25 years of Serious Business puzzle games — but it's in 3D now!
Puyo Puyo Chronicle is a Nintendo 3DS-exclusive entry in the Puyo Puyo series. It is, for all intents and purposes, the series' 25th anniversary game and appropriately draws upon the gameplay structure of Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary and Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary with numerous Arrange Modes. Chronicle is also a full-on Video Game 3D Leap, rendering the characters as super-deformed models and providing a fully 3D overworld (although the actual Puyo gameplay remains firmly in 2D).Chronicle features a fully-fledged RPG mode. With it comes a new gameplay ruleset, Skill Battle, that sees the player create a party and use each party member's unique skills to reduce enemies' health to zero in puzzle battles.
Arle and Carbuncle are pulled into a mysterious book, falling into Grimp Forest. There, they meet Ally, a young girl wearing a mysterious pendant, and they embark on an adventure in this strange new world.
Tropes present in Puyo Puyo Chronicle:
- Always Night: Purplune represents the purple Puyo color, and in order to fit the color, it's "shrouded in eternal night", as Ally words it.
- Art-Shifted Sequel: Puyo Puyo Chronicle shifts away from the 2D art style for 3D character models and environments.
- But Thou Must!: The first major quest in Yellome involves the Village Chief begging Arle to investigate a mysterious stone. The player then gets four possible ways to answer the request... and all of them are affirmative replies.
- Catch Your Death of Cold: The Blueo manzais have characters consistently worrying about catching a cold from being out in Blueo, with Amitie adding that they could also have frostbite.
- Chest Monster: Wouldn't be an RPG without 'em. These ones have the usual Mimic moniker, and always get back attacks on your team when encountered.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The villages you visit throughout the game are patterned after the Puyo colors; Grimp is a grassland (green), Bleuo is very snowy (Blue Means Cold, after all), Retty is near a volcano (red), Yellome is a Shifting Sand Land (yellow), and Purplune is a nighttime town (purple).
- Continuity Nod:
- You find Schezo in a treasure chest in an aqueduct, and he proclaims he was hiding in there to let himself dry after falling into the stream. This isn't the first time it's happened; he once fell into a river, and took shelter in a chest in BOX while his clothes drip dried in the background. Even Schezo himself is aware of this déjá vu.
- You find and recruit Lemres in Yellome, a desert. In Puyo Puyo Fever 2, his first appearance, Amitie, Raffina, and Sig all find Lemres in a desert.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Just like Puyo Puyo~n, a defeated person will tag along with your party for the entirety of the story. This includes random enemies, as well as the main playable cast.
- Downloadable Content: This game adds extra dungeons and boss fights alongside extra music via paid DLC.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: Chronicle is a full Video Game 3D Leap for traditional Puyo Puyo games, eight games and roughly fourteen years into Sega's run.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After you break the stone in Bleuo and arrive in Retty, Ringo points out that this means a hypothesis Maguro had made earlier came true. Maguro explains that he thought "maybe we're dealing with some sort of progression mechanic?" and that since a lot of the video games he plays have a mechanic like that, that's how he figured breaking the stone would let them move on to the next village. While he explicitly uses the term "progression mechanic", he doesn't say much else to imply that he's aware that he's in a game himself.
- Mission-Pack Sequel: Averted. It's an Anniversary title in everything but name, but unlike 20th whose most distinguishing feature was a significant Art Evolution, Chronicle features an RPG mode far different than anything done in Sega's Puyo Puyo games.
- Musical Nod:
- This game's remix of Puyo Puyo Sun's normal battle theme starts out in the key of the console/PC version, but midway through switches to the higher key of the original arcade version (and Game Boy Color version) of the song.
- Likewise, the Chronicle remix of the Game Gear Puyo Puyo's Nazo Puyo theme mixes the original song with the objective screen jingle that usually precedes it.
- Onion Tears: As the gang makes their way through the Color Tower, they are assaulted by an oniony stench that makes their eyes tear up. It's caused by the onion-headed Onion Pixie.
- Penguins Are Ducks: Expediguins, explorer penguins who serve as one of the game's enemies, have yellow beaks.
- Portal Book: The plot is started when Arle and Carbuncle are sucked into a book and end up having to travel through its worlds alongside Ally and the rest of the gang.
- Revisiting the Roots: Arle, who spent most Sega Puyo Puyo games as a secondary protagonist at best and a minor character at worst, is the main protagonist for the first time since Minna de Puyo Puyo.
- Skewed Priorities: Subverted. When Sig complains about Rafisol not only absorbing all the magic in the world surrounding the Color Tower, but destroying everything in existence, he first mentions that it would make all the bugs disappear before mentioning it would affect everyone else as well.
- Spell My Name With An S: A literal example with this game's title. The official title is "Chronicle," but the fandom's initial spelling of "Chronicles" has yet to completely disappear from usage.
- Video Game 3D Leap: Discounting DA!, Chronicle is the first Puyo game to be presented fully in 3D. Gameplay is still the traditional rule sets, but the cut-ins are now 3D models, much like how Puyo Puyo 39! presented theirs. Chronicle's RPG mode also utilizes a 3D free-roaming overworld.
