Puyo Puyo/YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The most famous party is the Strange Klug ACI; from what we see in Puyo Puyo Fever 2, Klug does not like having his body rented out. However, fans will either say that the two are friendly rivals(mostly harming one another in comedic ways), the two hate each other, or the two don't mind one another. There's also small camp that turns Strange Klug into a demon that forces Klug to act evil, or is a psychopath.
  • Ekoro's ACI is simple. Was he a Complete Monster, a creature that loved Ringo, or a Yandere that loved Ringo?
  • Some will see Raffine as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Masked Satan in Puyo Puyo Tsu is a worthy True Final Boss. Masked Satan in Puyo Puyo BOX's Scramble mode, on the other hand, is a downgrade from the four (potentially five) Yon-rule opponents that precede him.
• Character Tiers: Maybe. They come from drop sets and chaining power in the fever/henshin modes. However, the matches seem to be skill > tier.
  • For Puyo Puyo Fever rules, Arle is a mixed bag. She's limited to pairs only, allowing the pros to efficiently create their massive chains in whatever way they want to build it with less clutter. The drawback to this is that due to her low puyo count, she builds chains slower than larger drop sets and has far less opportunities to offset to get into Fever. On top of that, she has to conform to having two X's on the field, meaning she can't utilize all of the space to build.
  • On the other hand, bigger drop sets can bring in more puyo on the field quickly and thus having material to harass the opponent with small chains, build freestyle chains, or having an easier time getting into fever/henshin. This has the disadvantage of having much more puyo to manage, leading to a lot of unnecessary clutter. Carbuncle, who has the "biggest" drop set in the game, is sometimes considered a Tier-Induced Scrappy because of this.
  • There are also chaining power tiers inside and outside fever/henshin, though those effects are really noticeable when you rack up big chains. Even then, building higher than a 10 in the heat of battle is challenging to attack with, and anything lower is nothing too game-changing.
• Common Knowledge: The unfortunate combination of being obscure and having very few localizations led to a ton of this in days past, the biggest one possibly being that the English arcade game is an unlicensed bootleg based on MAME's first English romset being extracted from a bootleg board. Thankfully, most of these aren't spread as much in the present day.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome Some people never play anything other than Puyo Puyo Tsu, and/or Puyo Puyo Fever, and/or henshin modes (possibly playing only Arle or Carbuncle due to their drop set in fever/henshin). Good luck trying to find someone to play other modes like excavation.
• Critical Research Failure: Sega America has been guilty of this: the N-Gage Puyo Pop uses Mean Bean Machine terms like "beans" for the Puyo and "refugee" for garbage, and an official Sega blog covering 3D Puyo Puyo 2 states multiple times that Mean Bean Machine was derived from Puyo Puyo Tsu (it's derived from the first arcade game, not Puyo Puyo Tsu).
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Here.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Ecolo is either an Omnicidal Maniac (Puyo Puyo 7) or Well-Intentioned Extremist (Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary) who on at least two occasions induces apocalypse-tier disasters that threatened the universe, and has implications of Crazy Jealous Guy towards Ringo. However, in the fanon, this aspect doesn't come to play, either highlighting his general goofiness or his humanoid "Unusual Ecolo" persona being cute (sometimes with Ringo for Shipping reasons).
• Ear Worm: Puyo Puyo! Puyo Puyo! Puyo Puyo! Puyo Puyo! Pupupupu! Puyo! Puyo! ♪
• Evil Is Sexy: Satan and Doppelganger Arle are as close to this trope you can get in this series.
• Gameplay Derailment:
  • The lack of any defensive mechanics in the first arcade game and its predecessors means that matches between two moderately-skilled players break down into tests to see who can build the fastest 5-chain and/or who can keep their currently-controlled pair off of the ground the longest; the latter is generally accomplished by mashing the rotation button as quickly as humanly possible.
  • Puyo Puyo Fever deadlocks qualify, as well. Fever mode mostly consists of watching giant preset chains pop, the only diversion being to add an extra chain or two onto the normal preset chains.
• Good Bad Bugs: In almost every Arcade/Mega Drive version of the first game (including Mean Bean Machine!), holding left or right on a CPU player's joystick/D-Pad disables their ability to manual drop. Sega released an alternate arcade board that eliminates this bug, but it apparently came too late for the English or console versions to inherit the fix.
  • Arle no Roux allows players to skip Minotauros and Rulue by finding an invisible tile that triggers Satan's puzzles.
  • Sometimes the automatic drop speed becomes so fast that holding down on the D-Pad/Joystick actually slows your pieces down.
• Growing the Beard: Puyo Puyo~n, since it took its Madou Monogatari roots a little more seriously.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Lemres.
• Les Yay: Witch in Puyo Puyo SUN. Justified because she was "sleepwalking".

