Treasures of Montezuma 2

In Brief

Treasures of Montezuma 2 is a decent match three and second of the five Treasures of Montezuma games released by Alawar. You can now get all five of the games free via MyPlayCity HERE, though today's game has had some of the low level adware and toolbars that you get via these free game sites removed

The game was originally given away on the 21st December 2014 HERE five years after its original release a decade ago; where it received a positive 84% out of 373 votes. You can check out the 52 comments HERE

If you want to check out the game before you download it, you can play it via your browser (Adobe Flash required) HERE. I've posted a thread over in the forums where you can list your top five favorite match three games HERE; depending on my mood, mine include Treasures of Montezuma 1 or 4, Luxor3: Quest for the Afterlife or Atlantis Sky Patrol, Puzzle Quest or Gems of War, Call of Atlantis and 5 Elements, with Around The World In 80 Days (due to the free screensavers) as a runner up. :)

Introduction:

Return to the jungle in The Treasures of Montezuma 2, an all-new Match 3 game with more levels, more challenges and more fun! Power-up totems and unleash special powers by making multiple matches of the same color token. Then rack up a high score by activating Score Frenzy with a series of insanely fast matches! Finally, unlock trophies for performing amazing feats as you try to collect all of the gems on each level before time runs out.

Reference accessed HERE. 26th May 2019

Installation:

Treasures of Montezuma 2 downloads to a 72.5 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 86.3 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\The Treasures of Montezuma 2

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the shortcut to the game, plus three others ''Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and a shortcut to a free online game. These latter three shortcuts can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation; there are details about this issue in the read me that unpacks from the downloaded zip file.

The Game:

Sequels are difficult things to gauge sometimes. This is doubly true when the first game was a real winner. The Treasures of Montezuma 2 is of course the follow-up to last year’s Treasures of Montezuma, but in spite of the 18 months between titles it doesn’t look like a lot of new material was brought to the table.

The Treasures of Montezuma 2 is a nice match-three title, with all the familiar trappings of the genre. Like the first game, you make your way through various puzzles, making matches of three to five tiles in length by swapping tiles, creating combos, earning powerful power-ups and the like. The game encourages you to create matches in quick succession, as doing this increases a Score Frenzy meter. When full, you can earn double the points for a limited time. To pass a level, you must break tiles that contain gems. The game starts out with as few as 15 gems to collect, but quickly gets above 60. And with a timer ticking down, you’ll have to move fast.

Fortunately, the scoring is ranked on the time it takes you to finish – at least in Normal mode. While you won’t get a high ranking for taking a while, you won’t automatically fail out of a level just because you couldn’t make the match in time, which is a welcome reprieve.

When compared to the original game, The Treasures of Montezuma 2 looks like a million bucks. Everything has a lovely coat of shine to it, and details like gems bursting and lights flashing all gleam with the glamour of a Vegas billboard. In addition to the main adventure mode – which, as mentioned, now has three difficulty levels – there are the new Puzzle and Endless modes. Puzzle mode has 40 fun levels for you to solve, while Endless lets you make matches to your heart’s content. Both these modes as well as the difficulty levels unlock as you make progress in the main Adventure mode.

The game’s "store" is different from the original. Rather than earning golden stars for completing each level, you are awarded gold coins, depending on how well you perform. So, if you play better, you can purchase items and upgrades much faster. However, in making it different, the layout of the "town" (the name of the area where you purchase upgrades) is a little bit confusing to navigate. It all looks a bit busy, which while jiving with the game’s frenetic core, doesn’t help when you just want to figure out which upgrade to buy. The map screen, navigating from level to level, can get confusing. Though I thought I pressed the Play button, I was taken to the town to buy an upgrade I didn’t think I needed.

Otherwise, the game is pretty much a carbon copy of the first. While the title screen shows off the first example of the beautiful upgrade in the graphics department, the sound will definitely disappoint. Like an unfortunately large number of casual titles, the music and sound effects are identical to the first one. When loading up The Treasures of Montezuma 2, the sound is the first cue for déjà vu.

Next are the power-ups. The purchasable totems (mystical stone creatures that grant power-ups when two consecutive matches are made of the same color) are back. The list of powers is the same: fireballs that destroy parts of the play field, lightning that destroys one color of tile on the board. The bonuses for making matches of four or five tiles (like making an exploding tile that clears a small area of the board) are repeated here.

Also repeated are mini-games at the end of each of the game’s four worlds. While they are an interesting diversion, such as a hidden object game, they do not really add to the core game play of The Treasures of Montezuma 2. The first title only had around 40 levels, and even that is repeated here.

On the plus side of the repetition is the vast array of achievements and trophies to unlock. There are myriad ways to achieve, and strive to do that much better. However, when the achievement is unlocked, rather than waiting until the end of the level to tell you, the game wants you to have instant gratification by placing a white box right over the play field telling you what you just earned. You can’t work under the box, and have to wait until it leaves if you want to work on that part of the board.

Finally, though it may not matter that much to you, there is no story. Gone from the first game is any hint of narrative. Though the game play stands tall without it, it does feel a little weird to play the game without purpose. Also, as a bit of an oddball oddity, "Hard" is written as "Expert" on the stage select screen, and vice versa.

So what did the developers do with those 18 months between the first game and The Treasures of Montezuma 2? Not much, it unfortunately seems. I had not played the first game when starting out with The Treasures of Montezuma 2, and was genuinely excited for its gameplay. However, a quick visit to the first one shows the true colors. Therefore, if you’re like me and never experienced the first game, by all means, download this title. If you’ve already unearthed Montezuma’s treasures in the first game, the Yucatan looks might familiar in The Treasures of Montezuma 2.

Reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by David Stone on Nov 24, 2009, re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 26th May 2019

Conclusion:

Although similar in most respects to the first one, which was given away last week, Treasures of Montezuma 2 is still well worth downloading. When I first bought this shortly after its released I didn't like it as much as the first, but after playing it a few times, I soon grew to love it. Despite its age and lots of decent match threes released since, I'd still score this a decent 8 out of 10 overall for game play and the excellent variety of power ups that are available in this game.

Other Reviews and Videos of Treasures of Montezuma 2:

You can read other comments about todays game giveaway via pocket games HERE and HERE

You can see some video of game play HERE, HERE and HERE

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game free via MyPlayCity 24/7 HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Big Fish Games

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Treasures of Montezuma 2 to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Treasures of Montezuma 2 with the toolbars and some of the low level adware removed and also to the game giveaway team for securing safe free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Treasures of Montezuma doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums). Also, check out the free games available via Indie Gala HERE , the latest additions include Antisquad and War of the Human Tanks. The latest game from Epic Games is an atmospheric adventure exploration game called RIME HERE (worth £29.99/$29.99/€34.99/₽499). The next free game via Epic Games starts on 30th May and will be City of Brass (worth £15.49/$19.99/€16.79/₽435) a first-person action adventure, inspired by the Arabian Nights, ; also, there are nine pages (15 games per page) of free games available via Steam HERE