I didn't have high hopes for
match three pirates 2, as the
first game was pretty bad, but since it was already a big improvement over the developer's earlier attempt,
gems of magic: lost family, I changed my mind about not playing any of their future games and gave them another chance. I shouldn't have...
while the first one had a mandatory move limit, this has
3 game modes:
hard with a move limit, skulls and pests,
normal without a move limit or skulls, but pests are active, and
relaxed has no move limit, skulls or pests. I seem to remember pests being a nuisance in the first game, so I went with relaxed, my preferred choice for match-3 anyway. otherwise
skulls spread after every move, have to match next to them or use a bomb, and various
pests do all sorts of nasty things, like tying tiles down. contrary to what the game says, skulls still show up on some relaxed levels, but they don't multiply.
the story picks up after the happenings in the first game. I never finished it, but of course bobby got rescued along with the pirates, and now the kid is back in that parallel world to help the pirates once more. since they're immortal in their realm, issues bound to come up eventually.
no voiceovers this time but text display is fast enough and blissfully silent (except for the noise the button makes when you click it, could do without that as well).
anyway, the old pirate dude misses the laughter of children from our world, so bobby has the bright idea to
build a pirate theme park. the overworld can be zoomed in to reveal how low-res the artwork is and
barely anything is animated. there's a
help screen that goes over the basics (sometimes shows incorrect text under the picture and it's
full of grammatical errors), otherwise it's the usual deal: many buildings to spend gold on, some unlock
very expensive single-use boosters to buy before each level, the rest is just decoration.
levels are unlocked one by one and can't be replayed later. not sure how many there are, I gave up after 30-odd. one of the only cool things from the first game is back:
you can continue playing and farming gold after the goals are met, but this time the amount of money collected isn't shown while playing, only after. lame. besides skulls and pests, which are now thankfully optional, there are the usual obstacles to destroy and chests to open with varying amounts of adjacent matches.
animations are still crazy fast, even for me, who prefers things happening instantly, yet during longer cascades I would've preferred to keep matching, except it's not possible. and
still no sound for basic bombs. power-ups are created by matching 4+ tiles, they can be combined, always nice, otherwise they trigger when matched. with no valid moves left the board auto-shuffles and cascades count if you need to match a certain number of things, etc.
aside from pixelation when zoomed in and some unattractive text display,
the game looks good enough, has a fitting piratey soundtrack (I think it's from the first game), ambient noises, plus separate volume settings (some without labels), windowed mode toggle with a non-resizable window, custom game cursor and some languages, also available while playing a level.
unfortunately,
not much has changed since the first game, this is also
really buggy and unpolished. missing tooltips everywhere, mechanics not present in relaxed mode are explained (and sometimes present) nonetheless, not just the help section but the entire game needs a proofreader, and maybe replace the demo text when quitting the game... and even then it wouldn't be recommendable.
