YMMV / Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

• Casual-Competitive Conflict: Still very much present, with this game swinging things back in the favor of story/lore fans after Puyo Puyo Champions was laser-focused on gameplay-first Puyo Puyo fans. Between just about every character being fairly well-written and actually contributing to the plot (with the only exception being Ally being poorly handled), the story being quite well done as a whole, the Visual Effects of Awesome, and the simple bonus of seeing the S.S. Tetra's crew again after it seemed like they would never appear in another game certainly made fans of the series' character/world-building quite happy. To some, it even rivals Fever 2, the gold standard of lore-heavy Puyo games, in quality. Meanwhile on the competitive side, between nerfs to Tetris not being enough to keep it from oppressing Puyo, 4wide becoming even more powerful due to the speed nerfs (but not the power nerfs) applying to Tetris vs. Tetris, no crossplay between versions, and the Switch version lacking the adequate power to handle the aforementiond visual effects despite being the most popular version, the game is considered something of a disappointment. Especially compared to Champions for Puyo and Tetris Effect Connected for Tetris, or even its own predecessor.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Most, if not all, Skill Battle teams will use a combination of Dark Prince with his Garbage Cleanup power (Reduces the amount of impending nuisance on your board), Ally or O with their HP recovery skill (Restores HP), and a useful setup skill like Recycle (Turns nuisance puyos into a colored puyo), Pair Puyo Change (Changes the color of your current Puyo piece), or Tetromino Change (Changes the current Tetromino you're using). Anything else is likely just the infamously broken Terraformer + Sharpshooter combo to score quick victories.
  • In Fusion mode, two particular characters stand out compared to everyone else: Marle and Carbuncle. Both have the largest dropset in terms of Puyos compared to everyone else. They are the only characters with two big Puyo pieces and both even have the O-shaped switching pieces, which can be dropped in Puyo form for a quick chain extension, and since the mode allows for extending mix chains with any quick Puyo group or Tetrimino line clear, characters with larger Puyo count (and especially those who have a big Puyo in their dropset, which can be just dropped on an even ground to add one more chain and therefore send more garbage) are heavily favored. Between those two, Marle has a slight edge over Carbuncle, as the only difference between their dropsets is that Carbuncle has an three Puyo piece, but Marle's double pair piece at the end makes her Puyo dropset larger than Carbuncle's (Marle has a total of 18 Puyo in her dropset while Carbuncle has 17 Puyo).
• Contested Sequel: Just like the original game prior to its localization, opinions on this game are highly polarized. Some fans genuinely love the game, its story and character interactions, and its gameplay additions. Some find it a redundant but still largely enjoyable sequel. And some are irritated that Sega went for another Tetris crossover and, combined with the equally polarizing Puyo Puyo Champions, accuse Sega of having no idea of what to do with the series following its newfound international success.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Some players interpret Marle and Squares as allegories for the Casual-Competitive Conflict. Marle wants everything to be "fun" and specifically merges the dimensions again to see the characters interact more, while Squares doesn't care about that and is obsessed with what's "right" and enforcing the rules.
• Game-Breaker: In Skill Battle, with a Tetris team having Ess with Terraformer (Automatically sets up five rows allowing for a Tetris, with one line left over to prevent a Perfect Clear), Tee with Sharpshooter (Removes the bottom two rows), and either Ex, Rafisol, or Ragnus with Tetrimino Change (Swaps a Tetrimino out for another one of your choice) gives you an extremely strong attack that can instantly destroy any player not expecting it. First, use Tetrimino Change togive yourself an L or J piece (Unless you start out with one), next, move it down in a way where the elongated part is caught in the well where the I piece is intended to go (But don't lock it down). Then, use Terraformer, and finally use Sharpshooter. The result is the formation trapping the L or J piece inside with the elongated part filling the entire well, resulting in an instant Perfect Clear, dealing a ton of damage. It can be seen in action here.
• Genius Bonus: Marle and Squares can be read as a reference to a definition that is commonly used in academic game studies, which states that a "game" is a system of "rules" that is meant to "entertain" the participants.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: If players completed Schezo's story in 15th Anniversary, Accord tells him he could (and should) watch his attitude so the creeper/pervert comments will stop. In Puyo Tetris 2, he makes a comment on how he's trying to improve on his vocabulary mangling, even though it looks like he's still working on it. Guess he really did take her advice.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • One of the more recurring complaints leading up to Puyo Puyo Tetris 2's release is that, aside from incorporating the Skill Battle mode from Chronicle, it is a textbook example of a Mission-Pack Sequel. While the online rankings were addressed, things some Puyo Puyo fans wanted such as Fever rule were not. Not helping matters is the fact that there were alternatives for both Puyo Puyo and Tetris fans on all platforms when taking backwards compatibility into account, especially on the Nintendo Switch which had five other Puyo Puyo games plus Tetris 99 available upon Puyo Puyo Tetris 2's release. The announcement of post-launch support for characters and modes comes across as a Author's Saving Throw in the wake of these complaints.
