Does this game have a measure of randomness in it that can very easily turn your good battle into a very, very bad one? Sure it does. Is it worse than the original Puzzle Quest? Heavens no. See, here's the thing. If the last time you played the original game, you were playing with a high level character who had already beaten the game, then randomness played a much smaller part because your cunning was probably high enough for you to always go first. You have to think back to when you first started the game, when you never got to go first and the fact that you only needed to match four in a row, rather than this game's five in a row. Remember back to those times when you had to wait to go while your opponent made one match that then caused a cascade of gems and extra turns such that by the time you got to make a match, you were already nearly dead? Is this game more random than that? No. Is it harder? Absolutely, and that's the real difference. It is much easier to miss a match and your opponents come packing some serious hardware from the get go, making it crucial that you pay attention to their weaponry as well as their energy levels so you can make matches to keep them from using their weapons.

It’s this blend of casual pick up and play feel, deep, challenging gameplay and copious amounts of activities that makes this a very hard game to put down. Unfortunately, all of this content comes at a price, namely in graphical hitches and loading times. Truth be told, I see the "Accessing Data" screen a whole heck of a lot more than I'd like to, and the three to four seconds that it hangs around for isn't high on my "Best things of '09" list. When gems match in battle, they come off of the grid with slight stutters and hitches and I think it's a poor design decision to have the leapgate timer continue to countdown as a whole bunch of unintended matches pile up, but none of this, not one single distracting thing about this game would make me stop playing it for a second. In fact, the only thing to get me to stop playing it is the need to write this review. Now that the review is done, well, I'll catch you at the next leapgate.

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