Video Game / Puchiguru! Love Live!

What happens when you cross adorable nesoberi plush dolls with the gameplay of Disney Tsum Tsum? You get Puchiguru! Love Live!, of course!

Puchiguru! Love Live! was a Japanese "tap puzzle" mobile game released in 2018 as part of the Love Live! franchise, developed by Pocket Laboratory (Sinoalice). It is one of three major games in the Love Live! franchise, the others being Love Live! School idol festival and Love Live! School idol paradise.

In Puchiguru!, players attempt to pop as many nesoberi, hereon referred to as "puchiguru", as possible on a playing field where puchiguru fall onto the field constantly while backed by popping music from the Love Live! series. Popping any two connected puchiguru clears them off the field; the more puchiguru you clear at once, the more points you get. Clearing enough puchiguru at once can also earn you Coins as well as create Bombs, which come in various types and can be used to clear a large amount of puchigurus at once. Clearing enough puchiguru will activate Showtime Mode, where puchis pop faster and score is tripled for a limited time.

Teams can be formed out of puchiguru based on the school idol groups of µ's and Aqours (with Saint Snow), each with different variations and costumes. Each individual puchiguru has a Support Skill that can be used to augment gameplay, as well as a powerful Center Skill, which can be used after filling up the Skill Gauge by popping puchiguru corresponding to the Center Puchiguru and have powerful effects that can boost your score.

Players can participate in Mission Mode, Score Attack Mode, or Event Mode. In Mission Mode, the player attempts to clear a variety of missions to earn Stars, with each mission awarding prizes for being cleared. Score Attack Mode offers a competitive challenge, where players attempt to get a high score with a specific team, and based on how many points they earn each week, can earn big rewards. Event Mode allows players to participate in special events that can award chances to acquire puchiguru exclusive to the game.

Sadly, after enjoying over a year of service, the game was shut down on May 31, 2019, with offline AR camera and Card Album features remaining open after closure. However, the game is still playable via private server projects dedicated to keeping the game alive.

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Puchiguru! Love Live! contains examples of:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Puchi have a maximum Skill Level of 10, and a puchi is awarded Skill EXP when you acquire a duplicate of it from the gacha. The trick is that the number of duplicates needed per Skill Level spikes exponentially beyond Skill Level 4; normal puchi require a whopping 50 copies to max, which is almost certainly unachievable without dropping mad cash, and chances are you will never need to go to Skill Level 10. Event Puchi are exempt from this as they are given out for free from Events and only require 10 copies each to max.
• Achievement System: You can earn Titles through by fulfilling certain objectives. Titles can be displayed on your profile, which is viewable by other players, so you can show off your favorite achievement.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you try to form a team of characters with similar hair color (Honoka and Chika, for example), which might make the game harder, you will be given a warning at the team formation screen.
  • Event Puchiguru, due to the limited availability, require only 10 puchi to max their Center Skill Level, compared to the staggering 40+ puchi needed to max gacha-based puchi.
  • The Sky Blue Raincoat event modified the format originally used in the Chocolate Party event slightly to allow overflow Rain Gems to count towards the next target. In Chocolate Party, any overflow Chocolate Balls that were popped were lost if you hit the target for the current stage.
  • The 2.9.0 update added a Photo Mode button to the title screen, making it no longer necessary to connect online to use Photo Mode features as long as you download its data beforehand. The 3.0.0 update also added the Card Album to the title screen, allowing you to view downloaded cards as well.
  • 2.9.0 also changed Daily Mission requirements so that Mission Mode and Score Attack Daily Missions are replaced by Event Mode Missions when an Event is active, removing the need to go out of your way for Daily Missions.
  • In the unlikely event that you pull on a Gacha whose puchi are both already in your possession and max Skill Level, the game will instead convert your Gacha Ticket into a Skill Parfait that can be used to power up a different puchi. This is not typically possible with Event Gachas, as the corresponding event will give the exact 30 Tickets needed to acquire and max all characters, but the "SUNNY DAY SONG" event handed out duplicates of each Event Gacha Ticket for every previous Event Gacha.
  • The May 31st, 2019 maintenance moved the Card Album and Camera buttons on the title screen down to where the "Tap to Start!" text used to be for easier access, as the game is no longer playable.
• April Fools' Day: As part of the annual 2024 April Fools events, the game was brought back for one day as a browser game with the Hasunosora Girl's High School Idol Club as playable characters. Completion of the game would reward you with a code that can be entered in Link! Like! Love Live! to obtain stickers of the Puchiguru! versions of the cast.
