Picross 3D: Round 2

released on Oct 01, 2015

Chip away at a three-dimensional block puzzle to reveal the object hidden within. Only this time, blocks can be painted with two colors of paint to mold detailed shapes. Enjoy more than 300 puzzles at the Cafe or even tap compatible amiibo figures (sold separately) to solve 10 more puzzles hiding secret Nintendo characters!


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soundtrack goes unreasonably hard, perfect zen game, cannot recommend enough

I really liked the first 3D Picross on DS, so I was of course very excited when I heard they were making a 2nd one for 3DS. In typical me-fashion, I waited ages until it was on sale so I could get a physical version from Japan (didn't come out physically here), and then waited even longer to eventually play it in the first place XD . I finally started it a couple weeks ago, and then 56.5 hours later, I finished it XD . This game has a TON of puzzles, and they're really good fun! I played through the whole game on "Bitter" difficulty, and got rainbow rank on all 364 puzzles as well as unlocking all but 1 amiibo puzzle (I don't have a Link amiibo XP).

3D Picross turns the traditional picross formula on its side by putting it in the third dimension. Instead of several numbers indicating how many sets of unbroken blocks are in a 2D picture, each puzzle has a series of blocks with solid numbers on them. A plain number indicates a single unbroken stream of blocks, a number in a circle indicates the set is in two sets, and a number in a square indicates three or more sets. 3D Picross 2 ups the ante on that even more by making it not just numbers, but colored numbers. Now blocks can have clues for both orange and blue numbers, both of which can have the aforementioned shape modifiers. Orange blocks indicate a block that will be modified or curved upon the completion of the puzzle, while blue blocks are ones that will stay blocky. Even more-so than 3D Picross 1, the two sets of colors/numbers means re-teaching yourself how to 3D Picross all over again, and it's SO worth it for how tough and mind-bending some of the puzzles are.

The game does have some features to make the game more palatable for everyone though. I played on the hardest "Bitter" difficulty, but there are two other flavors of lower difficulties that provide more hints in each puzzle (Bitter is effectively having exactly enough information to complete the puzzles: no more no less). The game even sets the starting difficulty for you depending on how much trouble you have on the tutorial stages. You get higher ranks depending on how quickly you complete each puzzle and on how few mistakes you have, and higher difficulties provide higher points modifiers at the end (how many diamond (the second highest) ranks you have as well as how many points and how many sets you've completed unlock new puzzles to play). The music is good, as well are the puzzles, although give the game is so long I'd really recommend some good podcasts to listen to while you're going through them, as there aren't THAT many music tracks in the game.

The only real mechanical issue I have with the game would be that it can be hard to tell if you've completed a section or not because of how the colors look. The colors fade a bit when you've done all of that color's blocks in a line, but it can be hard to tell, particularly with the orange numbers on an orange block, if you've got it dimmed out or not. The same goes with how hard it can be to see the numbers on the much larger puzzles, as there is no dedicated zoom feature. I played this on a 2DS XL, and I can only imagine how hard it is to see the hint numbers playing on a normal 3DS when there are both colors of hint numbers on a block. Even on my bigger screen, I would frequently mistake a circled number for a squared one and vice versa when it was an orange-on-orange number/color combo. However, unless you're going for rainbow-ranks on everything, this is not that important a complaint, and will only add to your miss-counter. Very few puzzles have the penalty for getting misses as puzzle failures (like 10-15 out of the 364).

