Long-time casual player of the 8 and 16-bit Compile games (mostly through emulation), I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen a SEGA-developped Puyo for any platform in retail before Puyo Puyo Tetris. Seems like they barely existed at all where I live.
So I’m not sure Puyo Puyo Tetris is to blame for the state of the game, at least it made a lot of people aware that the game exists. Though I can’t say I’m a big fan of its aesthetics or writing…
Nowadays whenever I want to play some quick Puyo I just play Tsu on switch online SNES.
That’s a lot of ranting.
I get it. PuyoPuyo main story is necessary for casuals to get introduced to the game. Chaining 10+ long while harassing is a skill that took me a literal decade to reach, and there are far stronger players than me at the game.
But PuyoPuyo Tetris was that big casual story driven game that truly did bring a lot of players into the scene. Myself included. So yeah, I wouldn’t be a serious PuyoPuyo without that.
PuyoPuyo Champions/eSports is pretty good for competitive players. We got Fever and Tsu mode, the main modes that people care about.
There are also more casual mobile games like that Apple Arcade one brought up. The real issue is that modern video games make money from Apple and Android stores, not really the consoles anymore.
While my 2021 essay did aim to be as thorough as I could in criticizing PPT itself, all of my criticism of the game is secondary to my greater criticism of how Sega handled the series afterward. I wonder if being too thorough may have caused that thesis to be lost in the woods, but I hope this video today hammers that point back home.
If Sega had followed up PPT1 with a full mainline game, using its commercial success as a jumping off point for the series to go onto bigger and better things, I wouldn’t be so frustrated today. But instead of doing that… we got Apple Arcade.
Mobile games just make more money now than console games. It only makes sense to aim for casual gamers on the Apple Arcade or Android Play store.
It’s a problem in that it somewhat alienates the hardcore console players. But the console market is shrinking. That’s true for all fanbases, not just PuyoPuyo.
The only stuff that gets money in the console market are super mega AAA games that reach millions, like FFVII remake. But these mega-games cost so much that there’s no risk or creativity anymore. (I like PuyoPuyo Tetris’s style, it was a risk and a bit different. We need game makers to take risks like that)
I had allways wanted to try the puyo games and finally got into them when they brought it to the nintendo online thing. I think that ppt helped bring other people to puyo but I do hate this move of a new game exclusive to apple devices of all things and on top of that behind a subscription pay wall. I wouldve rathered them do some shitty low effort chronicle or 20th anni remake for like the switch or something since those are the two most recent games that have close to a definitive puyo expierence with the most gamemodes and stuff. I tried the puzzle pop on a family members apple tv and the funniest thing is that it looks like they reused animations and models from chronicle and it seems like the online doesnt even put you against real players but idk.
Yeah, the online being fake is appalling. Sega knew in advance that this game would be completely dead online, meaning no one’s playing it. They knew what would happen and they took this deal anyway.
