Puyo Puyo 2 (2020) [Switch]

“I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.”

-Bob Dylan

So, what have I reviewed on The Pixels so far, and, more importantly, do they adhere to any kind of pattern? Well, so far it’s been PS1, PS4, and a Mega Drive game, leaning toward narrative-driven, single-player experiences. Some of these are shooters.

With that crushing ton of facts before us, what game do you reckon I’ll be doing next? Well, after a chat with Red over on the ever-awesome Discord channel, he somehow used subtle Jedi mind tricks on me, making me accept a press key for a Switch game of all things! Is it a narratively strong experience? Not exactly. 

Okay, fine, is it a shooter?

Nope.

What is he on about this time?

So then what in the name of all that is unholy is it? Well, this game series started life way back in 1991, that’s almost thirty (thirty) years ago! It was published by a company named Compile and released for the MSX2 and Family Disk Computer. The game features some seriously wacky characters from RPG series Mado Monogarari, another Compile creation, and featured several game modes, including a two-player competitive mode.

What is this mysterious, not-very-Winst0lf title of which I am speaking? Well, fans of Japanese puzzles may just already know the answer. It is…

Yep, Puyo Puyo! A name perhaps more commonly attributed to Sega than Compile. This is because the two companies teamed up in 1992 (the year I played my first video game, which was also a Sega title!) to release Puyo Puyo into the arcades, utilising The House of Hedgehog’s famous C2 hardware. This turned out to be rather the popular choice at arcades in the Land of the Rising Sun, even though (or perhaps because) it had less modes and more of a focus on multiplayer.

It seemed a natural jump from here for Sega to port this arcade success story over to their home console options, and so it eventually found its way to the almighty (coughbetterthantheSNEScough) Mega Drive.

What a beauty…

From here a Puyo Puyo 2 seemed inevitable, and you can bet your bottom Yellow Puyo that that’s exactly what happened in 1994, though it was only released in Japan on a range of formats. This, my dearest reader, is the game I’ve been cajoled into jumped at the opportunity to review for The Well-Red Mage! 

Let’s get into it, shall we?

Visuals: 8/10

I was born in 1984, which means that I was a literal child in the 1990s and, back then before the days of HD, 4K and bloom lighting, before bump mapping and textures and whatever else, there was 16-bit graphics. This era of video game visuals was all about colour and artistic vision and Puyo Puyo 2 actually has tons of both. 

Let’s start with colour. Each round of Puyo Puyo 2 is set out in two opposing grids, much like that other famous puzzle game, you know, the one from Russia. The background from each level dynamically changes from level to level. One might be in a dingy cave, the next in a riot of gold and copper filigree patterns. Sega have made a good effort to keep the trappings of each level nice to look at and it is surely appreciated by this writer!

Each level also includes a rival competitor (a Puyan? A Puyan Puyan!) For you to trade moves with, and boy what a weird lot they are! In my several hours of becoming a Puyo Puyo 2 champion (more on this inspiring journey later), I have competed against:

An Egyptian mummy!

An nautically themed lady!

Whatever this guy is!

And this absolute fruitcake with a giant bloody foot!

I don’t know what strain of peyote Sega and Compile were experimenting with, but this motley crew of weirdos is absolutely fantastic and definitely unique. Tetris and Columns don’t get that kind of cast to stare at in vague discomfort and even Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, which pretty much is Puyo Puyo 2, only has those naff Badniks off the cringey Sonic TV series!

Man, I loved that cartoon as a kid!

But guess what, not even this lot are the real visual star of this puzzling classic, for we have yet to mention the little gooey Puyos themselves. They all resemble multi-coloured beans, each with a cute little face that reacts to the moves going on around it. As their comrades disappear from the board with a satisfyingly flashy animation, their little eyes are filled with shock and, perhaps, a little joy that they haven’t all piled up to the top of the board. For, if they do, they all actually die, flying away on little angel wings with cute, sad little haloes above their heads (do they even have heads?).

Who is this dude? No idea?

Graphically, Puyo Puyo 2 sure makes an impression on the eyes. It’s colourful, cute, varied and all kinds of weird.

Audio: 6/10

How would I describe the sounds of this crazy game? Delightfully 16 bit would be a good starting place I suppose! There is a rich depth of plinky, plonky effects emanating from this game at any one time. If you drop a slick run of moves, resulting in your opponent getting buried under a mountain of horrible little transparent Puyos, you can enjoy a weird wailing noise and the sound of your opponent giving a little enraged scream, it’s immensely satisfying, unless of course they are, in fact, doing it to you, in which case your protagonist’s anger noises are rather in sync with your own (so I hear, did I mention I’m a champion?). I was also impressed with the 16-bit voices, though I don’t understand Japanese they sound very good quality for sounds pumped out of that (supposedly) inferior Mega Drive sound chip.