Verdict: Highly Recommended. It's probably one of the best picross experiences out there. Graphical information problems aside, with all the difficulty features helping with accessibility, this is a game anyone can pour tons of time into without running out of puzzles to complete. I'd go as far as to say there are TOO many puzzles, because the game just doesn't want you to run out of puzzles to complete. Play as many or as little as you want, as easy or as tough as you want, and you can still have a great time with 3D Picross 2 ^w^

major props to hal lab for avoiding cashing in on yearly picross 3d releases like in the 2d series; round 2 is a complete overhaul of the original concept. the original picross 3d struggled with integrating its 3d nature into the actual puzzle solving, as the game's loop involved slicing its three-dimensional voxel sculptures into two-dimensional slices, where row hints pointing towards the player had next-to-no bearing on the solution of any given slice. round 2 instantly solves that by transforming the game's mechanics into an adaptation of color picross from the main series, where instead of chiseling out a monochrome image, you instead have to deal with multiple colors on each line. hints perpendicular to a slice now show the possible colors for that particular block, and thus the loop now involves checking hints on all three axes instead of just the slice's primary two. switching to colors also vastly increases the potential number of hint arrangements. as in the first game, each hint may indicate an unbroken string of blocks, two separate strings of blocks, or three+ strings of blocks, but now each of the two colors can have its own variable number of strings per row. the amount of different idioms that arise from this far surpass the original game.

what makes this particular interesting is that the coloration of the blocks is not random or chosen purely mechanically: it actually reflects the construction of each puzzle. the voxels of the original game are now marked blue, and new, variably shaped, curved blocks are marked orange. this addition adds substantial context to the chiseling process: compared to the rectangular jumble of the original, you can now clearly make out the structure of what you're building over time. while aesthetically pleasing in its own right, this also assists with the mental leg work, as educated guesses can be made much more easily with a rough idea of the puzzle's shape and edges. this creates some pseudo-idioms in its own right as well: for example, edges with a taper at either end generally appear as a single blue string and then two one-block orange strings. the game can get quite inscrutable at times without some real brute forcing of all the different possibilities, so the organic natures of the game's mechanical structures eases some of the tedium and allows for some guesswork.

I played a couple more rounds of the original just to feel it out, and honestly playing this has dampened my enthusiasm for that entry. so many QoL additions here, from the ability to swipe across the screen to break/paint a bunch of blocks in one go to finally being able to isolate the edge-most slice from any direction. the structure here has been changed from tiered assortments of puzzles from easy to hard to thematically driven "books" of puzzles, with the easy/normal/hard selection individualized for each puzzle. goes a long way in making the on-ramp smooth coming out of the original; no need to slog through the piss-easy stuff if you already have some experience with the concept. the ranking system is also much more granular, with your amount of misses (now including incorrect painting, unlike the first title) and time taken now converted to a numeric score, which gets multiplied against the chosen difficulty of the puzzle to get your final score and rank. also a testament to how difficult this game can get: later puzzles can have top "rainbow" ranks allow for 25-30 minutes on a single puzzle with up to three or four misses. the very final puzzle in the game took me over 45 min!

I've been a huge Picross fan for a while now. In fact, I'm that jerk who doesn't use the X's in order to up the challenge. But I had only played the free, mobile Picross, thinking it was so simple that there was nothing to be added in a premium price version. I then find Picross 3D: Round 2 with a demo, and my perspective totally changed. Adding a third dimension is already cool and original, but it's integrated so elegantly. It's inseparable from the 3DS, in that I can't imagine a more fast, fluid, and precise way to play it other than the button and stylus combo. It feels as natural as rotating a Rubix Cube in your hands. The gameplay is akin to its 2D Picross counterpart, but is brilliantly retooled to feel almost like "paint-by-numbers sculpting". Finding the form within is endlessly satisfying- which is good, because the sheer amount of levels feels endless! There are plenty of difficulty options to cater to any level of puzzler, even the hardcore type like myself. Visually, the game is clever in how it justifies the cuboid Picross squares, by simply making them look like physical wooden blocks! Additionally, there is a boundless variety of subject matter, from people who truly understand how to make simple look charming, rather than boring. That little penguin in the thumbnail explains it better than I can. Every single thing you "carve" even comes with its own little text description!

In conclusion, it's a game with a familiar yet inventive premise that does its job to perfection, and is a must play for any Picross fan!

Sadly, with the retiring of the 3DS eShop, the game is no longer available for purchase digitally; however there are still Japanese-only physical copies at good prices. It's still worth braving the language barrier!

perfect sleeper game, love its puzzles