YMMV / Puyo Puyo Fever

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Despite the tedious hoops you have to jump through to trigger his fight, Carbuncle falls into this as he shows up and instigate a fight via magic overload right when Raffina was about to call out Ms. Accord for lying about her cane. You don't get any special ending cutscene if you do beat him, as the regular HaraHara ending plays regardless with his presence after going unacknowledged.
• Common Knowledge: Fever first released on the Sega NAOMI, but that was not the "lead" version of the game — the NAOMI and Dreamcast versions are actually downports of the GameCube version that happened to make it to market ahead of the original.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: According to producer Yuji Naka in one interview, most returning Japanese players only played as Arle and didn't bother to play as any of the new characters, much to his disappointment. This largely stems from Arle providing the closest to the series' traditional gameplay by lacking most of the new gimmick Puyos.
• Growing the Beard: For a while, SEGA's handling of the Puyo Puyo brand was rather lacking. There were straightforward ports of Puyo Puyo 2 on the Neo Geo Pocket Color and WonderSwan, a really bad version of Puyo Puyo on the N Gage, and an original game on the Game Boy Advance that blatantly tried to copy Compile. Puyo Puyo Fever was when the SEGA-era titles started to gain an identity with its new setting, artstyle, and gameplay mechanics.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The DS version was published by Atlus in North America, a decade before Sega, the owners of Puyo Puyo, acquired them in 2013.
• Memetic Mutation: The English Fever voice acting is treated as a meme in itself due to it being regarded as cheesy and hammy compared to the later Puyo game dubs.
• Polished Port: The Nintendo DS version is typically considered an improvement over the console versions. Besides being portable, the gameplay is extremely smooth and fast compared to the chunkier console ports below, you can choose which characters you want to use in the singleplayer modes, the non-Puyo screen has cute mini-battles with unique art, and the touch screen, rather than being a forced gimmick, is used for minor, but adorable things like messing with the characters. It even fixes some of the worse localization issues like "Prince of ocean" becoming Ocean Prince. It does have a few weaknesses, though; voice language and text language are linked, meaning if you wanted to listen to Japanese audio, you'll have to take Japanese text too; and the Microphone, which can be used to taunt, is very sensitive. Play in a moving car at your own risk.
• Porting Disaster: Fever DX, released for touchscreen Java phones, is by far the worst way to play the game. Not only is the frame rate heavily cut down and the touch buttons aren't the most responsive, it has extremely grating MIDI music that only loops once before stopping, tinny sounds and voice samples, a "Blind Idiot" Translation compared to the console versions, and brings back the loving Scrappy Mechanic of not being able to rotate your Puyo pairs counter-clockwise from the original arcade version of Puyo Puyo.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The PS2, Xbox and GameCube versions use the 3D graphics for the Puyos and move the camera dynamically whenever Fever Mode is activated. While the 3D Puyo and camera effects can be nice, the camera can often be annoying and distracting. More significantly, there's a piece delay between all of your pieces and movement just feels wrong. While once regarded as the standard version, it is now considered a weaker version of the game.
• That One Boss:
  • Popoi in the HaraHara course, especially in Hard difficulty. He plays as fast as possible, has a large dropset (allowing him to stall out and reach Fever more easily) and has strong Fever chaining power. On top of that, he plays with four colors while you have five. Carbuncle, the Superboss that can be fought instead of Popoi, exchanges some Fever chaining power for an even larger dropset, so it's not any easier.
  • To a lesser extent, also in the HaraHara course, there's Yu. Her AI is nowhere near as fast as Popoi or Carbuncle's, and you play with four colors... while Yu plays with three, allowing her to stall for enough time until Margin Time makes her stalling go from annoying to very dangerous.
  • In the WakuWaku course, Arle can and will be your ultimate showstopper regardless on how you approach Amitie's story, even moreso than the actual Final Boss himself. Good news, Arle has no special pair Puyos in her dropset unlike the rest of the Fever cast. Bad news, she will prove time and time again that she doesn't need them as she will set up large chains in a heartbeat and leave you buried under Nuisance the moment you blink, almost like Sonic Team wanted to remind you why she was, and still is, the definitive "A" protagonist of the franchise.
• Vindicated by History: Not a lot of people in the Japanese Puyo community liked the new Fever rules or the 3 and 4-Puyo drop pieces simply for existing and seemingly replacing the traditional Tsu rules, but they're a lot more appreciated now since they introduced brand new chain setups that allow for even longer attacks.