So yeah, it’s all decent on the sound effects front. But something is missing! Whilst Puyo Puyo 2 has music that intensifies dynamically as things get hairy, it lacks a good hook! If you think of Tetris you can almost hear that music in your head! Columns had some absolutely cracking pieces to line up jewels to also, but the music on show here is just kind of forgettable. It’s background music, that’s all, and that makes me sad. No addictive hook, no lovely MIDI melodies, just background music in its purest form.

Puyo Puyo 2 has some lovely sound effects, but is ultimately let down a little by a somewhat forgettable soundtrack.

Gameplay: 8/10

Here, I suppose, is the central crux of this piece then, for whilst we can talk about how it looks and how it sounds all day long, how it plays will always be the most important aspect of a puzzle game such as the mighty Puyo Puyo 2.

The best way to actually get in there and describe it is… utter chaos. Puyos fall from the top of the grid, ala Tetris, in twos. Sometimes they’re the same colour (out of a lovely palette of blue, yellow, red, purple and green) and sometimes the cheerful-looking little blob folk mix it up pigment wise, maybe a blue and a green, or that long-awaited purple attached to a yellow, for instance. Once they reach the bottom, there they will stay, with subsequent Puyo pairs raining around and atop them until the big stack reaches the top of the grid, at which point boom, it’s game over folks, you just let that weirdo with the giant foot win! My video was awful, this YouTube find is much, much better!

To stop such an intolerable thing from coming about, one must line up coloured Puyos in groups of 4, it works with that old Connect 4 game and you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be a success here too. Your line of 4 Puyos (be it vertical, horizontal, diagonal, a square or just a big old squiggle) will disappear with a pleasing pop, the Puyos that were on top of them falling down to fill the void. Good players (like me, obviously) can then tactically line things up so that the new Puyos that drop down into the gap also set off reactions with their neighbours, scoring big, beefy multipliers that would, back in the 1990s, have set the arcades on fire, no doubt giving you a cool nickname like “the High Priest of Puyo” and making you the raddest kid in school.

However, your opponent won’t take this lying down. Each time he lines up a successful Puyo chain, a layer of transparent Puyos will rain down onto your grid. These will block you from completing any chains they land upon (unless you can work around them from another angle), but can be destroyed if they themselves are caught up in later chains. Your chains, meanwhile, have the same effect on the opponent, raining down clear Puyos onto them. All of this combined makes for deeply tactical gameplay that will most certainly test your brain and keep you coming back for more, until all your quarters (or whatever the UK equivalent was in 1994, let’s say 20p) are history.

This Sega Ages re-release on the Switch has a few different game modes also, to mix things up a little and make for a high-value package. We have Arcade, which obviously does exactly what it says on the tin and is a total proxy of the 1994 arcade original. Matches are in a tiered format, your opponents are chosen at random using a press of the B button. The matches start easy but get incrementally more difficult as you go, until you may as well be playing against the warlike spirit of Sega itself, proudly doing what Nintendon’t and trying to murder you!

Endurance drops the tiering system and just keeps you going on and on, keeping your Puyos coming and going for as long as possible and amassing a high score until the inevitable curtain drops. This mode can be really tough and will leave a lot of gamers a nervous wreck by the end of it.

It’s a real tower of terror!

VS mode is a straight multiplayer rumble, using 2 controllers (or Joycons) you can play against your friends, family, enemies or pets (if they’re super geniuses). This mode also has some cool modifiers, like having the Garbage Puyos add to your score or making them less common, which can lead to some delightfully fraught and varied battles. Online mode is much the same, only your genius pet can play you from halfway across the world, if they’re so inclined.

As previously stated, Puyo Puyo 2 isn’t the kind of game I’d ever go for, but my time with it has been quite rewarding. Varied gameplay is guaranteed to test your brain and reflexes and being able to play with friends from the comfort of your living room really adds a whole new angle to this arcade classic. 

Multiplayer: 10/10

Oh, boy. Multiplayer in Puyo Puyo 2 is an absolute blast! I recruited Mrs. Bizzaro for this rigorous phase in my investigation and, after a few matches to get the hang of it, she really started to enjoy herself. As mentioned, the VS mode has a few modifiers available. One of these is the intensity of the game’s difficulty. The lower end of this spectrum allows for slower-moving Puyos (and more time to plan their eventual location) or, if you’re a lunatic, you can go to the highest difficulty, which has the cheerful, shiny little fellows firing down the grid as if from the barrel of a cannon. This highest difficulty requires the reflexes of a cat and would take many hours of play to get there, not to mention many quarters/20ps/lire/roubles (unless you’re me, obviously, I’m really good at it!)

The online game is solid too. I was able to join up for a couple of matches, both flowed at a good speed with no sign of lag or slowdown, no complaints from this jaded single-player gamer here, online play is a solid, challenging experience, a lot of the opponents were actually pretty damned talented and gave me quite the battle!

Puyo Puyo 2 recognises, even in this modern Switch incarnation miles from the arcades, that some games are better enjoyed with friends, and Sega have done a great job of making this game accessible and easy to use to this end. Even if you don’t have any friends, online players make for good battles and, hey, you always have that evil genius pet, right?

