Puyo Puyo Review

Puyo Puyo it is one of the most blissful puzzle experiences ever created, but it is slightly disappointing that we now must play the game in silence.

For those of you who have experienced the brilliance that is Puyo Puyo, I need not tell you that it is one of the most blissful puzzle experiences ever created. Often hailed as a "Tetris killer," Puyo Puyo combines elements from Sega's Columns with the cute anime characters of Madou Monogatari, an old RPG series for Sega's 8-bit Master System. While Madou Monogatari did not make it to the states (except in import form), when its lovable characters were cast in Puyo Puyo as the player's competition, the result was a tremendous success here as well as in Japan.

Puyo Puyo's premise is, at a glance, nothing special. Little faces of a variety of colors fall from the top of the screen in pairs of two. You must arrange these items in an effort to match each face with three or more other faces of the same color. What most distinguishes Puyo Puyo from every other puzzler involving nondescript items falling from the top of the screen is that the focus of its gameplay is on competition. In Puyo Puyo for Sprint Vision phones, you face six intelligent AI opponents, each replete with cute, anime-style animations. When you successfully combine a group of blocks, "bad" Puyo Puyo faces get dropped on your opponent. These "bad" faces cannot be cleared by the conventional method of pairing as they have no color save a ghostly white. In order to make these nuisances disappear, your opponent must clear groups of normal Puyo Puyos sitting next to them. In this way, you can make your opponent's life quite difficult. Be careful, though, because your enemy can do the same to you.

Simply making groups of four Puyo Puyo heads will not get you far, however. The real challenge is in creating chain reactions that cause multiple groups to trigger with a single move. For example, making a group of green Puyo Puyos vanish could cause a red face that was resting on the top of that batch to land on top of an assemblage of other redheads waiting below. This is a small example of the huge combos that can be executed, the successful triggering of which causes exponentially larger amounts of bad Puyos to be dropped on your opponent. The potential depth of this system is what will keep you tapping away at your phone, week after week. As you relentlessly hit combo after combo, your opponent will launch into a cute crying animation. If he's causing you major damage, though, he'll bare his teeth in a show of pride and heroic resolve.

My main criticism of Sega Mobile's version of Puyo Puyo for Sprint Vision is the lack of sound. Puyo Puyo has always had good MIDI background music, and it is slightly disappointing that we now must play the game in silence. That said, the series' great gameplay and characterization is in full force in the mobile version.

The Good

  • N/A

The Bad

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