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As far as puzzle games go, few are dearer to my heart than Arle and her antics. Puyo Puyo is more than another Tetris variant, it is a highly addictive matching game where your mission is to match at least 4 like-colored jellies (known here as Puyos) to make them disintegrate. Making a match will drop a transparent Puyo onto your opponent's side of the screen which blocks its colored Puyos. The transparent Puyo may only be removed by pulling off a match right next to the transparent Puyo. It may sound simple but its not. It takes practice, skill and quick thinking to become a competent Puyo Puyo player. Novices to the game will find it full of strategy and replay value while old hands will refine their skills and think up of devious chain reactions to set up and build their combos like an architect erects his towers. The play mechanics allow for a high degree of planning and setting up chain reactions which are the key to winning any Puyo battle. A well designed chain reaction where multiple combinations are set off will drop a stack of transparent Puyos onto your opponent and in most cases, send him or her out of the game and into oblivion. |
| The latest version of Puyo Puyo from Compile introduces the Sun Puyo which is a destructive little beast when utilized properly. A Sun Puyo is dropped onto your field whenever you obliterate all of the transparent Puyos on your side. Once you have a Sun Puyo in place, you can blow it up immediately by making a color match next to it. Three transparent Puyos will drop onto your opponent's field. If you are able to make the Sun Puyo part of a secondary combination then six transparent Puyos will drop and so on as follows: |  |
| Sun Puyo position in chain 1 2 3 4 |
# of Transparent Puyos Drop 3 6 12 24 |
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As you can see, if you are masterful enough to make the Sun Puyo the final hinge of a 4 part chain, your opponent is toast. Three levels are available for play, each with its own character to play as. Arle is the heroine in the second level of difficulty. With the addition of the Sun Puyo, new voices that exclaim victory or yelps of joy for good chain reactions will greet you when you are doing well. When you are doing bad, you will see the fear and trepidation on the face of your character as the Puyos pile up incessantly. Some characters will be reduced to tears as they falter... |
| Fans of the game will enjoy the new strategic considerations that Sun Puyo adds to the flavor of the game. Newcomers to the Puyo stable will find solid action and a great introduction to one of the better puzzle games in the market today. Recommended. |