  • Even for players that were more receptive of Puyo Puyo Tetris's character spells in the English dub, the fact that Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 recycles a significant amount of these spells (and in some cases, such as Schezo and Dark Prince's alternate voices, are exactly the same as in the first game) left a bitter impression, moreso considering that all Japanese character spells were remade for PPT2.
• Just Here for Godzilla: With Sonic joining, there are many people who got the game just to play as him.
• Les Yay: On Chapter 6-S4, Ally loudly declares that she loves Marle much to her shock.
• Memetic Mutation: Now on the Memes page.
• Older Than They Think: Even without taking Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine into account, this is not the first Puyo Puyo title to have Sonic the Hedgehog appear as a playable character, as he and Shadow had previously appeared in Puyo Puyo!! Quest as part of a collaboration event. Likewise, Puyo Puyo has previously crossed over with Sonic Runners, and Riders Sonic appeared as a special event Guest Fighter in Puyo Puyo Fever Carnival Edition.
• Porting Disaster: The Nintendo Switch release came out plagued by severe framerate drops thanks to the extravagant chain animations in 2-player battles, forcing players to disable a major part of the game's aesthetic appeal to have a consistent framerate. This still doesn't totally help for online play, however; if the other player has chain animations enabled, the connection will lag to accomodate the slowdown on the other console, rendering the game nearly unplayable anyway. Fortunately, they addressed the issues in the first two patches... at least mostly. Risukuma and Squares, at launch the laggiest characters, became much more playable after waves two and one respectively.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is an extremely difficult game with auto-difficulty on, especially if you breeze through the early levels, compared to its predecessor. The auto-difficulty weights wins more than losses, so by around Chapter 5 levels become very difficult very fast. Meanwhile, while not a snooze cruise (especially on certain levels) the original Puyo Puyo Tetris never gets very difficult.
• Tainted by the Preview: Skill Battle mode got a rocky reception from the very moment the demo of the game became available. The reason is very simple: the demo Tetris team includes the Game-Breaker combo of Ess's Tetris Terraformer and Tee's Sharpshooter skills. When coupled with the rather low HP and Defense of the Demo teams, a Terraformer followed by a Sharpshooter into a Perfect Clear could easily score a One-Hit Kill.
• That One Attack: The AI in Boss Raid mode has some special quirks that can be annoying and/or frustrating to fight against.
  • They do not need to make chains to attack you. Out of nowhere, they can send you a noticeable amount of garbage lines or Nuisance Puyos that can easily ruin your day. This can easily lead to you filling your board and losing a significant portion of your HP, especially in higher difficulties where they use this attack even more often, and it's even more powerful.
  • The AI characters that play Puyo will start spamming Recycle after taking a large attack, which turns up to 24 Nuisance Puyos into Puyos of a single color, allowing them to clear most, if not all garbage in one chain. Furthermore, garbage doesn't drop when clearing chains as Puyo in Skill Battle mode. If you have sent an uncounterable attack (especially after a Lucky Strike), get ready to see the AI take a hit, Recycle, take a second hit, Recycle again, take another hit, Recycle yet again... until they accidentally fill their board or run out of MP. At this point you are under no threat at all, but the AI's extreme stalling tendencies can turn the battle very boring. In contrast, Tetris AI bosses only have access to an 8-line Sharpshooter, and garbage lines appear even while you are clearing lines by yourself.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 changes a function that was much appreciated in the previous game, which was the ability to set free play rooms as only playing Puyo or Tetris. In Tetris 2, these filters do nothing to stop any other player from selecting which game they want, which can make finding random Puyo only games or random Tetris only games (especially if you want to play more than 2 rounds at a time, or with non-standard rulesets) next to impossible. Most people believed it was a glitch before the official English Puyo Twitter account confirmed this was intentionally changed. Bizarrely, "Puyo Puyo Lovers" and "Tetris Lovers" room tags already do the same exact thing as indicating without enforcing, which made this change unnecessary and disappointing to quite a few players.
  • Another change that Tetris 2 brought was how dialogue functioned in cutscenes. In the first game the text moved along with the dialogue, here the text moves independently of the dialogue. While this isn’t too a big a problem if you are using buttons to advance the text, players using auto mode have to deal with rather long pauses during cutscenes since the text has to catch up with what was just said.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A majority of the cast appears to finally avert this trope, actually contributing to the game's plot, but there are two notable exceptions.
  • Lidelle is the only character to appear in some cutscenes, yet not be playable. In addition, the reasons as to why she doesn't join her classmates for the adventure are flimsy, leaving many wanting for her to have had more of a presence. She does become playable after the first DLC wave, but she still gets no extra story prevelance as no Adventure levels were added.
  • Meanwhile, Ally somehow manages to get an even worse deal than Lidelle. She is only present in a four-stage side story in Chapter 6, only interacts with Marle after she's been freed from Squares' mind control. While many like how Ally was portrayed, her limited involvement with the story (being the only character who has nothing to do with the main plot) and lack of interactions with other characters left many of her fans wanting.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 really raises the bar on spell cut-ins, giving the high spells big overarching cut-ins behind the play field. Not only does it stay out of the way of gameplay, it also breaks free from the animation confines of the field space, making for some awesome and cinematic moves that couldn't be possible otherwise.

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