Witch: I love you so very much!
Arle: Where are you touching me?! Stop!!

• • And Ms. Accord for Rulue in Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary.

Ms. Accord: She's very sexy and quite wonderful.

• Memetic Molester: Though, exclusive to the Puyo fandom, Risukuma's been called Pedobear for his attacks (I love you), and...

Risukuma: You can touch as much as you want...

• Moe:
  • Lidelle is a very gentle and sweet girl. So much so it'll make you feel bad for curb-stomping her in Puyo.
  • Nekomimi Schezo of all people is this. Stick cat ears on Schezo, and you have a Dark Wizard who actively denies how much he enjoys wearing them, and has his power boosted the more he feels embarrassed. He even has a perpetual blush at his ★5-6 card ranks!
• More Popular Spinoff: Of Madou Monogatari, which you'll notice is still redlinked.
• Most Annoying Sound:
  • Harpy's voice, ESPECIALLY if you're playing the Sega Genesis versions. This was before it was supposed to be her defining trait.
  • High-level Puyo Puyo Tsu-rule matches can have issues with this. There are only 6-7 spell phrases while chains from top-level players easily exceed that, so you'll be hearing the final phrase (usually "Bayoeen!" or "Uwaaaaaaaa!") several times in a row in virtually every round. Keep in mind that hardcore Puyo Puyo sessions can go on for dozens of matches, and...
  • Puyo Pop Fever, in both languages. Hohow Bird in particular is often considered the most annoying character in the series thanks to his chain phrases.
  • Because Puyo Pop Fever taunts can be activated with the DS' microphone, playing the game in a moving vehicle with the sound on is NOT advised. "Youyouyouyouyouyou BETCHA!"
  • The English dub voices for Puyo Pop Fever... actually, the Japanese voices in that game were pretty bad too.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The jingle of an All Clear! is one satisfying sound... because you get to send an extra juicy serving of Nuisance Puyo to your opponent!
  • The jingle that plays whenever you win a set in the Sega games, especially after an intense round.
• Older Than They Think: Many people claim that Compile sold Puyo Puyo to Sega sometime between 2001-2003. In reality, Compile "loaned" the series to Sega in 1998 with the apparent understanding that they would buy it back once they turned their fortunes around... but never came up with the money. In addition to Sega's name showing up on the title screen of every Puyo Puyo game since then (and being credited for the characters in games that feature them but are not explicitly Puyo games), the NGPC Puyo Pop was ported entirely by Sega and published by SNK.
  • Due to the obscure nature of Discstation games (and the Madou Monogatari games in general, for that matter), many characters that are introduced in them are much more recognized by their first Puyo Puyo appearance. The major example is Puyo Puyo Sun; Lagnus is the only character out of the five "newcomers" that actually debuted in the game, and even he debuted in a Madou Monogatari novel.
  • The first game to give the vast majority of the cast their own story is Haro no Puyo Puyo, beating Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary by more than a year (Haro no Puyo Puyo also has multiple possible scenes per stage in each story, which has yet to be done in a proper Puyo game).
  • SEGA 3D Classics Collection is not the first time Puyo Puyo Tsu was released in the west. It was predated nearly two decades ago with the release of Puyo Pop on the Neo Geo Pocket and later a release of the Mega Drive version of Puyo Puyo Tsu on the Wii Virtual Console service.
  • Puyo Puyo Chronicles is not the first time the franchise has a RPG mode. Several of the Nazo Puyo games borrow elements of RPGs, while Puyo Puyo BOX had a similar Quest mode. Also technically, the series was originally an RPG series with Madou Monogatari before Puyo Puyo eventually overshadowed it. It's also not the first time characters are shown as 3D models, with Puyo Puyo DA! being the first to do so, and there was a manga that depicted Arle and Draco as low polygon models as part of a Shout-Out to Virtua Fighter.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Not the series proper, but a fangame titled Magical Stone is this. It treads the legal gray area for being an arcade-perfect clone of Puyo Puyo Tsu, but it's a free to download and play game, with the intention of it being brought into eSports territory. Once drama broke out of it being developed with money obtained through RMT (Real Money Trade a.k.a. dirty money), support for the fangame crashed and burned. Even the top Puyo players went on hiatus, citing their support for the fangame tarnished their reputations a bit. Sure, the Western fans didn't mind it and see it as an accessible way to play Puyo online, but Japan is absolutely frigid about it.
