Even though the match-three puzzle type isn't as crowded on the Xbox One as it was on the Xbox 360, you still need to do something different in order to stand out. Both Gems of War and Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign added a heavy RPG component to their combative iterations. Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight took the very successful mobile game's levels and added a local multiplayer versus mode. The duo of Sparkle Unleashed and Sparkle 2 took the Zuma approach and did their match-three thing with moving marble lines. When compared to all of those games, Azkend 2: The World Beneath did the one thing that made sense on paper: throw everything at the player and hope it sticks.

Though puzzle games don't necessarily need one, Azkend 2 comes with a story. You play as Jules, a young woman who is sailing aboard a vessel named the Celestia from Liverpool to New York. It doesn't take long for the journey to go awry, as the ship is pulled into a maelstrom and sucked into a whirlpool. When Jules comes to, she finds herself at the center of the Earth with no one else in sight. She's alone and determined to find a way back home. The story is pretty much a riff of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, and while the tale isn't put to great use, the team has to be applauded for pushing the narrative at every opportunity. Even with the use of mostly still images, the game bookends each of the campaign's 17 chapters with fully voiced cut scenes. Again, none of this is really necessary for a puzzle game, but it is a nice touch nonetheless.

The game is split into two puzzle types. The most prominent one is a match-three variant, where you trace out a chain of similar objects that connect to one another. Matching three is necessary to make them disappear, so other objects can cascade down to fill up the empty spaces. Matching six or more produces balls of energy that randomly destroy other objects on the board. The main objective is to move the target object, which is usually a piece of something much bigger, to the bottom of the playfield before time runs out.

However, the game throws plenty of puzzle variations at the player. The most common one is making matches to change the underlying board tiles to blue, and the target object only appears once the whole board is that color. Even at this most basic configuration, you'll be given some obstacles such as fog, ice blocks and locks, and making matches near them clears things up. Soon, you'll encounter variations that do away with color changing in favor of something else entirely. Blocks of fire need to be snuffed out as they spread. Flowers need to be matched to build up an energy meter, and it has to be done before all of the petals fall off. Bugs need to be eradicated by making multiple matches near them before they reach the top of the playfield. Aside from combining those variants with the lock and ice block barriers, you'll encounter puzzle fields that ask you to clear out every object.

What makes this experience more engaging is the pace at which the different objectives are thrown at you. With 17 levels in the campaign and three to four stages per level, a decent amount of gameplay is available. The whole affair goes by rather quickly due to the very short intervals the game allows between each new mechanic. There's barely any time to get comfortable before something new is introduced, so the game keeps you on your toes right until the very end. Considering how long it takes other games to introduce something new, this is a welcome change of pace.

While the game challenges you with rapid-fire variety, it gives you some help along the way. Aside from the aforementioned power balls that are generated when you make long chained matches, any matches that help you achieve your objective fill up a meter that fires off five bolts of energy at random spots on the board — but only the spots that help fulfill your objective. Another power-up on the board is a compass that lets you link up objects of different colors to create even longer chains. As you progress through the campaign, you'll unlock active and passive powers that include hammers that act like energy balls that target random areas of the board, extra time on your level, and the ability to create more compasses.

The combination of challenges and different powers makes for an interesting twist to the puzzle game, but all of that is hampered by a control scheme that doesn't work as intended. The buttons work fine, but the cursor control takes some getting used to. The analog stick movement is too sensitive, causing you to make unintentional mistakes around the field. Movement backtracking is done manually as opposed to a button press, so you'll learn to live with some matching mistakes instead of wasting seconds backtracking. Directional pad movement moves you at a steady pace across the board, but there's no way to speed up the cursor movement. It would've been much better if that was relegated to snapping a cursor over each tile with each press for more finite results. This is a harder way to play the game than compared to the finer movements of a PC mouse and more precise finger readouts on touch-screens.

Aside from the match-three puzzle game, the title also has a variation of the "spot the difference" game. You're given a timer and a chance to look for snippets of the background as highlighted in the upper right corner of the screen. Instead of just matching scenes as they appear, though, the game tries to trick you by rotating those pictures, so it's much harder especially when most of the scenes don't have too many distinguishing marks. Though it isn't necessary to find all of the highlighted scenes to move on to the next stage, finding what you can fills up your lightning bolt meter, making it worthwhile to complete the missions if you want to start the stage with a noticeable advantage.

Once you get through the campaign, there are two other game modes at your disposal. Timed gives you one static board and a set amount of time to get a high score and put yourself on the leaderboard. It plays similar to the classic game, but you can now produce multipliers when you create long chains. You also don't have access to the powers you acquired in the campaign, so this is as pure of a puzzle experience as you'll get. Medals mode also works on a timer, but it lets you go through all of the campaign stages with your powers. You simply try to finish each stage again with the same parameters as before, but you're trying to do so in half of the required time. Considering that nothing else changes here, it feels like busywork.

Graphically, Azkend 2 does most things well. The effects are rather basic, but they work, and the detail on the objects is well done. The only issue here has to do with size. With various board sizes in play, the game tries to fill in the screen, and while this means that some boards show up with very large objects, others are so small that you'll need to move closer to the TV to see what you're doing. Some size consistency would've certainly helped make this a more couch-friendly experience.

Like the graphics, the sound is an area where most things are done well. The sound effects are fine, and the music brings out the perfect vibe for the game. It's epic without being overwhelming, correctly conveying how grand of an adventure Jules is undertaking. There are times when the music seems to have been compressed to the point where thunderous bass crackles the speakers. The voice work wavers at times between well acted and rather aloof, so as a whole, it doesn't do a good job of keeping a steady cadence to make things believable.

If you can forgive the controls, Azkend 2: The World Beneath can be a fun puzzle game. The fidgety nature of the analog stick and the imprecise movements of the directional pad make it very easy to commit mistakes, something that didn't occur in either the PC or mobile iterations. If you can live with that, then you've got a puzzle game that provides a decent amount of challenge and replayability without feeling like it goes on far longer than it should. While other platforms are recommended for the title, it remains a good choice on the Xbox One if you've already exhausted a few of the other options on that console.

Score: 7.0/10