Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary: Everything all at once

Twenty different rulesets on one cart? Twenty? That’s about nineteen too many for one portable puzzle game, surely? Especially a landmark one in a series as well designed and long-revered as Puyo Puyo. Where’s the consistency? The sense of purpose? The balance? So I went into 20th Anniversary assuming it would be a directionless disaster, an awkward jumble of bits hastily nailed together for the sake of selling something that looked mostly new by a certain unmissable date. How nice it is to be so very wrong. The only “problem” with this game, as is often the case, is me. Why am I taking Puyo—the series with the yellow “gu-gu!“‘ing mascot, talking fishmen, and more recently, science bears—so seriously? Right from the start the game shows absolutely no interest in presenting itself as a dry, intimidating, colour-chaining trial for dedicated decades-old Puyo nerds, choosing instead to offer a bundle of fun unlockables, daft single-player stories for silly characters who can’t go two…