YMMV / Puyo Puyo!! Quest

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Many characters introduced in this game tend to bank on flavor text and descriptions for their characterization, and as such fans tend to give them their own interpretation of who they are. The most recurring one is the characters' relationships to one another, which range from anything from enemies to lovers and anything in between.
• Base-Breaking Character: Being a mobile game, Western players have been quite polarized on certain characters.
  • Arle herself, at least in the context of the game's meta. She has more alternate versions than any other character, which is either fine because she is the original protagonist, or not fine because she doesn't need more when there are other popular characters that either don't have alts or only have a few. The fact she got a gacha campaign focused on her doesn't help matters. Though the number of alts between the heroines are close^note As of this moment, Arle has 26, Amitie has 24, Ringo has 23., what bothers the players is that Arle's cards also tend to be very overpowered compared to the other cards in a banner set, resulting in accusations of Creator's Pet and making her inclusion compulsory if players want to tackle the challenging content.
  • The Puyo Puyo!! Quest characters included in Puyo Puyo Champions are easily the most divisive part of the game. On one hand, people appreciate Quest being acknowledged due to being filled to the brim with some surprisingly popular characters, but on the other hand, them effectively pushing out favorite staples like Lemres, Klug, and Feli also gave them a Replacement Scrappy reception for some. Then there's the third camp who likes the idea, but questions the characters chosen, with the omission of specific characters like Undine or fan favorite series like the Holy Beast Fighters or Sage series being commonly mentioned.
• Broken Base:
  • Even though it enjoys a healthy amount of western players to evoke meta and story discussion, there is a dispute whether it deserves a localization or not. A localization would give it more interest into the series, but there's a camp that says it's better off staying in Japan because it'd be eaten alive by either Puzzle & Dragons, the disdain of gacha games, or a combination of the two arguments.
  • Quest's crossover with Osomatsu-san, a series infamous in the West for its..."flavor" of Shipping, is, unsurprisingly, far from universally-loved. This is not helped by the crossover designs themselves, which are disliked by pretty much everyone who's not already a large fan of Osomatsu-san.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: When building your team, expect every powerful team makeup to consist of the "Boys" or "Girls" combination bonus. Why? Many of the most powerful cards fall under that umbrella, and both of those combinations encompass countless characters for their respective groups, making it easy to min-max your team's stats.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: To a surprising degree! Since the game has a steady stream of new characters and gameplay that can be put on autopilot, the stories behind each of the characters has players wanting more from them such as Manzai from the Special Training Boards. When Version 10.0 went live, the new story took players by surprise in that it makes space-time travel an actual plot point by transporting Atari and co. to the timeframe of Fever 2.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Some examples include the Angel Series, Devil Series, Warlock Series, Holy Beast Fighter Series, along with individual characters like Undine. Sometimes invoked if an otherwise minor character gains an alternate card or a series gains a voice set. Sure enough, Champions decided to give the Angels and Devils some spotlight, picking out Ciel and Hed as the respective representatives in the roster.
• Epileptic Trees: The Lamia from here being given a profile similar to the mainline characters in Puyo Puyo 25th Anniversary Book is peculiar given that Compile's Lamia never appeared in a Puyo Puyo game. Either it was a mistake by the people who put together the book, or Sega owns far more from Madou Monogatari than the fandom generally assumes.
• Fan Nickname: Fest cards that aren't part of a skill series but are connected to them by story are known as "Lore Fests". Some examples include Rozatte, mentor figure to the Warlock series; Legamünt, the aloof sixth member of the Heavenly Knights; and Lulisia, the oveseer of the Elven Priestesses.
• Game-Breaker: The Puyo Fest characters have a very good reason for being the rarest cards in the game (not counting crossover characters), as well as the ones with the highest card costs. Generally speaking, they have very high stats even at ★6 rarity and their Active and Leader Skills outclass even those of non-Fest ★7 cards. These examples here are some of the extreme standouts.
  • Charmy Draco, despite being a Healer-type, packs a massive punch due to her skill set. She passively buffs the team's HP by x3, which is a respectably sky-high multiplier, Recovery by x2, and Attack by a massive x4.8. She even extends your trace limit by 3, giving you better chaining options. Topping this all off is her skill, "Charming Breath", which first makes your entire party attack first for some big damage, then resets the field to give you a free 11-chain that All Clears.
• More Popular Spin-Off: This game is by far one of SEGA's most successful mobile games, raking in millions in revenue, with advertisements, streams, and cross-promotions with other mobile games being centered around Puyo Puyo!! Quest.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Not this game proper, but Cranky Food Friends, an attempted Dolled-Up Installment. 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 franchises. 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 have played a role in the game's eventual closure in early 2016, and not even getting a proper release.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Cranky Food Friends received endless flak when it was (very quickly) discovered to be a cheap reskin of Puyo Puyo!! Quest.
  • Zigzagged with Puyo Quest itself: it was initially met with a lot of skepticism, but has since become the most popular topic of conversation in the English fandom. However, the general disdain for mobile games by western gamers definitely crops up at times, and Puyo Puyo announcement teases invariably attract snarky comments claiming that the announcement will be about Quest or another mobile game.
• Tough Act to Follow: Being an incredibly popular mobile game, it set the bar a bit too high for the other mobile game, Puyo Puyo!! Touch. The latter was a single-player puzzle game where you dragged Puyo to copy-paste its color to make chains, but on launch, it suffered from Fake Difficulty terribly. The game was given balance updates to smooth out the difficulty curve, but it wasn't enough to carve out its own niche and shut down roughly a year after it was launched.
• Unexpected Character: The reason why the game is known for being a Continuity Cavalcade, usually happening when the game adds a lesser-known character or alternate form from Compile's end of the series. Demiserf takes the cake here (most of the western fanbase couldn't tell you what Demiserf even looked like before he was added to Quest), but not a lot of people were expecting the likes of Jaan, Mandrake, Nega Kikimora, Cool Schezo^note Schezo's classic costume, Green Witch^note Witch as she appears in Puyo Puyo~n, or Flash Attack Rulue^note Rulue as she appears in Puyo Puyo~n.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Oddly, a handful of the male characters in Quest have feminine characteristics, to the point several of them can invoke Dude Looks Like a Lady and throw off players (since gender is relevant to gameplay in regards to combinations).
  • Sullivan's got a long ponytail and a feminine voice, but his bio refers to him as a boy. Eventually acknowledged in his Story Quest, where Incubus and Stornum try to flirt with him thinking he's a girl, until Sullivan explains he's a boy and disturbs the both of them.
  • Greap is a man, but with that long hair and androgynous face of his, you'd be forgiven mistaking him for a punkish-looking woman.
  • The worst of them all, however, has to be Ander◊, who is a Wholesome Crossdresser based on the titular character of the The Little Match Girl. Not helping matters is that currenly in writing, Ander lacks voice acting for the distinction.
  • Rozatte is an interesting case, as his happened because of Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. He has a clearly masculine Japanese voice and is classified under "Boys" in the game, but those that have not played the game will be thrown for a loop because of his feminine English voice, only finding out through Quest, or noticing his profile in Tetris 2 referring to him as a he.
  • When Seo was first revealed, players were wary on her gender identity due to the game's track record of very feminine pretty boys, such as the previously mentioned Sullivan and Rozatte, and her profile didn't describe her with any pronouns. All of the S characters were up until this point male, and the chance of a Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio was possible too. Doubt was eventually dispelled when internal files referred to her as a woman.
  • We don't know if Issen is a girl or not as they only appeared in a cutscene of a side story, they look very feminine but their gender is unknown for now