• Arbitrary Mission Restriction: Present in the Missions that use Required Party Members and in Score Attack Mode.
• Art Shift:
  • Just to signify their importance, Special Skills are accompanied by a full-screen animated artwork of the character, compared to the Super-Deformed character animations that normal puchi get.
  • The Sanrio characters have a more simple and rounded design matching their official Sanrio artwork compared to the Super-Deformed but still detailed and sharp designs of the school idols.
• Augmented Reality: One of the game's touted features is an AR camera that allows you to superimpose the puchi you've earned onto your camera and other images. As you level up a puchi, a new expression for it is unlocked at Levels 20, 30, and 40 for use in the AR camera. A later update made it possible to use Special Skill Card portraits in the camera, and offline support was added so that the camera could be used without connecting to the game itself.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Making a Score Bomb manually. Activating a Score Bomb triples the score you would normally have gotten for popping a normal Bomb, which makes it incredibly potent during Showtime due to effectively giving you 9x Score for popping it. However, creating a Score Bomb by hand requires a whopping 26 puchis by default, which takes too long to create without wasting a whole lot of time that could be spent racking up more score with normal Bombs.
  • The "SELF CONTROL!!" set, which was released to celebrate the Hakodate Unit Carnival live show in Hakodate, Japan. This set contains Sarah Kazuno and Leah Kazuno of Aqours' rival group Saint Snow, which is a big surprise and cool in and of itself. However, the two are kinda iffy in actual gameplay; Leah has a pretty terrible Center Skill^note Sarah at least has a saving grace in having one of the best Scores in the game when maxed and has a solid Skill, and both have negligible Support Skills and don't fall under the µ's or Aqours categories, which means they can't get a Group Bonus from any team composition aside from Year and can't be used in any Mission or Score Attack challenge that requires a specific idol group.
• Balance Buff: Prior to 2.0.0., Hi-Score was perceived as an underwhelming puchi type due to its 0.1x Skill Gauge fill multiplier and 3x Score effect not being that useful compared to cranking out Score Bombs with overpowered Centers. 2.0.0., in addition to directly buffing Hi-Score by increasing its score multiplier, indirectly buffed it with the introduction of Cards. Cards add to a puchi's base score output, and due to Hi-Score being a multiplier, the resulting output scales up rapidly as the puchi's base Score increases. This allows Hi-Score puchi to generate staggering amounts of points if both the puchi and equipped Cards are a sufficiently high level compared to their previous performance.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Uniform Hanayo pops all of her own puchis on the screen on Center Skill activation and prevents puchis of herself from dropping for a brief period of time. This is essentially a controlled 6>5, which is surprisingly potent with an actual 6>5 Ticket and helps create big groups. Uniform Hanayo is considered the best starter character in the game because of her Center Skill.
  • Pomupomupurin's Center Skill causes Bombs to show up randomly when puchi drop into the play field for a limited time, which is surprisingly effective despite not having super game-changing effects like "Snow Halation" Nozomi or "HAPPY PARTY TRAIN" You.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs:
  • Of the animations that play when you pull a puchi from the gacha, one involves the puchi missing the platform completely (complete with Oh, Crap!) and another involves the puchi faceplanting on the platform. Another animation involves the puchi faceplanting, then sliding off the platform (with an Oh, Crap!).
  • There are two formats for Event Mode: Mission, where the player progresses through stages like Mission Mode to collect items, and Item, where the player uses Bombs and burst effect to clear items off the field to collect them. The Sanrio Characters Event is a Mission format Event that has both normal Mission Stages and Item format Stages.
  • The "Autumn Traveler" event combines the Mission format with a pseudo-item mechanic where popping puchi with a little treasure chest icon on them racks up points that unlock secondary bonuses.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The October 5th 2018 update added EX Missions to Mission Mode, starting with HAPPY PARTY TRAIN and Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki. EX Missions are unlocked by earning 70 Stars in the normal version of that area, and are more in line with the Hard Mode events that consist entirely of difficult 1 Play Missions. While you won't earn Area Complete rewards, the rewards granted by clearing EX Missions are much better than standard Missions and include large stashes of Gold, Candy, Item Tickets, and Medals.
• The Cameo:
  • Shiitake and Anko from the Sunshine!! anime appear as plush toys in a UFO Catcher in "SEGA Collab" Hanamaru's Center Skill.