Challenge: 7/10

Okay, time for a confession. You know like I’ve been saying that I’m really good at this game, able to play on that mental difficulty with the crazy speeds?

I lied.

I’m rubbish at this game! But it is important to know that this isn’t due to Puyo Puyo 2, no, I am just awful at puzzle games, hence the reason why this is the first one I have seriously played since 1994! I panic, fumble the buttons and eventually lose interest because I miss having a story to follow.

But back to my previous point. For the most part, this game does a good job of easing you into its colourful, hysteria inducing world. Games start easy and (especially the case in Arcade mode) get incrementally harder as they go, until you’re fighting with the big boys/girls/non binary folk and smashing anthropomorphic frogs in the face, figuratively speaking. My only issue with this is that there seems to be one hell of a difficulty gap between some of the characters you draw against. Giant Foot Boy was a pushover and made me feel like I was actually learning until, in the next round, I got absolutely mullered by a happy looking Egyptian mummy! I can certainly appreciate that this is how games in the early 1990s worked, they weren’t exactly made to be fair and hold your hand with tutorials like a modern game, they were far too hungry for your short change.

Again, this may be down to my own lack of skill with these games, but I often found my learning experience with this game being messily derailed by running into some kind of uber opponent and forcing me to start over, kissing my lovely high score goodbye!

Puyo Puyo 2 is hard, very hard, but for the most part it doest keep the curve gradual, which would be fine if you weren’t impaled on the occasional spike thanks mummy you jerk!

Accessibility: 7/10

So, with what I just said in mind, we know that this title can be pretty unforgiving from the off. |It will smell your fear and come after you like a bat out of hell. At first you will lose matches, a lot of them, your shame will be as intense as that big pile of Garbage Puyos that just drowned your nicely lined up stacks and cost you the game. The only thing that will improve this is experience, keep on pushing through that pain barrier and you’ll soon be chaining Puyos together and getting a fantastic amount of points, it’s just that the game isn’t too interested in helping you there. One could say that it’s the Dark So…no, I refuse to use that phrase! I don’t even like Dark Souls!

Back on subject, it is also worth mentioning that all of the little speech bubbles that come up during games might well contain useful information, only I wouldn’t know, because I cannot speak the language of the Land of the Rising Sun. Seeing all of those neat Kanji characters is a treat, don’t get me wrong, but if they contain any wisdom then they’re lost on me!

But hey. It isn’t all doom and gloom on the accessibility front. Sega have slapped a nice, modern main menu on it now that it’s part of the Ages collection and the port also has an easy to use save/load function (not unlike the one Nintendo have put into their virtual NES and SNES consoles). So if you want to keep that mammoth endurance run going, but need sleep like a functioning human being, then you can do that!

And that’s not all! This game has a manual included and, perhaps most importantly of all, tutorials! Actual tutorials! Joking aside, these are in video format and have a lot to say about how to not only play this game, but actually be decent at it. After watching these, even I was doing alright!

As dense and murky as an ocean of Puyos, Puyo Puyo 2 can be hard to get to grips with, though a thoroughly modern front end and save/load function does supply the player with some solace.

Uniqueness: 9/10

Much like anything made by Japan in the early 1990s and only relatively recently released in the west, Puyo Puyo 2 is all kinds of colourful, weird and, say it with me now reader, unique. Considering how cookie-cutter games would become a couple of decades down the line, the games of this time were a veritable smorgasbord of original ideas.

How visually awesome is this image? Ignore the Game Over!

Yes, some could say that, thematically, it is quite similar to its stablemates Columns and the almighty Tetris, but each of these three games takes a basic premise and adds its own rules, twists and visuals to make themselves truly one of a kind. I can honestly say that I have never, in all my years, challenged a man with a giant foot to a game of stacking happy blobs in a grid and bursting them to score points. The only thing it loses a point for here is that it’s a sequel, and sequels have to ape their predecessors by design, after all.

My Personal Grade: 7/10

At the end of the day, I just don’t enjoy playing puzzle games. That being said, seven out of ten is surely high praise from me indeed? For all of the irritation and stress it brought me whilst playing for this review, it also charmed me with its wonderful visuals, wowed me with its clever gameplay and, more than a few times, made me punch the air with unrivaled glee when I won a tough game against one of its weird and wonderful opponents. It’s also great training for kicking Dr. Robotnik’s butt in the Chemical Plant level of Sonic Mania, let alone kicking his butt in Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine!

A very clever boss fight indeed

If you enjoy puzzlers then I would heartily recommend this weird beast of a game. If you don’t enjoy them, play it anyway, it might just do that little bit to win you over!

Aggregated Score: 7.5

Winst0lf is a blogger, reviewer and podcaster who began his internet journey thanks to the lovely people on this site. You can find his blog here, and his podcast, Shart Select, here. Every time you read one of his articles, he lets out a little cheer!