To all who have played this game: How would you rate the AI difficulty? 
 
Personally I think I have to be missing something.  I'm a few hours into the game so far and now almost every enemy blocks all the damage I deal them, cutting it in half.  On top of that the extreme luck the AI from the first game had doesn't seem to have changed much.  I'm pretty good at Puzzle Quest, and I beat the first one, but man this game can get rough.  Don't get me wrong I don't think this ruins the game...in fact beating an enemy that hands it to you like 10 times in a row is pretty satisfying, especially when 7 out of the 10 times they get a cascade doing damage in the 50's during the first turn, when you only have 80something HP (true story). 
 
But I love the game and was wondering what you guys thought about the AI and the game in general?

It was really hard at first, but now that I've leveled up more the regular enemies seem a lot easier to beat.  But yeah, I'm lucky if I get a row of 4 twice in a game, but an I've seen an AI guy do it like six times in one turn, and they get gigantic combos all the time too.

The Greater Challenge side quests are insane! 

" @davissc9: Boss quests.  One of them has a 1 hit kill spell which recharges fast. "

Which version are you playing? I've got it for the DS and it doesn't seem to have that issue, or at least as suspiciously often as before.
 
Overall, compared to the first, this seems like one step forward, two steps back. The actual match-3 gameplay has greatly improved, what with the actual use of inventory, greater variety of mini-games, greater balance and all (seriously, in the first game, choose a knight, buy an unholy lance, put half your points into green mana and attack, and you've pretty much won the game). 
 
But everything surrounding that main element faltered. Moving through towns and dungeons feels extremely sluggish and unnecessary , the whole silent protagonist cliche draws me out of the story completely, and certain expanded side elements like seigeing cities, capturing and training mounts, learning spells, and companions seem to have been taken out completely. Overall, the sense of scale from the first game has been seriously cut back. (Of course, I'm not that far into the game, so if anyone can correct me on this, that would be great.)
 
Still, those issues are minor and don't make this game not freakin' awesome and worth every dollar I spent on it. Hell, I bought a DS only last month for this one game, and even that was totally justified.

I'm not too far into it yet, but I finished the beginning part of the main quest in the town, which didn't really give me any trouble. Now that I'm getting into side-quests, the true nature of the AI has revealed itself. Yes, it still cheats like a motherfucker. It still appears that it somehow manages to see gems before they are visible on the board and uses that to its advantage, creating ridiculous combo chains and dealing massive damage while you sit there, helpless. That's nothing new, really, except now it does that in normal mode, unlike the first game where it usually did it on Hard. However, certain monsters have the tendency to use stupidly unfair combos of attacks and spells more than they did in the first game. I can definitely see how some issues I have with the AI could be solved simply by leveling up, but at the end of the day, Puzzle Quest still has cheating AI and it DOES piss me off quite a bit. That did not stop me from loving the original, and it certainly won't stop me from loving this one.
 
 I do have other problems with the game that lie in the developer's choices of game design, mainly in world traversal and the sense of scale, but they have made changes I enjoy, as well, and I cannot wait to get into more of this game.

Totally agree...it's the same puzzle quest AI oddities where you're amazing runs are few and far between and seem to be based on luck, while the AI does it consistently.  Frustrating, but satisfying when it all works out.

Fighting the Yeti on the 360 version is really pissing me off now.  He has double my hit points, he can block most attacks, blue gems heal him for massive amounts, he can cast a spell that fills the screen with blue gems which gives him more turns then he can use that spell over again and fill up his health completely.  He even has a 1 hit kill attack.
 
WTF, this is worse than the first game!

They're blocking it cause they have high defence.
If I want to deal some nice damage with my barbarian, I use a defence debuff first.

I haven't had any problems playing as an Assassin on Normal Difficulty. 

if the enemies are too strong then do a different quest and come back as a higher level, like you would in any rpg.

I play as an Assassin and I am not having too much trouble....I beat the Yeti while playing on Normal.

if the enemies are too strong then do a different quest and come back as a higher level, like you would in any rpg.

" @BergDK said:

if the enemies are too strong then do a different quest and come back as a higher level, like you would in any rpg.

Is there a way to tell enemy levels in the XBLA version?  DS version tells you but it seemed the enemies were always my level. "

" @BergDK said:

if the enemies are too strong then do a different quest and come back as a higher level, like you would in any rpg.

Is there a way to tell enemy levels in the XBLA version?  DS version tells you but it seemed the enemies were always my level. "

Fair enough.... You will have much better equipment and spells though at higher level...

edit: Having just played some more, I found myself fighting level 15 enemies with my level 28 assassin, so it doesn't scale up to your level atleast.

Played it for a while & really really liking the assassin, though there are some AI fights where the opponent just spams whatever weapon they have constantly. The XP for losing seems to be a bit better this time so even if you lose it's not much to worry over.

I haven't had any problems playing as an assassin on normal except the greater challenge - ogre took some tries.

I've had a little trouble with a few random characters (mostly undead creatures), but when I started getting into the upgrades, I had less and less trouble.  Not that I'm particularly good or anything - it's mostly still just luck for my victories, but I'm getting there.

