In the latest issue of Famitsu, Sega announced the latest entry for the Puyo Puyo franchise, Puyo Puyo Chronicle. The game is being developed for the Nintendo 3DS, and is scheduled to be released on December 8th in Japan. The game’s standard edition will retail for 5,490 yen. To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the franchise, an Anniversary Box edition will also be made available for 9,490 yen. This limited edition contains a soundtrack, vocal tracks CD, a drama CD and a special Anniversary theme for your 3DS.
Puyo Puyo Chronicle features a RPG story mode starring Arle and her companion Carbuncle. At the start of the game Arle becomes transported to a new world, and in order to return to her own world she begins an adventure with a mysterious girl named Allie. Battles in this mode have a twist on the traditional Puyo Puyo falling block gameplay: as you erase Puyo blocks you’ll deal damage to enemies. Like with traditional Puyo Puyo, chaining a combo in erasing Puyo will escalate the damage dealt to the opponent. This game mode will be presented in full 3D fields. Sega promises a long story with over 60 side quests to complete. Alongside Arle, other fan favorite characters from previous Puyo Puyo games will show up throughout the adventure. So far only Amity and Ringo have been confirmed.
When taking a break from the main quest, you can enjoy a large array of traditional Puyo Puyo game modes. Puyo Puyo Chronicle will feature 17 different rules to play with, which were introduced in previous entries of the series. The RPG battle mode can also be enjoyed in a local multiplayer titled “Boss Battle with Everyone”. The objective is to team up in 4 player to fight a boss. Only for multiplayer, the battle system features a “chance time” where you could enter Fever mode if you met the conditions during the fight.
The game hasn’t been announced for the West, but there was a lot of enthusiasm surrounding the release of Puyo Puyo 2 in the SEGA 3D Classics Collection on the Nintendo 3DS, and a Puyo Püyo mini-game was also included in Project Mirai DX. Given that we’ve even seen the release of 7th Dragon III Code: VFD in recent times, a game nobody really expected SEGA to release, there’s hope that Puyo Puyo Chronicle might also end up being localized.
Thanks, Gematsu, for the translation.
I hardly doubt they will ever make a better game than Puyo Puyo Tetris, specially one that could have a chance in the west.