explaining this in depth (again)? No need. Once again like the original this game is easy to pick up, easy to learn, yet once you learn it you find it’ll be hard to master. Just learning the way of playing the game is easy, but once you do you’ll find that the game offers up more than enough challenge to keep you going.

Like any good RPG you’ll find all the requirements for total immersion into the title’s sci-fi world, though I do have to admit the leveling up is not as impressive as it was with Puzzle Quest. This time it’s your ship, and not you, which levels up as you play, giving you a stronger vessel (several vessels as you can gain other ships and switch between them during gameplay) as you spread amongst your four ship attributes the points you earn each time you level up making your ships stronger with each upgrade. There are shops where you can buy stuff of course, but that’s not as big as Puzzle Quest the original (again) for some reason. You have a

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command center where you pick up new missions and side missions in each solar system you visit (except for enemy sectors of course), and that’s about the gist of the stuff you have to play around with in this version of the game.

Anyway once again with it’s high quests count (both main story quests and sideline secondary missions) to keep you occupied, the many mini-games and side jobs you can do like mining, enemy skirmishes, resource gathering, ship part assembly, warp gate hacking and so forth? This game should keep you playing for hours and hours on end, which makes D3Publisher once again a worthy 3rd Party Developer in my book (for releasing a truly addictive game that keeps you playing and playing).

Yes, Puzzle Quest : Galactrix may fall short of Puzzle Kingdoms (which would probably be a more closer to the original sequel if I ever get around to playing and reviewing it for you to find out if that statement is true or not)  but in the end it is still a great game for the DS and worth having in my opinion, fan of puzzlers or not. Thumbs up, D3, you get 4 Golden starship Awards out of 5 (aka the Silver Standard) for making a “sequel“ that is as good as the original but can stand on it‘s own merits by being it‘s own game (and not just a clone of the original with new content).