Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S: Kondowa Puzzle de Oshioikiyo!

"Not bad, considering it's a Sailor Moon game."

Hearing the name Sailor Moon will either make you immediately stop listening, or make you stop paying attention to anything else you’re currently doing. It’s one of those things that no one is in the middle on. I’ve never understood why so many people could enjoy something to such an extent, or how anyone could hate something with a passion like this.

For those of you not familiar with the whole Sailor Moon phenomenon, let me give you a brief introduction on how I see it. For those of you who already know the background, I apologize for my sad attempt to summarize it. Sailor Moon, also known as Serena, is enlisted by Luna, a talking cat, to fight evil. Sailor Moon is joined by other Sailor Scouts throughout the adventure, and eventually joins up with another talking cat.

The Sailors try to find Princess Serenity, who was lost a long time ago fighting the forces of evil in the Moon Kingdom. The Negaverse, or the bad guys, are trying to go back in time to rule the Moon Kingdom as well, so time is not on your side. Now that the basic story is out in the open, on to the actual game.

There really isn’t much. The blocks used in the game are of five color varieties, and the special attacks you get are nothing to gawk over. The only thing that does look good is the characters in the lower corners of the screen.

I like the music in this game. The sound effects are well placed, and pair up with the actions taken perfectly. The music stays at a normal beat, even when you’re about to lose, which is another plus. I can’t stress how much I hate it that a game feels the need to tell you that you’re losing. The game also sports a sound test and a music test in the options screen.

Sailor Puzzle, as I call it, plays like a mix between the classic Tetris, and a somewhat bastardized form of Tetris Attack. There are a number of colored blocks on the screen, from three to five different colors. You have to click on a group of two or more same colored blocks to make them disappear.

There are a total of ten characters in the game. Depending on which character you choose, you will get a different special attack. As you destroy the blocks, a yellow bar will start to fill up on the left side of your screen. When you fill one fifth of the bar, that section will turn red. You can then hit the Z button to unleash your characters special. These can range from destroying a row of your blocks, to freezing the opponent for a certain amount of time.

There are five levels of special. The first level is your normal special. The third and final levels are also your special attack, but are grander in scale. The second and fourth levels are the same for everyone, and will dump blocks onto your opponent’s area. There are a few other things you can do. Hitting Y will allow you to push your blocks to the right or left side of the screen.

If you destroy a lot of blocks at once, grey blocks will fall onto your opponent’s area. These can’t be matched up to be destroyed, but must be touching another group of blocks being destroyed. There are also special blocks, like the umbrella, which will hover in one spot, and stop blocks from falling. There is a bomb, which takes out a few blocks, cannons which destroy all blocks in a certain direction, and a heart that will destroy all blocks of one color.

To win, you must either empty your own area of all blocks, or fill your opponent’s area up to the top.

There are three modes of play. These include the standard Single, versus, and solo modes. Single will pit you up against the computer opponents, one by one. Versus will allow you to play against a friend. Solo lets you play all alone, with the clock as your opponent.

The game plays very fun, but the difficulty fluctuates a lot. Most of the harder stages will end before they start, as the blocks that start on your screen will either be good or bad.

The games best mode is single, and after you’ve played for a while, it won’t present much of a challenge. Solo mode just doesn’t appeal to me here, and versus relies on the fact that you and your friends don’t get angry with each other easily.

For a Sailor Moon game, this is actually one of the better ones. It is not, however, the best. If you just want a game to play for a day or two, this should hold you over just fine. If you’re looking for something you can dust off every year and give it a run through, you’ll probably just want to leave it in the closet. I recommend this to you now because you know that the longer you play the game, the less fun it will turn out to be.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/24/03, Updated 12/28/03