I've noticed the AI gets some pretty ridiculous cascades that make me wanna hurl my DS but overall it hasn't been too bad. Specially now that i've got a defence debuff for my assassin. I usually hit em with that followed by either stealth or disarm which doubles any strike spells.  
Works wonders. But yeah that yeti's a bitch with his one hit kill spell.

 The enemies are always the same level as you are. You can highlight their portrait and press Y to watch their stats. "  

" @CrazyChris said: 

 The enemies are always the same level as you are. You can highlight their portrait and press Y to watch their stats. "  

 Yes, enemies (at least some) certainly change stats in the game.  One side quest was kicking my ass (it had 300 hp, 3 skulls dealt me 22 damage, and it had an attack of maybe 50 damage...) so I left to level and retry.  I came back and it now had more hit points (up to 340), and still kicked my ass.  One more trip to level and it had even more (360), though I finally managed to win by actively taking away skull and action point opportunities for the AI.  The win was sweet and ultimately worth the effort. "

I haven't  played it yet but really I don't care too much on the difficulty. Just from seeing the new layout of the game world and features making me so excited for it that I would buy it the first day it goes on any kind of sale on XBLA.

The assassin class is overpowered.
I met an assassin that was 4 levels lower than me, and he destroyed me.
I couldn't even hit him. Ehh...

I started as a Barbarian, sucked ass against the enemies then I rerolled as an assassin and now I roll through most enemies. Sometimes I run into 1 that will just get lucky against me over and over again which sucks.

from reading this and playing assassin it seams that the class is pretty OP (think about starting a templar), I've been pumping my moral which means I resist abilities quite a bit and have green, red, and yellow strikes with disarm and stealth which depending on how many purples etc are on the board I can use all three strikes in one turn each doing 30ish dmg, don't normal bother getting 3 normal skulls since I've also crafted a 1h axe to legendary which is 7 fists for 16dmg, also the mana pots are so good I currently have a red one that is 5 fists for 7 red mana. 
 
Also there is learning spells but it is just quests from random goblins in the dungeons so far

Ya the whole game has alot of lolz in it but is still great in my mind

Playing as a Templar.  I can pretty much wreck most opponents - it just takes a LONG time.  For those not familiar, the Templar is basically a tank.  If I have my spells and kit setup correctly, its really hard to hurt my guy.  However, my guy inflicts very little damage.  So I basically just sit there and whittle my opponents down to dust.  In PQ1 I played as a Sorcerer and had a handful of offensive spells that would just obliterate in 5 turns.  I figured I needed a change of pace this time :)

I was having fun until I got to the last boss.  Nothing but cheapness.   Green dragon fight was hard but fair.  Last boss is all about wasting your time, 60% spell resist, insta-win spell (eat red mana before she does), 100+ non-crit melee... It's too much.  The fight is possible, but incredibly frustrating.   Less about skill, more about luck with the resists.
 
I've never rage-quit a puzzle game before tonight.

This sounds just like the first Puzzle Quest, unfortunately.

I have also run into this problem. I didn't play the first game but some of the enemies in this game pull out the most ludicrous combos. I was just facing some skeleton with a spell that would let him summon one skull onto the board and of course he managed to a 5 damage skull right in between two other 5 damage spells causing a total of 15 damage followed by a cascade that resulted in multiple combos of 4 blocks or more. It honestly feels like this game hates me.

Im playing as the Sorceres now which seems to be the hardest class for me atleast. I havent experienced the Ai "Magic comboes" much. Maybe im just lucky, but i think if you study the board a bit you can prevent many of the Ai´s 5 - 6 comboes

The special monster side quests can be tough, but the regular enemies haven't been a challenge since level 10-15.  I'm around 43 now.  Game is fun in bursts but is becoming quite the grind.

I finished it last week. The game got progressively less fun and interesting as it went on. Some quests took forever simply because you just keep entering hallways or rooms full of dudes that you are forced to fight, and even worse, some fights drag on for way too long because enemies love to block all your attacks, even when they have almost no defense. And yeah, the game wasn't hard at all after the first few hours, except for the Greater Challenge bosses. I have to say though...killing that Green Dragon was pretty satisfying and turned out to be a fairly intense battle. Unfortunately you don't really get any sort of in-game reward for it. 
 
I was disappointed in the story. Not that PQ1's story was particularly good, but just the sense of scale you got from traveling over this huge world map to all these different places and talking to all these different races of creatures gave it a big epic feel. PQ2 has you in one town and crawling through a few tedious dungeons on a series of fetch quests that couldn't be any less interesting if they tried. The character interaction might as well be non-existent, as well, since all the dialogue sections are brief, and few and far between.  While the main quest takes awhile to complete, that's only for the reasons I stated above, and it's not till it's over that you realize that barely anything happens in the story. I was really surprised when I reached the end; it seemed like it came out of nowhere. I enjoyed myself and definitely got my $15 worth out of the game, but once again, the developers went ahead and changed things that should've been left alone, and the game ends up suffering for it.