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Rating: 
Summary: I hope Dreamcatcher Interactive can read this......
Review: After having just finished an awesome computer game, I began searching for another captivating and challenging conquest at a reasonable price. I searched online and made a few choices, and because of the online reviews, as well as the product description for Jewels 2, it was amongst my choices. I was severely disappointed with the game from the onset of puzzle 1. The description on the box and website reviews were TOTALLY misleading. The game has NO SUBSTANCE! There is NO plot, no mystery, no intrigue, nothing to explore or find....NOTHING, but puzzle after BORING puzzle. The puzzles alone would have been ALOT more tolerable, and perhaps even interesting, if the player knew that they were going to get further, or at least SOMEWHERE, by solving them! The graphics were ok, but not much better than that, and many places onscreen were too dark or barely visible. The package boasts of a "built in Hint Book" and for the life of me, I couldnt decipher the hints or solutions in the book any more than I could stand the monotony of this game. I am truly dissapointed in Dreamcatcher Int. for the release of this less than enjoyable piece of work. I hope they strive for much more next time.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Puzzles, Zero Story
Review: I give this one a 3 rating because it's the average between a 5 for the quality and challenging nature of the puzzles presented here, and a 1 for story line, navigation, and features. For example, there's no way to just pickup where you saved a game. Whenever you load the game you have to click through each of the intro sequences to get to the starting point, then you have to open the saved game file to pickup where you left off. It would've been helpful if they could give you a simple way to auto-restart with the saved game file and skip all the dramatic intro fluff. It is also hard to move between puzzles, each of which resides in a separate cave with no marking on the outside. So there's a lot of going into a cave only to find you've already solved the puzzle there. To manouever between some of the caves can be a puzzle in itself. The puzzles are amazing though. Some are near impossible. But the graphics are smooth and detailed hi-res. If you're going to work at a puzzle for hours at a time at least they're lovely to look at.
Rating: 
Summary: Puzzles, Not Adventure
Review: Jewels 2 is not an adventure game. It's a puzzle game thinly disguised as an adventure game. So if you buy J2 looking for an adventure game, you're probably going to be disappointed; you won't find much of a story or progression from one place to the next, there's no character interaction, mininmal inventory -- that is, none of the things that make an adventure game an adventure game. On the other hand, Jewels 2 does offer a great set of puzzles, 30 or so of them ranging from math to mazes to mosaics. There are one or two places where doing a puzzle will give you a clue to another puzzle elsewhere, but mostly you can do them in any order. Each puzzle is available both in an easy form and a more difficult one. I found that there were only two puzzles that I couldn't solve in the difficult form and only one that was totally incomprehensible, making a hint or two necessary. I liked that if I got stuck on a puzzle there was always another one to solve, and though it initially irritated me that you couldn't save within a puzzle -- saving causes the puzzles to reset, putting you back at square one -- I came to feel that this was actually an advantage, as it gave you a fresh start and sometimes encouraged you to go about things in a different way. Bottom line: if you're the kind of person who takes "The Big Book of Brain Teasers" on vacation with you, you will probably like this game. If not, or if you're really looking for a true adventure, you won't.
Rating:
Summary: Puzzles, Not Adventure
Review: Jewels 2 is not an adventure game. It's a puzzle game thinly disguised as an adventure game. So if you buy J2 looking for an adventure game, you're probably going to be disappointed; you won't find much of a story or progression from one place to the next, there's no character interaction, mininmal inventory -- that is, none of the things that make an adventure game an adventure game. On the other hand, Jewels 2 does offer a great set of puzzles, 30 or so of them ranging from math to mazes to mosaics. There are one or two places where doing a puzzle will give you a clue to another puzzle elsewhere, but mostly you can do them in any order. Each puzzle is available both in an easy form and a more difficult one. I found that there were only two puzzles that I couldn't solve in the difficult form and only one that was totally incomprehensible, making a hint or two necessary. I liked that if I got stuck on a puzzle there was always another one to solve, and though it initially irritated me that you couldn't save within a puzzle -- saving causes the puzzles to reset, putting you back at square one -- I came to feel that this was actually an advantage, as it gave you a fresh start and sometimes encouraged you to go about things in a different way. Bottom line: if you're the kind of person who takes "The Big Book of Brain Teasers" on vacation with you, you will probably like this game. If not, or if you're really looking for a true adventure, you won't.
Rating:
Summary: A game to make you use your grey matter between the ears
Review: Ok, there seems to be no plot, but the thing I found about Jewels 2 was it really challenged the brain, and did engage the imagination of me and my roomate, I think that was what the author intended for this game, and thats what I got from it, I really did enjoy the types of puzzles, and the fact you could do any of them at any time. (This allowed for a break if I got stuck on a particular puzzle) I really enjoyed this game, and if you are looking for a self-paced type of game this is the one.
Rating: 
Summary: Jewel II
Review: The graphics were good but the puzzles were almost the same as in Jewel. It was not very challenging.
Rating:
Summary: Puzzles but nothing else
Review: This game is nothing like the magazine reviews. Yes - there is a puzzle in each room to solve. But there is nothing else to explore. You simply solve puzzle after puzzle. There is no other story line. BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. You'd be better off with Myst, Shivers, or some of the Lucas Arts games.
Rating:
Summary: Puzzles but nothing else
Review: This game is nothing like the magazine reviews. Yes - there is a puzzle in each room to solve. But there is nothing else to explore. You simply solve puzzle after puzzle. There is no other story line. BIG DISAPPOINTMENT. You'd be better off with Myst, Shivers, or some of the Lucas Arts games.
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