  • A-RISE appears in a non-speaking role in the "SUNNY DAY SONG" event, where they are featured in the Bonus Stages.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • Events with a Bomb-based format usually skew in favor of Centers who can quickly generate high volumes of Bombs and those who can create "burst" effect puchis with Area of Effect damage.
  • Event requirements (for either Mission or Item format) scale in such a way that getting far in a reasonable amount of time usually requires at least one of the puchi that have an Event boost.
• Crossover:
  • With Sonic the Hedgehog in a special collaboration event that includes Rin and Hanamaru puchi based on their existing SEGA image girl artwork.
  • Puchiguru has also crossed over with Sanrio, complete with an event where you can acquire puchis of a variety of Sanrio mascots (including the ever-popular Hello Kitty) as Guest Fighters, along with a gacha set featuring the girls in special outfits partnered with various Sanrio characters.
  • There is also a crossover with fellow Love Live! mobile game Love Live! School idol festival which added Mission Mode stages based on the School Idol Festival exclusive songs "Takaramonozu" and "Jingle Bells ga Tomaranai" and Cards based on their School Idol Festival cheerleader outfits.
• Dagwood Sandwich: Picnic Honoka's Center Skill involves Honoka summoning a giant sandwich onscreen.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: The player needs to make long chains for gold/time bomb missions, but if the chain gets too long another type of bomb will spawn instead. So one needs to be careful not to overshoot.
• Dressed to Plunder: The MakiRinPana Pirates event features the title characters (Maki, Rin, and Hanayo) in stylized character-themed pirate outfits.
• Experience Booster:
  • Puchiguru Blade. Using it gives you +30% EXP for 60 minutes, and gives everyone who follows you on Twitter +2% EXP for 60 minutes (assumimg they play, of course). Because this bonus is Twitter-dependent, the game's official Twitter account also gives out regular Blade bonuses.
  • The SEGA Collab Crossover event also introduced a limited campaign where you could spend up to five Hearts on one play and gain a multiplier to the EXP earned by each puchi based on the number of spent Hearts.
• Face Plant: Two of the animations that play when you pull a new puchi from the gacha feature the puchi smacking into the platform face-first.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The 2.0.0 update introduced a host of bugs, like certain buttons no longer functioning properly (which can cause a softlock in the gacha menu) and Daily Missions not being able to be completed (which can prevent you from earning Gold and Medals).
• Girls Love Chocolate: The Chocolate Party event, which features Chika, Riko, and You in chocolate-themed outfits.
• Gratuitous English:
  • Half of Mari's sound clips. She also segues into Gratuitous Italian in Uniform Mari's Center Skill.
  • If Riko and Yoshiko are in the same team, one of Riko's possible Cheer quotes has her saying "Silent Cherry Blossom Nightmare!" in English.
• Guest Fighter: My Melody, Cinnamoroll, Kero Kero Keroppi, Hello Kitty, Badtz-Maru, and Pompompurin from Sanrio's collection of mascots are playable puchiguru that can be collected as event characters. All of them are also wearing themed outfits from various songs; the former three wear outfits from µ's songs, while the latter three wear outfits from Aqours songs.
• Insistent Terminology: The game would like to remind you that they aren't nesoberi, they're puchiguru.
• Instant Runes: Raincoat Yoshiko's Skill animation involves her creating a black glyph on the screen with her umbrella.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: Card Rarity is reflected by the color frame of the card, which corresponds with the color of the card pack that you get during the pull animation. 1★ and 2★ Cards have beige frames (the only ones without a corresponding color card pack), 3★ Cards have blue frames, 4★ Cards have silver frames, and 5★ Cards have gold frames. 6★ Cards, which can only be obtained by using Rarity Upgrade on a 5★, have rainbow frames.
• Lethal Joke Character: At first glance, "Mirai no Bokura wa Shitteru Yo?" Ruby looks like your average random clear puchi. However, if you dig a bit deeper, you will find that she has the same slower skill level growth as "powerful" puchis such as "Snow Halation" Honoka and "Happy Party Train" You rather than the "standard" skill level growth used by other random clear puchis. The reason for this? This particular "random" clear skill will never clear center puchis, so you can combine this clearing behavior with "Bokura wa Ima no Naka de" Kotori supports to make blue and yellow chains with ease. As Ruby's charge requirement is so small, these blue and yellow chains charge Ruby's skill up almost instantly, allowing to use her skill again to make another chai, which charges her skill up again and so on.
