20 years of Serious Business puzzle games.
Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary is a Falling Blocks puzzle game in the Puyo Puyo series. As its name implies, it is a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the series.20th Anniversary is a narrative sequel to Puyo Puyo 7, but a gameplay sequel to Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary. Like 15th, 20th includes a wide variety of gameplay modes, most notably the ruleset of Puyo Puyo Sun and the 2-vs-2 "Pair Puyo" ruleset. The game again gives every character their own story and gauntlet of opponents to face.
Tropes present in Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary:
- Anachronic Order: Aside from Ringo's story and the Extra Story, the order in which this game's events happen is entirely unclear. Add in the fact that All There in the Manual indicates that all of the Sega-Era novels, half of the Drama CD stories and possibly even Puyo Puyo Chronicle happen during the months this game takes place in, and you've got yourself a perfect recipe for player confusion. In fact, Puyo Puyo Tetris and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 are the only games released into the series since this one that are outright confirmed to happen after and not some unspecified time during it.
- Another Side, Another Story: Ringo's story is the only one that is available from the start, but other stories are gradually unlocked as you clear everyone else's. One final Extra story is unlocked after everyone's story is completed.
- Anti-Climax: The ending of Amitie's story. After wondering for so long about what the mystery of Amitie's hat is, Miss Accord just brushes it off, and states that it's just Amitie's imagination, despite the events that happened earlier in the story stating otherwise.
- Art Evolution: This game adds shading to the character portraits, giving the artwork a much more refined appearance.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Ecolo and a possessed Dark Prince in the final story mode.
- Big "SHUT UP!": Arle yells "EVERYBODY! SHUT! UUUUP!" to Rulue, Schezo, and the Dark Prince when she's had enough of their worries about her in a web manzai advertising the game.
- Call-Back:
- Like Tsu rule, Sun rule sees characters calling out spells in sequence instead of at the end of the chain.
- A cheat changes the Compile-era characters' attacks to their lines from Puyo Puyo CD Tsu or Puyo Puyo Sun, though at the cost of attack animations. Even without it, Arle has a unique vocal set that gives her six named attacks instead of the usual five, matching the number of attacks that characters called out from Puyo Puyo Tsu through Puyo Puyo~n.
- Combination Attack: Possible in Pair Puyo mode. It begins to build when both teammates start a chain at around the same time and activates when a certain amount of time passes without a chain from either player. There's also the Synchro Chain, which occurs when both teammates start a chain higher than 3 and of identical count at the same time.
- Comical Overreacting: When Risukuma offers him an opportunity to talk about whatever is on his mind, Maguro uses it to rant about Tabletop RPG sourcebook-scalpers. Risukuma is horrified to find that his underclassman is seeing a rather petty issue as a matter of life and death — openly wishing to never relive it once Maguro leaves.
- Compressed Abstinence: Lemres tries to train without his candy for a few days. It doesn't go well.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Challenge Battle matches; see SNK Boss below
- Conflict Ball: Several battles in this game have incredibly-flimsy justification, to the point that much of the game is an Excuse Plot.
- Cosmetic Award: This game has a Shop option allows you to buy alternate Puyo appearances, alternate voice clips, and alternate character designs. Though the latter two often come with unique AI patterns.
- Delayed "Oh, Crap!": When Ringo encounters Yu and Rei in her chapter, she had to confirm with them if they were ghosts first before breaking into a Freak Out (any other paranormal interaction would usually result in Ringo immediately yelling in fear).
- Divergent Character Evolution: Four of the characters that were introduced in 7 (reintroduced in Draco's case) used the same dropsets and scoring tables as characters from Fever and Fever 2. When said Fever characters returned here, the 7 characters received new dropsets. (They still share scoring tables with their predecessors, though.)
- Drunk on Milk: Anyone who drinks Witch's Secret Drink becomes this, as Klug and Lidelle finds out the hard way in Klug's story.
- Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": A web manzai meant to advertise this game features Klug reading Sig a novel he wrote. In the novel, the main character is very blatantly Klug, with the other characters in the story being Lemres, Raffina, and Feli, with different names obviously meant to be their names. Klug and Lemres are the heroes of the story while Raffina and Feli are the villains. Klug messes up his speech and almost says the actual people's names a couple times instead of their altered names.
- High-Voltage Death: Yu offers to turn Maguro into a ghost by bringing him to the high-voltage line, unaware as ever that it's death.
- Innocent Innuendo: Maguro's "that", mentioned by Ringo. She means his face.
