I’ll never settle on a consistent naming pattern for this site, will I?
The other day while snooping around Manchester, I popped into weird variety store Afflecks for a bit – and found some kind of Puyo Puyo game for SEGA Saturn. Truth be told it’s been there for years, but I never thought to pick it up due to the likely language barrier; particularly as I quickly established it wasn’t a conventional Puyo game, but rather an RPG of some kind.
Well, I’ve bought it now, anyway. So maybe I should talk about what I’ve played of it, since information on the game seems particularly niche.
The game, actually named Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeon, ensues as follows:
Arle and Carbuncle, the series protagonists, are out for a nice and dandy stroll, when the suddenly wind up at a giant theme park. Then Schezo and Rulue, series co-protagonists, also show up at the park. It turns out the attractions there are basically giant dungeons, that house all kinds of treasure and mystical items. The catch? They also house a bunch of monsters. Arle’s already spent about 10 games fighting monsters at this point though, so that’s not a deterrent. Into the dungeons you go, then!
Worth noting that there’s 3 playable characters, but from what I can glean they all seem to play pretty similarly – as of now, I’ve only played as Arle, hence why this isn’t a formal review.
Initially the game sets out as non-linear. You’re free to tackle the dungeons in whatever order you like; however as you start to play more, it gets pretty obvious that there’s a way you’re supposed to go, due to higher level enemies and the like. The ‘first’ dungeon is the Puyo Dungeon. It’s only 3 floors long, and serves as a good introduction to the mechanics. The second dungeon, Fire Mountain, can be considered perhaps a bit of a difficulty spike – it stretches out to 10 floors and has two bosses to deal with.
The game plays out as a roguelike dungeon crawler. If you’ve played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, you’ll probably be right at home here, as the formula is very similar. Run round a floor in the dungeon, and try to find the staircase to the next floor, while battling your way through enemies and trying to find items to boost your strength. The game is entirely turn-based, meaning enemies will only move when you do – this isn’t as sluggish at it sounds, and in fact there’s even a run button for extreme Arle Power Walking. You’ve got two means of attack, those being a melee attack and magic (in both close and long-range varieties). Close-range magic doesn’t use any MP, which makes it pretty good for quickly dispatching foes.
As you go through the dungeon, you’ll find plenty of goodies, but they’ll generally show up in your inventory with question marks attached. Arle can’t actually identify items herself at first, and as such you’ll need to pay the shopkeeper a hefty fee to do it for you; but you’ll soon unlock the ability to identify them yourself through this shop (as far as I can tell, it’s done by buying enough stuff). You can, however, still use the items you find, even if they’re not identified. I may not have known what that fancy ring I picked up was called, but I do know it made me hit like a tank. Just be wary, as some equipment is actually cursed, and once equipped you won’t be able to remove it without visiting the shopkeeper.
You’ll also find pentagrams on scattered all over the floor. These give you some kind of buff, and some of them are even multiple-use. Buffs can include restoring HP and MP, or a boost to attack power. Generally I’ll stop by to use one should I find it, as in a pinch they can provide a much-needed boost.
You’ll also find food, either lying around or dropped from enemies. Arle also can’t identify these items – come on, it’s a bloody apple! You’d think these items would restore health, but nope. The game actually has a hunger mechanic, meaning if you get hungry you’ll do less damage. It’s generally not too hard to tell when you need to eat, even with the language barrier; when you suddenly start doing 6 damage with decent spells, it’s time to chow down.
As mentioned earlier, each dungeon has at least one boss to fight. These bosses take the form of opponents from past Puyo Puyo games, such as series regular Skeleton-T and beauty queen Draco Centaurous. The bosses themselves also summon a bunch of regular enemies to pile on you, which is where the main source of difficulty comes from. Once the minions are out of the way though, it basically just becomes a match of alternating between magic use against the main boss, and guzzling down dangerous amounts of medicine. If you defeat a boss, they’ll stay defeated if you decide to come back to the dungeon, and this is also true should you die before reaching the end of the dungeon.
This last point is helpful because WWPPD is indeed a roguelike, meaning if you die you lose every ounce of progress you made besides bosses defeated and have to try again from the very beginning. It can be quite demoralising getting to the very end of the dungeon only to have a bosses’ minions wipe the floor with you, making you lose your experience and upgrades, but it’s also strangely addicting when it comes to changing your strategy for next time and experimenting with different equipment.
That experimentation becomes practically forced on you unless you’re experienced in Japanese however. Being a 90’s Puyo game, there’s obviously no localisation for this title meaning you’ll probably wind up fumbling through a bit of it should the language barrier affect you. This being said, considering there’s basically no English guides I got to grips with it fairly quickly, helped on by Google’s rough but pretty good real-time image translation app.
Graphically, I think the game looks very nice. It’s very colourful, and the characters are very well-animated. The artstyle and designs used for the characters is reminiscent of Puyo Puyo~n (that’s Puyo 4, for the uninitiated) and rank as some of my favourite interpretations of the characters, too. There’s even some nice scrolling effects on backgrounds at points, as well as items using a nice rotation and enlargement effect when selected. Overall, it’s just a very nice looking game, though the mix of more photorealistic effects for certain spells can look a bit awkward at times.
(I should also note that if the environments seem samey from this article, please understand that they only show the Puyo Dungeon).
Overall then, I’ve had quite a bit of fun with Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeon so far, which I wasn’t expecting given my lack of Japanese knowledge and general distaste for RPG-style games. I’d say give it a look if you’re prepared to mess with Google’s Translate app to get a gist of how things work, though do note that the game’s also on PS1, where it seems to be somewhat re-balanced.
So yeah! That’s my experience with WWPPD so far. I’ll probably keep hammering away at it for now, as I’ve made decent headway into the third dungeon.
…I should probably review Puyo Sun on here someday, huh? Perhaps another time.
Tracker_TD 