• Level Grinding: Heavily discouraged once a puchi passes a high enough level. The EXP needed to increase a puchi's level scales rapidly as the puchi levels up, starting at a few hundred below Lv. 10 and going into a few thousand past that. Once you pass Lv. 20, puchis require such a ridiculously high amount of EXP per level that attempting to gain any levels from normal gameplay is more or less meaningless. What you're actually supposed to do once your puchi hits high levels is to hoard Rare Candy (worth 2000 EXP each) and then cram enormous amounts of the stuff into a single puchi to power level it.
• Limit Break:
  • Each puchi has access to a Center Skill that allows them to activate a game-altering ability that has the potential to generate lots of points.
  • If you have it equipped, you can activate a Special Skill by charging up the Special Skill Gauge. Unlike the Center Skill Gauge, the Special Skill Gauge charges up over time, so being able to repeatedly extend the timer gives more opportunities to use your Special Skill.
• Logo Joke: The Rin & Sonic and Hanamaru & Sonic Center Skills both feature the girls saying their Verbal Tic to the tune of the classic SEGA jingle.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Upgrading Center Skills. Center Skills can only be upgraded if you draw a duplicate of a puchi from the gacha, which is, naturally, luck-based. Normal puchis require a whopping 50 extra copies to fully max their Centers, while Event puchis mercifully only require 9 extra to max.
  • Upgrading Card Rarity. This requires a duplicate of the Card being upgraded, which can either be mildly frustrating (for low rarity Cards) or a downright exercise in frustration (high rarity Cards). Rarity upgrade also enhances the Card's Skill (and Special Skill if applicable), making it even more frustrating if you want to maximize a Card's potential.
• Microtransactions: You can buy Jewels for real money in packs, which gives you a large quantity of Jewels and certain extra bonuses like Tickets. You can also purchase an Alpaca Passport, which gives you a "premium" subscription that gives you 1000 Jewels up front and 100 extra Jewels every day for 30 days.
• Moveset Clone: "WATER BLUE NEW WORLD" Yoshiko and Sparkling Princess Nico are straight clones of "Snow Halation" Nozomi. However, Sparkling Princess Nico has much weaker scaling due to being an event character.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Some of the animations for Center Skills are directly inspired by certain scenes.
  • The "premium" pass is called an "Alpaca Passport", in reference to Otonokizaka's alpacas.
  • "Bokura wa Ima no Nakade" Honoka shows her blowing a trumpet with doves in the background, just like the first opening for the Love Live! anime.
  • "Bokura wa Ima no Nakade" Kotori performs the infamous "Kotobomb" from the first opening.
  • "Snow Halation" Honoka has her performing her signature animation from the anime's version of the song.
  • "HAPPY PARTY TRAIN" Hanamaru shows her performing the hand signals that she uses in the music video.
  • Uniform Mari is shown riding a helicopter, which is based on the scene from the first episode of Sunshine!!.
  • "WATER BLUE NEW WORLD" Yoshiko blows a kiss towards the screen, just like during the song's performance in Season 2 Episode 11 of the Sunshine!! anime.
  • Unlike every other Rin or Hanamaru puchi in the game, which use standardized poses for the Super-Deformed characters with only the outfit changing, the Sonic Event puchi instead feature Super-Deformed art based on their SEGA Image Girl artwork.
  • Each of the girls' hats for their "HAPPY PARTY TRAIN" outfits bears a character-specific symbol. This also holds true for Pomupomupurin, who wears his own "HAPPY PARTY TRAIN" outfit decorated with a red cherry symbol, which he is sometimes depicted with in artwork.
  • The "Hop? Stop? Nonstop!" set is based on the outfits that Aqours wears to Italy in Love Live! Sunshine!!: The School Idol Movie: Over the Rainbow. The accompanying chibi is based on the official poster artwork for each character, and both the puchi bases and the relevant Event Cards also depict the nine Italian landmarks that are seen on each poster (with color-coding for each landmark based on the posters, to boot).
  • "Brightest Melody" Mari's Skill callout is "Let's dancing!", a possible reference to the infamous April Fools puppet show.
  • If Mari and Yoshiko are in the same team, Mari may say "シャイ煮プレミアムです!", referencing the Stewshine Premium from Season 2.
  • Riko's Cheer line with Yoshiko is "Silent Cherry Blossom Nightmare!", referencing the Calling Your Attacks shenanigans she gets caught up in in Season 2.
