7 Wonders II (DS) Review

Date purchased: Sept. 3, 2010
Price paid: $14.47
Dates played: Sept. to Oct. 2018
Playtime: ~8h
Date reviewed: Oct. 11, 2018
Date posted: Feb. 12, 2023
Rating: 3/10

It took around 8 hrs to play through all difficulties.

Basic match 3 game with power-ups. Its gimmick is that you "build" 7 wonders of the world with the blocks that are uncovered in each board (every square of the board hides a block). There's also an 8th wonder that you can unlock by putting together a treasure map in each of the normal 7 wonders' stages. Unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that the last puzzle you need to complete to unlock the 8th wonder is impossible due to the timing of the row and column clearing power blocks being just a hair off. There is a cheat that allows you to play the 8th wonder's stage, so at least you can do everything there is to do in the game. Each time you play through, it raises the difficulty and you restart, for a total of 3 difficulties, after which you have to create a new save file and restart. Scoring is pretty simple, as you don't get any bonus points for chaining together matches. If not for the impossibility of unlocking the 8th wonder, this would have gotten a positive score.