15 years of Serious Business puzzle games.
Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary is a Falling Blocks puzzle game in the Puyo Puyo series. As its name implies, it is a celebration of the 15th anniversary of the series, releasing 15 years after Puyo Puyo (1991).The focus of 15th Anniversary is gameplay modes, and lots of them. The original, 2, and Fever rulesets return, alongside several new modes such as the puzzle-solving Nazo Puyo mode, a mode where players race to clear a star at the bottom of the field, and a mode where the field periodically rotates.
The story of 15th Anniversary is even more of an Excuse Plot than previous games, being a straightforward Tournament Arc. For the first time, everyone gets their own single-player gauntlet with unique story scenes. Also, this game marks the triumphant return of Madou Monogatari characters beyond protagonists Arle and Carbuncle, with Schezo Wegey, Rulue, the Dark Prince, Suketoudara, Nasu Grave, and Zoh Daimaoh joining the roster.
Tropes present in Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary:
- The All-Seeing A.I.: 15th features the Searchlight mode, where, outside of Fever mode, the field is entirely obscured outside of a section that is visible through a rotating flashlight. The AI is completely unaffected by this.
- Another Side, Another Story: Players can choose any character to participate in the tournament with, with each character having a different set of opponents. They also have the opportunity to meet the "stars that fell from the sky", as Sig noticed, and unlocking them allows them to participate in the tournament and win.
- Arrange Mode: This game's specialty is serving up a wide variety of alternate gameplay modes, with more than a dozen being available.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Because the wishing medal in takes everything the wishers say at face value. Thus, some of the wishes end up having their words used against them.
- The Bus Came Back: Just in time to celebrate the series' 15th anniversary, Rulue, Schezo, the Dark Prince, Suketoudara, Nasu Grave, and Zoh Daimaoh come crashing from the sky and into the tournament. Of those six characters, however, Rulue, Schezo, the Dark Prince, and Suketoudara earn their status as mainstays.
- Call-Back: During Fever matches, characters only call out one "named" attack when making a chain. But if the player uses 2 rules, the character will call out all of their named spells in sequence, referencing the vocal patterns in those games. And in Original rule, two voice clips are dropped from the 2 pattern, referencing the lower spell count in the first game.
- Continuity Nod: When Suketoudara meets Yu and Rei, he tells them "Good luck dancing without any legs!" This is the same thing Raffina told Yu in Fever. Yu hangs a lampshade on this.Yu: Hmm... What's this strange feeling of déjà vu?
- Defeat Means Playable: You unlock the returning Madou Monogatari characters by defeating them in any character's story.
- Game-Breaking Bug: First-run copies of the DS version could only perform 255 game saves. If that doesn't sound too bad, this game uses autosave.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: This can occur in Ice Block mode. Instead of sending Nuisance Puyo, players send frozen-over regular Puyo that thaw after three turns. Attack at the wrong time, and watch your opponent get a massive chain.
- Interface Screw: The very nature of Spotlight rule. Unless light is shining on that spot, you can't see worth a damn.
- Is It Something You Eat?: In her story, Amitie gets hungry and asks Nasu Grave, an anthropomorphic eggplant, if he's edible. Then she asks if he's from her hometown Primp, and the eggplant thinks Primp "sounds like pudding" ("Primp" or プリンプ has a close spelling to the Japanese word for "pudding", or プリン) and repeats Amitie's question as to if it's edible. Amitie is shocked and refuses to let Nasu Grave eat Primp Town.
- Loose Canon: This game's plot is a tournament where you can play as any of the participants, who all get their own little personal character arc. There isn't any clear way to combine everything into one clean storyline, and while most of the wishes wouldn't end up mattering in the long run, there is no telling who actually won the tournament (assuming there was a winner to begin with). With that said, it introduces many meetings and interactions that would be picked up in later games, like the Klug/Feli rivalry and Schezo's interest on Sig's hand, plus the return of many Compile characters (like Rulue, Dark Prince, Suketoudara and the aforementioned Schezo). It's safe to say this tournament at least happened in some form, but any further details should be left to imagination.
- Luck-Based Mission:
- Non-Stop Fever, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. While it's appropriately awesome to be in Limit Break mode all the time, you're basically clearing the warning Puyo you start with and then hoping your opponent gets a Puyo they can't match before you do.
- There's a chance that all eight levels on any story mode will be different; a roulette is done to decide the games, which has (but not limited to) 2 rules, Rotation, Underwater, and even classic Puyo rules (no offsetting).
- Quest for a Wish: The story mode has your chosen character playing through a Puyo tournament, and the prize is a medal that will grant one wish. Though, Puyo being Puyo, it isn't all that straightforward, with the wishes being taken at face value. Be Careful What You Wish For is certainly in full force.
- Ms. Accord's wish is a secret.