• Necessary Drawback:
  • There are two special puchi types that can be generated by Center Skills: Burst (pops itself and every puchi in a certain radius) and Hi-Score (triples the points earned from that chain), and some puchis can generate massive amounts of these special puchi types. However, because of their effects, these types of puchis only contribute 10% of the normal fill rate to the Skill Gauge, which makes it harder to loop back into another Skill charge. There are, however, a select few Centers whose Burst/Hi-Score puchis are exempt from this rule.
  • Some events give out free 5★ Cards, such as the School idol festival collaboration and the "Over the Rainbow Part 1" Event Stage. However, to compensate for high-rarity Cards being free, many of them have significantly weaker base Score than the 5★s you can get from the gacha.
• Nerf: The 2.0.0 update heavily nerfed Skill spam tactics by nerfing "BokuIma" Kotori so that she only produces Hi-Score puchi instead of normal puchi (which prevents her conversion skill from accelerating Skill Gauge fill) and implementing a spam punish mechanic that increases the cost needed to use your Center Skill by a stacking 10% for every Skill activation after 10 uses.
• Ninja Run: The "Rin & Sonic" puchi's Center is a line conversion that involves Rin running like this with Sonic across the screen twice, turning the puchis they run past into Rings.
• No Bulk Discounts: Averted in the School Idol Shop. Certain banners feature a bulk purchase option (usually in 1500 or 3000 Jewel quantities) that awards an additional Card pull. This is not applicable to Medals, which can only be used for single pulls.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Unlike its sister game School idol festival, there's no story mode. The entire game runs on Rule of Cute.
• Not Completely Useless: Random Clear-type Centers, useless as they may be for actual scoring, have other applications that make them beneficial in specific parts of the game. They are typically the cheapest type of Center Skill (except for the stronger versions that also spawn Bombs), making them very useful for clearing Missions that require activating Center Skills, and they are one of the few types of Center Skill (others being Area Clear-type) that can directly target Event Items and do so at a fairly high rate, making them very helpful with Item format Events.
• Palette Swap:
  • Hello Kitty's outfit is Chika's "Aozora JUMPING HEART" outfit with the big red stripe on the hat recolored blue and the bow's color changed from orange to red.
  • Likewise, Badtz-Maru's outfit is You's "Mirai no Bokura wa Shitteru no?" outfit, but the anchor symbol has been swapped out for a big white X.
• Photo Mode: Added with 2.9.0 update. It let players move and rotate the plushes of unlocked characters as well as use the phone's camera or images as the background.
• Play Every Day:
  • There are Daily Missions where you can fulfill up to five set goals per day and earn up to 2500 Gold, 100 Medals, and a Candy by clearing them all.
  • Prior to 3.0.0, you could also get discounted Gacha pulls in both the normal Gacha and the School Idol Shop twice per day; this was revoked in said update and the discounted rate of 100 Jewels became the standard rate.
  • A Daily Draw in the School Idol Shop allows you to pull once free daily, with the chance to get a card between 1★ and 4★ rarity. Starting from 3.0.0 the Daily Draw limit was increased to five free pulls per day.
• Product Placement: The SEGA UFO Catcher appears twice in the game: once in the opening movie, and in "Hanamaru & Sonic"'s Center Skill, where Hanamaru (as the claw) pulls Sonic out of a mound of Shiitake and Anko plushies.
• Rare Candy:
  • Literally. The resident EXP-giving item is a Candy that gives 2000 EXP when fed to a puchi.
  • In a more conventional sense, the Skill Parfait item that can be earned from events can be used in place of a puchi copy for the purposes of increasing a puchi's Skill EXP.
• Required Party Member: Many, many Missions and Score Attack mode require the player to bring along either a specific Center or character(s) belonging to a certain Year or Group/Subunit.
• Secret Level: Secret Missions, which require fulfilling a hidden condition in an Area's normal Mission Mode or EX Mission stage. Secret Missions give huge Gold prizes for clearing them, but the vast majority of them are Nintendo Hard and are almost impossible to clear without the use of Tickets or creative team composition.
• Set Bonus:
  • The game gives a stacking +10% boost to Score for all units in the Team if all members in the Team belong to the same Group. Any given team can reach up to +20% bonus. In addition, starting from 3.0.0, if all members in the party belong to the same Unit and Year/Subunit, the Cheer function activates, which causes your Supports to cheer on your Center with bonus voice clips when certain conditions are met.
  • Equipping a Card that matches the neso boosts the Card's score bonus. In addition, equipping a Special Skill Card to a matching character allows you to start a round with the Special Skill Gauge fully charged.
• Ship Tease: It's quite subtle, but in the first few bits of the opening movie, the nesoberi are paired up with each other in such a way that it references most of the relevant ships in the series, including Eli & Nozomi, Nico & Maki, and Riko & Yoshiko.
