What Makes Puyo Puyo So Awesome?

I already went over the history of the series in my first post on this blog (though it should be noted that Puyo Puyo Chronicle was recently released in Japan, and both it and Puyo Tetris have been confirmed for release in Taiwan), so if you need a rundown, then go ahead and click that link. This post is not going anywhere. Today, I want to talk about what I feel the Puyo Puyo series does so well that it has become one of my favorite series.

Satisfying
Whenever you perform a chain in Puyo Puyo, your character shouts the name of one of the spells in their repertoire with each group of puyo cleared, until you end up at the point where your character uses the same spell over and over (I am not nearly good enough to reach this point). In addition to that, the amount of nuisance puyo sent over to your opponent with each group clear increases by a huge amount for each part of the chain, to the point that it can easily become overkill if your opponent does not retaliate in time. And even if your opponent DOES succeed in countering your attack, at least you will have the knowledge that it took an equally-sized chain to turn the tables on you. This creates an audio-visual feedback telling you "That chain you just did is very powerful."

Also, the animations really "pop"! I'm sorry, that was awful.

Fairness
In many competitive puzzle games, every player has different pieces. Puyo Puyo randomizes the pieces the players get, but everybody gets the same colors in the same order. Things get a bit iffy when the Fever ruleset is used, as every character has their own dropset for various kinds of pieces there (though the colors themselves remain the same for everyone), but even then, the dropset is fixed for each character (ex. two Amitie players will get the same exact pieces no matter what).

Characters
Every playable character in Puyo Puyo has a distinct personality and design and such. While this may seem like an obvious thing, victory is all the sweeter when you like the character you are playing as. It's science.

A large portion of the playable cast of 20th Anniversary. Yes, that is a bear in a lab coat in the back there.

Music
The music generally fits the cheerful tone of the series. For serious moments, the music naturally gets less cheerful, but for the most part, the music is super-cheery.


As covered above, Puyo Puyo, like most games, is awesome because of the many distinct elements present in the games. It is, however, important to note that most of the described elements are not even directly related to how the game plays. This is notable because, while the Puyo Puyo series has some pretty deep lore, ultimately a lot of people focus on the gameplay. But if you were to, say, replace all of the characters with angry foodstuffs, it just would not have the same appeal. Put more simply, presentation is important, even in a game with more of a focus on the mechanics.