Puyo Puyo Chronicle: more details and screens (Battles, Skills, Puyo Puyo Cards, more)

7 October 2016 Lite_Agent Puyo Puyo Chronicle, SEGA

Earlier this week, SEGA shared some details about the story and the characters of Puyo Puyo Chronicle, along with some screenshots. If that wasn’t enough for you, and you need more Puyo Puyo in your life, here’s some more details and screenshots!

In Puyo Puyo Chronicle, players will be able to enjoy a full-fledged RPG with 3D characters and fields, battles, and more. There’s also a large amount of dialogues (with manzai-like comedy skits), fully voiced. Of course, the usual gameplay of the Puyo Puyo series is there, but this time around, there’s all those RPG elements thrown into the mix (such as skills, character growth, and more).

Next, details about the battle screen. On the top screen, you have the enemy/ies you’re currently fighting. On the bottom screen, you have the usual puzzle field (along with details about your characters), which is where you will be looking at most of the time. To damage enemies, it’s simple: you just get rid of Puyo by combining them, as you would in a regular Puyo Puyo game.

Naturally, making combos allows you to deal more damage. When your characters level up, they deal more damage even with small chains. The chain system allows even players who are not really experienced to defeat enemies, and enjoy the game. As you can imagine, an enemy is defeated when its HP reach 0… the same also applies to your characters, obviously!

While battles use more or less the same gameplay as regular Puyo Puyo games, there’s also a major difference: they use the Skill Battle rule. Quite simply, you can send up to three characters in battle, and use their skills to defeat enemies. There’s two types of skills:

Special Skills: they need to be activated manually, and they use MP;
Auto Skills: they are activated automatically when the right conditions are met.

With Special Skills, you can modify the puzzle field, recover some HP, and more. Using the L and R buttons, you can select the character -and therefore skill- you want to use. As you can imagine, learning when to use a particular skill will be key to victory.

Like in many other RPGs, you can increase the rank of your skills when specific conditions are met. Of course, the higher the rank, the more effective a skill becomes. Even if you’re not very experienced, or if your characters are underleveled, you can defeat enemies with ease if you make good use of your skills.

Next, SEGA details quests. There’s two “types” to be found in the game:

the main quest
sub-quests

You receive sub-quests by talking to the various characters you meet in the game, and you need to clear them in order to progress in the story. When you clear one, you can get XP, rewards, and even a brand new companion. In fact, there are characters you can meet and befriend only via those sub-quests. According to SEGA, Puyo Puyo Chronicle feature over 60 such quests.

Another RPG-like element found in Puyo Puyo Chronicle is the Puyo Puyo Cards (or Puyoca). You can equip up to four at any given time, and those allow you to get various bonuses in battle. Puyoca can increase your attack power, defense, HP, MP, and more, and their effect can apply to the whole team. What’s more, you can even combine cards in order to make them even more effective.

There are various ways to get cards:

monsters can drop some when they’re defeated;
you can find them in treasure chest in the world;
you can buy them in shops.

One thing to note about cards is that those acquired in RPG Mode can also be used in other modes.

If you want to defeat bosses, there’s the Boss Battle with Everyone mode. It’s exactly what it says on the tin: a mode that allows you to tackle powerful bosses with your friends (up to 4 player), via local wireless. In this mode, you use the very characters you raised in RPG mode, and they all share the same HP and MP bars.

If the right conditions are met, you can use Chance Time to deal lots of damage to the boss at once. There’s also the Fever Mode (from Puyo Puyo Fever): when you enter that mode, preset chains are dropped onto the field. If you manage to clear them, you can deal lots of damage. During that time, the boss will not be able to attack.

When you defeat a boss, you get coins and Puyo Puyo Cards. The rewards you get depends on the difficulty of the boss, so if you want really powerful and/or rare cards, you will have to tackle the toughest ones.

Finally, SEGA talks about the many rules you can chose from in the game. You can chose to play the RPG Mode, but also Puyo Puyo Alone (Single Player), Puyo Puyo Together (multiplayer), and even online. The game features a total of 18 different rules (Skill Battle is not available in Puyo Puyo Alone).

About multiplayer, SEGA specifies that you can play with up to 4 players, and using only one copy of the game via Download Play. Also, the following modes can be played online: