Picross 3D: Round 2
Year: 2016
Rating: E
Time Played: 3,310 minutes / 51.17 hours
When I bought Picross 3D, I assumed it was a 3D game for the Nintendo 3DS. While I still enjoyed the three-dimensional gameplay of that Nintendo DS game, I knew the capabilities of the 3DS would easily enhance the puzzles presented in such a game. Fortunately, the developers of the first game came out with a sequel for the 3DS. Picross 3D: Round 2 is basically the same game as Picross 3D, except that you get to see the finished puzzles with the Nintendo 3DS stereoscopic top screen once you’ve completed them.
This sequel has an additional facet to the gameplay that the first game did not possess. While Picross 3D was more or less a standard extrapolation of Picross, this game introduced two colors into the gameplay. Blue blocks are solid, and yellow blocks are corners or other edges that round out the puzzle you’re solving. This allowed for more nuanced puzzles that weren’t nearly as blocky as the ones in the first game. However, I struggled against the control scheme for marking these different colored blocks for a good quarter of my play-through before I finally edited the button layout to be more intuitive to my play style.
Just like my play-through of Picross 3D, I finished all the puzzles at the maximum difficulty—mostly because I reset any puzzle I made an error on so I could get the maximum points for each one. I appreciated the larger multi-puzzle models created by solving several smaller puzzles. And while you don’t actually solve the puzzles on the 3D screen (instead using the natural touchscreen/stylus interface), it was nice to see these puzzles in 3D once I completed them—thus living up to the “3D” in the title.
A great follow-up to the original Picross 3D, I give Picross 3D: Round 2 4.0 stars out of 5.