- Is This Thing Still On?: In the introduction to the web manzais made to advertise the game, after finishing her announcement, Ringo asks Maguro if they can go get some takoyaki on their way home before being shocked to realize they're still rolling. She does the same thing in the outro after asking Maguro for the answer to a question in her homework.
- Late to the Realization: Amitie's story ends with Ms. Accord insistently telling Amitie that she was dreaming up the things related to her red Puyo hat, with her eventually accepting it after a while. One cutscene in Carbuncle's story has Amitie then realize that Accord tricked her.
- Logo Joke: Arle, Amitie, or Ringo will imitate the classic "SE-GA!" call as the game boots up. After going through the Attract Mode at least once, the game chooses another character (this time from the entire cast) to say it.
- Loose Canon: 20th Anniversary has a pretty straightforward plot that works well as a standalone story within the main timeline, except for the part where Arle and friends raid the Dark Prince's castle, which happens in multiple stories and has a different outcome in each story it occurs. While, thanks to supplementary material indicating that the events of 20th occur over the course of several months most of the game's stories can be fit onto a rough timeline, the castle raid is a clear exception and puzzles players to this day.
- Luck-Based Mission: Slots mode, which throws random effects after a certain amount of Puyo is cleared (30 is the default) ranging from erasing all nuisance puyo, freezing your opponent's puyo, to even swapping your field with your opponent(s). It's not uncommon to have a long chain turned on its head or even switched off to someone else, but it can also save you when you'd normally be knocked out or even knock you out itself.
- Meat-O-Vision: In his story, Lemres is so worn out by abstaining from candy that he imagines Dongurigaeru is a gumdrop and attempts to eat him. Dongurigaeru doesn't take kindly to it.
- Musical Nod: The Attract Mode song is the theme from the Game Gear/PC-98/Game Boy ports of the first arcade game.
- Mythology Gag: Beginning in this game, Arle stutters the spell that she uses after Diacute in Compile-era rulesets and other rulesets derived from Tsu rules. In almost every applicable rule, the spell in question is Brain Dumbed...but not the original Puyo Puyo rule, where she not only stutters Bayoeen instead, but the game knows to only apply the effect once per chain since Diacute goes away after using a spell.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Ringo basically tells an amnesiac Ecolo that people don't enjoy pranks, but really enjoy Puyo matches instead. Bad idea. Ecolo soon gets bored with making people happy through Puyo matches one person at a time and tries to find a way to make everyone happy on a large scale, eventually going as far as to try to possess Dark Prince himself.
- Oh, Crap!: The character portrait in the background changes to a frame of their "damaged" animation whenever the field is halfway full.
- "Rashomon"-Style: Arle and Schezo's scenarios have shades of this coupled with a pinch of Broad Strokes. It's quite clear that the overall tale is the same due to many recurring elements (Dark Prince's storm, Rulue as the penultimate boss, Ecolo being slightly involved), but the individual narratives aren't (for example, did Arle meet up with Schezo in his cave, or did Schezo find Arle after following Carbuncle?). Rulue also borrows some elements from both stories for her own, but hers is definitely not canon as she doesn't force Dark Prince to get rid of the storm.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Feli does this in Klug's story when the latter, Drunk on Witch's Secret Drink, tries to get her to strip her shirt off.
- Secret Final Campaign: Clearing all the individual characters' stories will unlock the Extra Route, which pulls everyone together for one final showdown against the final boss.
- Serious Business: According to his interactions with Risukuma, Maguro takes the crime of scalping Tabletop RPG sourcebooks very seriously — as poor Risukuma learns the hard way. By the time Maguro's rant about it is over, Risukuma is outright horrified and wishing to never speak of it again.
- Shout-Out: Ecolo has an unlockable human form. Selecting him in character select has him say "Saa, dou shitai?", which roughly translates to "What are you going to do now?" Purge, another Sega villain voiced by Akira Ishida says the exact same thing, also in a similar tone.
- Similar Item Confusion: Klug gives Lemres what he thinks is sugar, but in actuality it’s salt. This causes Lemres to pass out and sends Klug into a panic.
- SNK Boss: Challenge Battle is this. In each of the five modes, you're facing against a character with powerful AI, and their drop speed is the equivalent to quick drop. None of the modes have that, leaving you with a huge speed disadvantage.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: A distressing theme plays whenever the player's Pair Puyo team is on their last life.
- Victory Quote: A staple in the games, but in Pair Puyo mode, their lines will change if you play with a certain character combination such as True Companions Arle and Carbuncle, Childhood Friends Ringo and Maguro, even Klug and Feli who are Arch-Enemies!
- You Can Talk?: Upon seeing the Ocean Prince and hearing him speak for the first time, Ringo reacts with her signature shocked expression.