• Sleep Cute: Puchiguru fall asleep on the main menu if you wait for a few seconds.
• Socialization Bonus:
  • Following another player allows you to access their selected support puchi from the support list at will in addition to randomly selected supports. You can also send out Hearts to all players you follow, and players who follow you can do the same.
  • The Puchiguru Blade function allows you to gain a +30% EXP bonus for one hour at the cost of 100 Jewels. However, if you have a Twitter account linked, it will also send out a +3% EXP bonus to everyone who follows you on Twitter. The vice versa also applies; following someone who plays Puchiguru on Twitter allows you to get an EXP bonus from them if they use Puchiguru Blade.
• Super-Deformed: All of the characters on the character screens for each puchiguru.
• Super Move Portrait Attack: All Centers play a unique animation featuring the character upon triggering their Center Skill. Special Skill Cards have bigger, flashier cut-ins of that character that use their actual artwork.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • If you miss an Event Puchi, don't expect it to return for a while. The last event, "SUNNY DAY SONG", made Gacha Tickets for all previous Event Gachas outside of Sanrio Characters available as rewards.
  • The Kazuno sisters are limited engagement, which means they only appear in special banners like the Hakodate Unit Carnival banner and the Major Update Countdown banner in September 2018.
  • Due to their status as collaborations, SEGA Image Girl Hanamaru and Rin and all Sanrio-themed characters don't appear in the normal gacha.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: One popular Event format is racking up a certain quantity of event items by using Bombs or Center Skills to pop said item when it drops into the play field during gameplay. In events like these, it's usually more efficient to forgo strong puchi with powerful Centers for weaker puchi with destructive and Bomb-spawning Centers, like "Sore wa Bokutachi no Kiseki" Maki and "HAPPY PARTY TRAIN" Hanamaru.
• Time Stands Still: A couple of puchis, like "Snow Halation" Nozomi, have the ability to stop time for a few brief moments, during which you can tap as many linked puchis as you can to "freeze" them. When time unfreezes, all affected puchis will pop simultaneously. Certain puchis of this type also have the ability to create a Bomb based on the number of puchis you popped.
• Timed Mission: Each round lasts 60 seconds. You have the option to increase this by 5 seconds (to 65) by using coins or a Time+ ticket.
• Title Scream: Tapping on the title screen to start the game cues any one of the 18 girls to say "Puchiguru Love Live!".
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Certain Support Skills.
    • Gold+ is generally considered pointless for most content, since its effect is relatively weak and doesn't do anything to help your score.
    • Anything that applies in the first or last 10 seconds generally has limited application compared to stuff that activates during Showtime.
    • Last Bonus effects are also quite useless since there are generally no other benefits for leaving unpopped Bombs on the board on purpose or not using your Center Skill towards the end. Showtime also automatically cancels after the timer runs out, so you don't get a benefit from that either.
  • Certain Centers suffer from this as well.
    • Random Clear in general is not a good Center Skill, since it doesn't link any of the popped puchis and just counts every puchi popped by the Skill as individual. Chocolate Party Riko is marginally better since her Random Clear Skill also auto-generates free Bombs on use.
    • Uniform Kotori lets you pop puchis by dragging your finger across the screen. Just like Random Clear, every popped puchi is also unlinked, making it barely better than Random Clear; more akin to a controlled Random Clear.
    • Anything that auto-pops a certain area of the screen without creating a Bomb in the process usually doesn't help your score at all.
  • Gold Bomb. It's the next bomb tier after your standard Bomb, and increases the amount of Gold you get from popping it... by a measly 10 Gold. It's so underpowered that you're generally better off making several normal Bombs and popping those instead for more Gold.
  • Time Bomb adds +1 second to the clock when popped. Most puchis that have bomb generating potential generally do not create Time Bombs, and the effect is negligible enough that unless you can pop multiple Time Bombs in rapid succession, it won't really have an impact on gameplay that your standard Bomb doesn't already do.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: Camera Mode allows you to rotate the Puchigurus freely, making it very easy to cause a panty shot. However, they all have white panties anyway and they're plushies, so the point is fairly moot.
• The Voiceless: My Melody, Cinnamoroll, and Kero Kero Keroppi have generic sound effects in place of voice clips. Mostly played straight by Hello Kitty, Badtz-Maru, and Pompompurin except for their Center Skills, which feature a voice clip of three Aqours members shouting the Skill activation line.

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