  • Cranky Food Friends would of just been another Puzzles & Dragon clone with generic food as characters, but people quickly caught on that the game was basically a Dolled-Up Installment of Puyo Puyo Quest. Since then, the game became notorious both for Puyo Puyo fans and gamers in general for being a cheap imitation and proof that SEGA of America/Europe has no confidence in its own IPs. Not helping that the soft launch was a case of really poor timing, since vice president of SEGA Haruki Satomi stated around the same time that he wanted to improve the company's reputation after feeling fans lost faith. Though not stated, this may of played a role in the game's eventual closure in early 2016, and not even getting a proper release.
• Polished Port: Puyo Puyo CD for the PC-Engine CD includes full voice acting for cutscenes involving familiar voice talent from the industry at the time, extended cutscenes on the hardest difficulty, and higher quality music thanks to the CD formatting. It's also notably the only port that fixes Rulue's lack of voice clip.
  • Every version of Puyo Puyo Tsu after the Mega Drive version includes more features, such as the return of cutscenes from the first arcade game, full voice acting, a beginner course, Rally Mode and Mission Mode.
• Porting Disaster: Puyo Puyo for the Game Boy. This port, farmed out to Winkysoft of early Super Robot Wars fame, controls like garbage and is essentially unplayable on anything except a Super Game Boy due to lack of color differentiation (which, of course, defeats the point of porting it to a handheld in the first place). Despite facing the same hardware challenges, the Compile-developed Pocket Puyo Puyo Tsu is an infinitely more playable game.
  • Puyo Puyo Tsu CD is a more minor case. The gameplay itself works like intended, but the game has vibes of Obvious Beta due to the bizarrely low quality sound effects and music, and lacking certain graphics. This is especially jarring since its predecessor Puyo Puyo CD is considered a Polished Port.
  • If you count the N-Gage Puyo Pop as a port of the first arcade game (some do, others don't), it belongs here. The gameplay is roughly at the level of the aforementioned Game Boy port, only it replaces totally unreadable graphics with painfully-basic MIDI music and truly awful sound effects. Yes, the N-Gage was a glorified early-2000s cell phone, but surely, Sega could've done better than this.
• Sequel Displacement:
  • When people talk about the "first" Puyo Puyo game, they are almost always referring to the arcade game instead of its MSX/FDS predecessor. In fact, several outlets (including the official 25th Anniversary Book) treat the 8-bit games and the arcade game as a single entity.
  • As far as most people are concerned, the first English, non-Dolled-Up Installment entry is the GBA Puyo Pop. Nobody talks about the NGPC Puyo Pop, and those that do remember the English arcade game question its legitimacy.
• Sequelitis: Puyo Puyo Yon and Puyo Puyo 7 are often seen this way.
  • Yon moves at a snail's pace and has major character balance issues. Ironically, Pocket Puyo Puyo~n has much better reception due to utilizing Puyo Puyo SUN's game style and retooled the super attacks to more offensive ones and allowed you to pick which one you want.
  • Puyo Puyo 7, on the other hand, is often seen as a blatant cashgrab. Transformation is hastily cobbled together from two completely incompatible gameplay modes and the game has a fraction of the modes of Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary for no good reason.
  • More cynical fans might claim that the series as a whole has been zigzagging this trope for a while, with Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary being an exception between the tepidly-received Puyo Puyo 7 (for reasons detailed above), Tetris (for the Fake Balance and lack of compelling rulesets beyond VS, Swap and maybe Big Bang) and Chronicle (for the questionable RPG mode, shift to 3D models, and forgettable original heroine).
• Surprise Difficulty: Puyo Puyo has an impossibly-cute cast of characters, as well as an emphasis on chaining and general long-term planning that is arguably not approached by any other puzzle game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Most of the backstory and plot elements of the Puyo Puyo Fever era haven't been explored much, if at all, for a long time, due to the series shifting it's focus away from Primp and it's inhabitants, starting with Puyo Puyo 7.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy: Arle's and Carbuncle's reputations are at least part of the reason why Puyo Puyo Fever rule plays second fiddle to Puyo Puyo Tsu.
  • Notably, in the most recent games, Carbuncle is Demoted to Extra, being only there to cheer on Arle.
• Uncanny Valley:
  • Madou Monogatari: The Final Test's artstyle is unsettlingly different from the other Windows installments.
  • Ocean Prince in Puyo Puyo Chronicles can look strange depending on the angle viewed from, with side views in particular giving him a strange "flat" appearance.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: The Prince of the Ocean's human form looks like this.