If you've played the first installment in this series, there aren't any great visual advances in this, the second part of a trilogy. Dracula: Path of the Dragon - Part 2 picks up immediately where the first episode finished, with the priest, Father Arno, on his way to Prague. It's nice to get out of town, especially when that town is the creepy Transylvania burg you knocked around in exclusively during Part 1. Unfortunately, your view of Prague is limited to a static, overhead shot, and the inside of a building. Then, it's back on the train for you... Don't fret though, because you'll soon be gallivanting off to the exotic Turkish countryside, and by "exotic" we mean dark, dank, and generally dismal. Turkish prisons have that reputation, after all. We loved going deeper into the mystique of what is constantly being referred to as the "Path of the Dragon," a mystical journey that is supposed to bring the traveler closer to acquiring a vampiric form. Maybe it's just being familiar with the game, but we actually thought the voice-acting was a notch higher in terms of quality. There's a lot of it, at least! We think there's a general lack of quality voice talent in casual games, and Dracula: Path of the Dragon - Part 2 points the way for more publishers and developers to insist on at least this level of polish and production. Many of the puzzles have a strong visual component, requiring you to think about patterns and signs you've gathered through earlier conversations or reading. There are even a handful of cut-scene movies created for sequences like the train trips between areas, that help define the dark mood of the game.

Things are definitely getting stranger in the small Transylvanian town where your adventures began, in the latest chapter of Dracula: Path of the Dragon. The information you gather in Prague is creepy, suggesting that there are shadow societies monitoring prophecies that have ties to the Path of the Dragon and are willing to kill to protect their secrets. Your contact there whispers about these ominous links to the events in Transylvania before putting you back on a train... comforting, eh? As you depart the train station, you notice that the town's walls are marked with graffiti. Sinister, or just the work of pranksters? You can't help but feel as if a veil is being drawn over your surroundings, and this feeling only intensifies after a shocking murder occurs. This event sets you firmly on course for Turkey, following the supposed Path of the Dragon, but still in an effort to debunk myths rather than as a believer. Along this journey, you actually won't meet any new contacts, but you will have a chance to explore some previously inaccessible parts of town. Seeing the game open up gradually is a good thing, but we're wondering how everything will be adequately wrapped up by the end of the third chapter. We at least found the story more intelligible and captivating, helped by stronger puzzles and new places to explore. The elements we find hardest to love continue to be the somewhat aimless pacing and the obscure puzzles. The ending of this segment was a straight-up cliffhanger, so we're eager to dive into the third installment.

Having freedom to explore is a good and bad thing, since lack of structure creates frustration as easily as overbearing structure. The puzzles are obscure in the sense that you can't really piece together what you're doing right or wrong from the hints provided, and nothing in the game's documentation leads you closer to clarity. Luckily, these are few and far between, but there's only so much content in the game that isn't about exploring and talking to people. We'd have preferred more small puzzles that gave a feeling of accomplishment, rather than lots of item collection and conversation leading up to big set pieces. There are also some difficult moments where you come across something that you can't do anything about in this chapter. Some of these are accompanied by a message like, "I can't do anything about that right now," but there's no clear line between puzzles you can solve with existing inventory and those you can't solve yet. Better design would dictate that players should be kept clear of puzzles they can't solve or interact with until a later point. On the opposite side is the argument that players may enjoy the mystery and like coming back to solve puzzles at a later time. We felt led along gently by Dracula: Path of the Dragon - Part 2 most times, and there were good safeguards against completely screwing up in plenty of areas. The line between challenge and frustration can be incredibly thin, and Path of the Dragon - Part 2 mostly stayed away from the latter.

There are, pound-for-pound, more interactions in this chapter than the previous one. Whether it just seems that way because of shifting locations, we can't be sure, but there are a few puzzles that require use of several objects. It was in these moments that we realized how Path of the Dragon breaks with a few standard conventions. First, there's nothing to really suggest how and where you can have an interaction. Most games these days go in for glowing objects, sparkly stuff, or some other visual signal that tips you off to the opportunity to do something. The analogy for Path of the Dragon is probably back to the old text-based adventures we grew up with, where you had to really think about what to do, where, and with what. The other convention that's broken here is the ability to visually "use" an object from your inventory. We really found the system implemented for Path of the Dragon awkward, especially when the interactivity increased. Instead of dragging and dropping from your inventory, you have to break away from the game to the Pause menu, select an item to equip it from your inventory, and then interact with a specific object or area. This means that if you accidentally have an object equipped and stumble through an area where that object is used, you will accidentally solve the puzzle. This doesn't happen often, but it's just a strange design choice. There's also no way to combine objects, other than using, pausing, equipping, and then using again. The example of this in the game is lighting a campfire, which seems like a simple enough maneuver, doesn't it?

The transition between chapters was flawless, and we really hope the third part concludes with answers to the questions being raised about journeys into dark corridors of evil, on the way to becoming a full-fledged vampire. At the very least, this game has captured our attention, and whether it's smoothed out the rough edges or we've just managed to navigate around them, we're enjoying ourselves.