Picross e2

Picross e2 is the aptly named second part of Jupiter's Picross e series, a budget line of nonogram puzzles published by Nintendo for the 3DS eShop. e2's mission statement is to take the foundation laid by the very barebones e and provide a little bit more bang for your buck. There's only one new mode, Micross, but its existence provides just enough variety that I found e2 to hold my attention a bit longer.

There are 150 new standard puzzles here, and I found them to be more interesting and challenging than in e. The difficulty and density of the puzzles starts from a higher point, and the actual pictures the puzzles represent are of higher quality and a bit more inspired overall. There's still no real theme to them, just a string things you'd find outside, but some of the framing is interesting and fewer of them look like an Amazon stock photo. The Easy/Normal/Free/Extra modes return and work similarly, giving the game a very steady increase in difficulty from the top of the board to the bottom. Unfortunately, we run into the same issue of a single BGM track during the puzzles, and to make matters worse it's just a sitar remix of the original e's BGM. I really hope this is fixed going forward because I know for a fact it's easy to do.

The selling point of e2, however, is the new Micross mode that is prominently featured on its "cover" art. In this mode, you'll slowly assemble pixel art versions of real-world paintings, bit by bit. You start by solving a relatively simple 8x8 puzzle, and each filled tile then turns into a puzzle of its own, adding up to a ton of extra stuff to do. Because the tiles have to resemble parts of an existing work of art, not all are fully-fledged nonograms, but just enough are to keep the pace of completion high. The puzzles stay at the 10x10 size to keep them shorter, and the theme changes to a very hoity-toity aristocratic one, with a "digging" audiovisual style to the puzzles themselves a la the original Mario's Picross, and harpsichord music to work to. It's fun stuff, and the sheer scope of the 5 paintings available encourages you to do bits at a time while completing the rest of the game.

e2 is a welcome improvement over the well-built but anemic e. The increased puzzle quality makes the package feel more worthy, and the new Micross mode is a nice diversion from the more difficult standard puzzles. In all, the improvements here are enough to move the title up into the "recommended" category. Hopefully the later installments are able to do even more with the formula.