"A cute puzzler with mermaids, witches, and up to 4 players!"

The classic puzzle series Puyo Puyo hit's the Dreamcast in this bright and colorful installment that includes over 15 characters and the ability to have 4 player battles! With beautiful 2D graphics and a cute anime art style, this is one import friendly puzzle game that will keep players busy for a long time to come. So dive in and let's start popping those bubbles!

The story of this version is that the main girl Arle's hungry little yellow friend Carbuncle has gone missing and she has set out to find him. But what is with the strange circus in town? Her journey will take her across the world coming into contact with dragons, mermaids, witches, talking fish and other odd and interesting cute characters. Some of these characters will even join you on your quest and you can call on their powers to clear your screen of puyos.

Which brings us to the game play. Puyo Puyo is played by connecting 4 of the same colored puyos together. You rotate your puyos as they fall to the bottom of the screen as you try and connect them. The draw of the game is to stack up your puyos, and try and create multi chain combos. Creating combos will send garbage pieces to the other player's field, and once a player's screen is filled with puyos, they lose. What's cool about this one, is that different characters have different special attacks, and in story mode you can call on select characters with the Y button to unleash a screen clearing attack. This is critical to beating some of the harder stages of the game!

Needless to say, the game play is simple to pick up, but offers plenty of strategy and challenge in trying to rack up the giant combos. There's a good selection of fun modes to play in to hone these skills. Story mode features cute anime artwork between levels, and free play mode has you skipping the story scenes and just battling characters as you select which character you want to be. There are special modes where you can make the puyos big or really small, and there are some training modes where you try and get a certain number of combos. In addition to the standard 2 player vs. mode, there is also a 4 player vs. mode that is a great addition to the game. The story mode is sadly only for the main girl character, so perhaps if you don't have friends around you to play multi player with, the replay value may be cut somewhat short.

However, the normal difficulty in the game is really tough, so you won't be beating this game on the standard difficulty as soon as you get it. Setting the difficulty in options allows players of different skills to enjoy story mode, and it certainly keeps a great deal of challenge in the game and if you challenge yourself with the harder difficulties the game will last much longer. Also, in a very clever way to make some of the stages trickier, certain stages have certain play mechanics such as slow falling puyos after connections, or bonus points when you clear puyos.

In addition to the lovely anime style artwork, there is an anime opening video that really looks great and sets the tone of the game. The backgrounds of the stages are in 3D and all of the characters move around and look great. It's bright and cheery and just what one would expect from the Puyo Puyo series.

Everyone in the game has a Japanese voice, and the music is quite calming. It ranges from poppy jazz tunes to more electronic melodies and it's all very nice. However, with around 6 different stages, there's only a handful of actual tracks that one will hear while playing the game, and the addition of a few more music tracks would have been great. As it stands, the music in the game is great, I just wish there was more as hearing the same song for the first three levels or so gets a little old.

With a good amount of modes, some great multi player, and some solid difficulty, this is one puzzle game that has some great replay value. It would have been better if every character had his/her own individual story mode, but as it stands the replay value is still good. Also of note is that this game is very import friendly, and even if you don't read or understand any Japanese once you get past the main menu you should have no trouble playing this game. The story will be lost on you, but you'll still be able to enjoy the pretty artwork.

Puyo Puyo 4 for the Sega Dreamcast is a very nice puzzle game that is great to play both the one player mode and with friends. The cute graphics may not push the Dreamcast to its limits, but it conveys a great cheerful mood that really bodes well with the series. Fans of the series who have played any of the series various versions will feel right at home, and personally I think this one's art style looks much better then Puyo Puyo Fever's. This is a definite recommendation for puzzle fans, as well as for those looking for another 4 player Dreamcast game to play. Some more music tracks, story modes for all the characters, and the occasionally overly hard difficulty are really only minor deterrents from this great import puzzler. So what are you waiting for? Get importing now!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/07