Still addictive, but very difficult
Galactrix is a game I really want to like. I adored the original for its blend of classic gameplay with RPG elements. Galactrix still has those basics, but the difficulty has been ramped up, almost to the point of being frustratingly broken.
GRAPHICS
Galactrix has cleaned up some of the menus and graphics of the original. It's nothing that will blow your mind, but it's very pleasant to look at and the text is much easier to read this time. However, there's one fly in the ointment. If you are partially color-blind like me, especially to shades of green and yellow or blue and purple, you'll have a frustrating time of it. There are timed mini-games that make me want to scream in frustration as I hen-peck through similarly shaded blocks looking to find ones that are green and yellow. You'll be able to work around it with a good head for memorization in regards wo what blocks work in groups of threes and which don't, but it definitely bears mentioning that the shades of color are not color-blind friendly. Sliders to adjust or modify each individual color would be nice, but I can't a game to pander to my vision problems, and so this is not taken into effect in the final score.
GAMEPLAY
Unfortunately, the game play isn't nearly as much fun as Puzzle Quest. Repeate jump gate mini-games are frustrating and occur far too often, especially with the above-mentioned color blindness issue. You can take quests that may actually leave you stranded in the midst of a hostile territory, and if you've ventured too far into those zones, you'll find yourself in a no-win situation against a computer opponent that makes no mistakes with stats that are far beyond your own. This has actually caused me to have to start over twice now, which has tripled the amount of time I've had to spend with those annoying gate hacks. This is frankly a deal-breaker of an issue and needs to be resolved via a patch.
OVERALL
An adjustable difficulty setting, options to avoid the jump gate hacks after a certain number have been completed, and a way to escape battles into neutral territory (with a penalty, of course) would go a long ways towards making this a fantastic game, but as it is, I can't recommend it to anyone except die-hard fans of the original looking for some masochistic ways to punish themselves. Do yourself a favor and avoid this disappointing sequel.
