Puyo Puyo Champions

My honest first reaction to Puyo Puyo Champions was that it feels more like a tournament client than a full game release. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to know exactly what you are signing up for before you spend money on it. Sega released this one in Japan under the name Puyo Puyo eSports, and that label is a far more accurate description of what is actually inside the box. Two rulesets, Puyo Puyo 2 and Fever, sit at the centre of everything. Puyo Puyo 2 is the straightforward version: two-piece colored blobs fall from the ceiling, you stack them to match groups of four or more of the same color, and successfully planned cascades dump junk puyos onto your opponent. Fever switches up the formula by giving each character a distinct drop pattern and unlocking a short burst mode where pre-loaded chains can be fired off for massive garbage payloads. The mechanical difference between the two modes is real, and having both available is one of the stronger arguments for picking this up over Puyo Puyo Tetris, which does not include Fever rules at all. The problem lands the moment you try to play solo or bring in a friend who has never touched the series. There is no proper tutorial anywhere in the game, which is a genuinely odd omission for something branded as a competitive entry point. The single-player offering amounts to a standard CPU match and an endurance mode where you face one opponent after another without your board clearing between rounds. Both are fine for warming up, but neither has any meaningful progression or leaderboard to push against. No unlockables, no story, no endless puzzle mode. What you see is genuinely everything that is here. For a player who already knows what a 10-chain looks like and wants to drill it against real opposition, that minimalism works. For everyone else, it reads as barebones. Online is where Champions was designed to live, and the PC version carries a specific caveat worth knowing. The concurrent player count on Steam is very modest, routinely sitting in the double digits according to tracking data. Matchmaking does attempt skill-based pairing, but the small pool means you will frequently run into opponents who are considerably more experienced. The community that does exist is dedicated and knowledgeable, and the in-game match broadcast viewer is a genuinely useful feature for studying high-level play. The netcode itself has been described as solid, handling cross-region matches without major latency problems. But if you are not willing to seek out games through Discord or community hubs, finding a random opponent at your level on PC is genuinely inconsistent. The audio side also picks up a recurring criticism worth flagging: character voices shout the chain count aloud with every successive match, which gets grating fast during longer sessions, and there is no option to mute voicework independently from other sound. Visually the game is bright and clean, with a good range of characters pulled from over two decades of Puyo history. Cosmetic customisation covers character choice, stage backgrounds, music tracks, and even the visual style of the puyos themselves, including a retro pixel look. None of that changes the gameplay, but it shows polish in the places the developers cared about. If you already own Puyo Puyo Tetris and are happy with it, the case for Champions narrows to two things: Fever mode and a tighter online matchmaking structure. If you have neither and want an entry into the series, Champions is the harder starting point. Puyo Puyo Tetris gives you a story mode, far more variety, and a gentler learning slope. Champions assumes you are already converted and want to sharpen your chains against serious competition. Alex, Scout Team