Wireframe 2019

64 / wfmag.cc

Review

Rated

GENRE

Puzzle

FORMAT

PC (tested) /

PS4 / XBO /

Switch

DEVELOPER

Game Freak

PUBLISHER

Rising Star

Games

PRICE

£22.49

RELEASE

Out now

Info

Review

Absolutely riddled with Puyo-popping fever

uyo Puyo Champions is a niche entry

in an already niche series, intended

primarily for the very best in the

scene (in Japan, it’s called Puyo Puyo

eSports). It’s bare-bones, offering

only what is needed for competitive Puyo Puyo

players, while many who are only vaguely familiar

with the goo-popping puzzler may struggle to get

to grips with it. It’s Puyo Puyo though, so it’s still as

fun as it’s always been.

You’re probably already familiar with Puyo Puyo;

the goal is to match up four of the same coloured

blobs (Puyos), and place

them in a way that sets off

massive chains of popping

puyos across the screen.

Champions includes two of

the most popular rulesets,

Puyo Puyo 2, which is the purist’s game, and Puyo

Puyo Fever, which rewards character-specific

patterns with the ability to do large amounts of

damage to the enemy.

Champions is heavily based on its immediate

predecessor, the brilliant Puyo Puyo Tetris, and,

at a glance, it’d be easy to see it as PPT with the

Tetris bit lopped off and half the price. And, for the

99%, that’d be a fair assessment: a few characters

return from older Puyo games, but it’s missing a

single-player campaign or any of the superfluous

modes that competitive players wouldn’t be

interested in. There also isn’t any sort of tutorial

mode, so this is definitely not an entry for

newcomers or casual fans looking to reconnect.

For those who are way into their Puyo Puyo and

know the series well, though, Champions does

offer a sense of balance and focus that its Tetris-

tinged sibling couldn’t, offering all kinds of settings

and modifiers to help make training for the main

event, online play, more efficient. In single-player

mode, you can apply handicaps, change the

combo rules, and tweak virtually every part of

the game to make practising racking up those

15-chains a simpler affair. While in multiplayer,

annotated replays and a full tournament mode

help both learning and competing easier.

Online is where things

falter for Champions. You’d

hope a game built around

competitive play and

rankings would have better

netcode, but many games

• even with people in the same region – are
  plagued by lag and connection failures.
  It’s not a huge deal for this sort of game, and
  finding other players at any time of day is almost
  scarily quick on PC, but it does take you out of the
  state of flow Puyo is supposed to get you into.
  Puyo Puyo Champions isn’t for everyone, but
  then that’s the entire point of its existence. This is
  a streamlined tool for people who are dedicated
  to popping their Puyos and bagging big combos.
  If you don’t know your stair chains from your GTR,
  there are much more accessible entries available.
  But for those who can sandwich and dig with the
  best of them, this is where the best in Puyo Puyo
  is now happening.

Puyo Puyo Champions

P

VERDICT

A glut of content and full

backing from Sega going

forward, this is the start

of a new era for Puyo

Puyo fanatics.

63 %

 Online play is a good

place to be painfully

humbled by people way,

way better than you.

HIGHLIGHT

The skill ceiling in Puyo Puyo

is somewhere in the upper

stratosphere, but it gets its

claws into you with that first,

simple two-chain combo. Before

long, you’re poring over YouTube

guides, wikis, and online chain

simulators to improve, watching

replay after replay to hopefully

pick up some hints.

REVIEWED BY
Joe Parlock

Review

Rated

“A streamlined tool for

people dedicated to

popping their Puyos”

 I love it when a combo comes together.