- Akuma wished for no demons to be able to enter the town. While he is a demon himself, the wish only stopped demons from entering, so he's just fine.
- Amitie wished to be a great spellcaster. She gets nothing, on the reasoning that she's already a great spellcaster, which she feels is a cop-out.
- Arle wished to be able to travel freely between the two worlds. She got it, no strings attached.
- Baldanders was ordered by Feli to wish for her and Lemres to be happy together. Ms. Accord informs him that he could only wish for one of them to be happy. We never find out who he chooses.
- Donguri Gaeru wished for a pond in the forest. He got it just fine.
- Feli wished for Lemres not to grow old without her. She got that, but then Ms. Accord revealed that everyone was using anti-aging spells anyway, and Feli would have been better served wishing a Plot-Relevant Age-Up on herself. Feli was not happy.
- Klug wished for his success to get a 16-page spread in the local mages' magazine. Ms. Accord pointed out that this was dependent on him being successful in the first place, which he had completely failed to wish for.
- Lemres wished for the beach to turn into candy, the sea to turn into jelly, the sand into cocoa powder with powdered sugar and skimmed milk, the pebbles into chocolates, and the shells into candy. He gets it.
- Lidelle/Rider was going to wish to get rid of her horns, but after meeting Dark Prince, she grew to appreciate them. Since she didn't have a backup wish, she wished for world peace. Ms. Accord said it would be granted, but we don't ever actually see it.
- Nasu Grave wished to be taller. No, wait, he wants to not wear spectacles. No, wait, he wants to not be an eggplant. The medal heard three wishes when it could only grant one, so it didn't grant any.
- Ocean Prince wished for all his subjects to be his servants with free food and naps. Ms. Accord informed him that he could only get one of those (servitude, food, or naps), and asked him to choose, but he ran off without realizing his wish hadn't been granted yet.
- Onion Pixie wished to be with Onionette forever.
- Dapper Bones wished to meet "that person" (his lover?) again "someday". Popoi points out that this is a poor choice of words, as it doesn't specify an actual date. Even so, they are now guaranteed to meet again...eventually...
- Raffina wished to be more beautiful. The medal did nothing, which Ms. Accord claimed was because it believed Raffina was already the most beautiful. Raffina accepted this explanation happily, but after she ran off, Popoi suggested that maybe the medal just couldn't do that.
- Rulue was going to wish to be Dark Prince's wife, but that wouldn't stop him from going after Arle. She was then going to wish for Arle to be taken out of the picture, but then she realized that would be essentially admitting that Dark Prince loves Arle more than he loves Rulue, and she could never do that. Unfortunately, she said all this out loud and in front of the medal, which decided to grant her "wish" of never admitting Dark Prince's love for Arle. As Rulue immediately points out, this doesn't make any goddamn sense.
- Dark Prince was going to wish for a honeymoon under the stars with Arle, but first he felt he had to chew out Ms. Accord over her students' disrespectful behavior toward him. The medal heard him say he ought to teach them manners and granted that wish.
- Schezo wished for everyone to stop calling him a pervert. It was granted, but everyone called him a weirdo instead. Ms. Accord empathetically adds he can earn a good name for himself by improving his attitude.
- Sig wished for new insects in the forest. The medal flat-out refused, as it dislikes insects due to not having hands to brush them away.
- Suketoudara wished for anyone to be able to do a solo dance at a dance party.
- Yu and Rei both wished for the same thing; to swap places for a day. The medal granted both wishes, for a net result of not doing anything.
- Zoh Daimaoh wished to be a king who would bring peace in a rich country, in a future with hope. He got that... as far as anyone knows.
- To sum up, 22 wishes were made in total. 8 turned out fine, 4 were corrupted by poor phrasing, 4 were flat-out not granted, 2 were ruined by thinking out loud, 2 were caught on a one-wish technicality, Nasu Grave's was not granted due to thinking aloud and the one-wish technicality, and we never learn Ms. Accord's. If we throw out Ms. Accord's wish, that's a 62% failure rate.
- Riddle of the Sphinx: In her story, Raffina comes across the ghosts Yu and Rei, who give her a pop quiz that involves Yu asking what has four legs at birth and three legs at old age. Raffina correctly guesses "man" and wins an obligatory puyo battle with the ghosts.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: As detailed above in Quest for a Wish, most of the characters wind up wasting the wish they were battling for.
- Tournament Arc: The story mode takes place during a Puyo tournament where everyone is raring to compete. The prize for winning is a magic medal that grants them one wish of their choosing.
- Your Costume Needs Work: During Dark Prince's story mode, Klug says that Dark Prince's wearing a costume, more or less saying he isn't really who he is. Let's ignore the fact that Klug said Satan was a myth, but let's focus more on the fact he's saying that our green-haired villain is wearing a costume of a guy from an entirely different section of Puyo Puyo's history. Which he got from a book about another dimension. ...Unless he means the real Satan...
