Azkend 2: The World Beneath (Nintendo Switch) Review

When a 19th Century explorer drifts into a maelstrom while sailing from Liverpool to New York, what follows is a little Jules Verne adventure story, with a series of puzzle levels to unlock items that then unlocks the next chapter. Each part of the story sees the erstwhile explorer having to match sufficient tiles, flip over all of the tiles on the grid to change their colour, or complete special objectives, like stopping bugs from reaching the top of the grid or collecting flower tiles.

The core gameplay is a simple Match-3 (or more) title on a hexagonal grid, with the items on this grid made up of various sea-based tiles to match, such as shells, oysters, shark teeth, and more. Matching these tiles isn't the only way to remove them, though, as making more and more matches charges up Tesla coils to zap some away, and making a match of six or more tiles in a single turn fires off some lightning to help clear the board.

Once the objective is complete, an item will spawn somewhere on the grid; getting this to the bottom of the grid completes the level. To add an extra level of challenge, this all has to be done while fighting against a time limit. The items collected in this manner over the course of the story unlock special tiles that can be equipped, and doing so allows special tiles to appear on the board and gives passive bonuses to help during the puzzles.

There are nine active tiles to equip and nine passive; one of each can be equipped at a time. The active tiles give abilities, such as a pair of binoculars, the tiles of which remove "odd one out" individual tiles that aren't touching any matching ones. There are compass tiles, which act as a bridge between different groups. Dynamite destroys tiles in a large explosion. Passive tiles grant small bonuses, such as extra time on a stage, and extra balls of lightning to be produced, extra power-ups to appear, and the like.

The story mode boasts over 60 levels and this is the perfect type of puzzler in that it drags attention in and doesn't let go, making for that "just one more go" style mentality, keeping things fresh by adding in new mechanics regularly and making it worth replaying levels with different items equipped for very different experiences. Outside of the story, there are two extra modes to keep things interesting. There is a medal mode, which allows replays of every stage, but with half the time limit. Then there are a time attack mode and a bunch of achievements to aim for.

Whether playing on the big screen or in handheld mode, the presentation is great. The tiles are sharp, the story moments between stages are made up of animated, hand-drawn moments that look really striking, and the whole thing is topped off by a score from Jonathan Geer, who also produced the wonderful soundtrack for Owlboy recently. What isn't great in both modes, though, is the way this controls. This is definitely one to be played in handheld mode, just to make use of the touchscreen. The cursor positively crawls across the screen and often doesn't feel right when swiping across groups of tiles. It feels like you are constantly battling against the controls unless the touchscreen is utilised.