Puyo Puyo Tetris 3


Quick drop defaults to on in Puyo


Modes:

>All of the modes from the first two Puyo Puyo Tetris games return here (Versus, Fusion, Swap, Party, Big Bang, Skill Battle, Fever, Sprint, Marathon, Ultra). Skill Battle has been tweaked to have skills more akin to those seen in the singleplayer campaign (more on that later) and to allow more flexible team building. All modes are much more customizeable. For example, you can change the line count for Marathon and Sprint, the time limit for almost everything (Party, swap times in Swap), etc.

>All modes can be played in "Classic" mode, where reaching the top is gameover, "Score" mode, where reaching the top removes some score and the highest scorer wins, and "Health" mode, where clearing lines not only sends garbage to your opponent, but also damages them. Reaching the top also damages you. Whoever runs out of health first loses.

>You have the ability to customize the playfield's size at will, making it shorter, wider, taller, thinner, etc.

>There are a variety of unusual Minos and Puyos, and you can individually choose whether or not you want to include each one (you can also exclude any normal Minos or Puyos you wish.) You can also draw your own Minos/Puyos on a 5x5 grid and add them to matches at will.

>You can choose to set it so that instead of rotating Minos/Puyos you flip them horizontally and vertically. You can also choose to set inverted gravity, meaning that Minos fall, and Puyos don't fall. These settings can each be individually set independently of all other modes, so they can be freely mixed with any mode.


New Modes:

Tetris but you have to fill in a shape as accurately as possible, with a variety of different shape challenges available.
Tetris but instead of clearing horizontal lines you clear vertical columns.
Tetris around a 3D cylinder, where you're trying to build climbable steps.

Tetris/Puyo but sometimes you get a corrupted Mino/Puyo that dumps garbage on you (and damages you in health mode) when a line/group with it is cleared, so lie them flat so they don't hit many lines in Tetris and try to avoid getting combos with them in Puyo.
Tetris/Puyo but Minos/Puyos fall from the top or the bottom and meet in the middle.
Bring back the Virtual Boy's 3D Tetris and have a 3D Puyo to go with it.
Tetris/Puyo but garbage blocks sometimes fall at the same time as your Minos/Puyos; they dissolve if they hit solid ground, but if your Mino/Puyo hits them on the way down they get stuck together, so you wanna be strategic to avoid them or maybe even make use of them (stick one to the end of an i-Mino, clear 5 lines at once, and get a special bonus for that, for example.)



Adventure:


The singleplayer campaign has been drastically revamped. The world map is much more open than before; it's a sweeping, expansive open world with tons of freedom and exploration. Each level has a difficulty ranking attacked to it so that you know what you're getting into. Levels are always in Health mode.

Basically, imagine Smash Ultimate's World of Light, but the rpg mechanics are wrapped around Puyo Puyo and Tetris instead of Smash.

Each level has four stars that can be earned. One for beating it, one for beating it and getting a certain amount of score, one for beating it within a certain time limit, and one for beating it with the Slime Soul equipped (an item that basically turns the game into hard mode. Opponents deal more damage and creating more garbage, and, most drastically, their AI is more advanced and works more quickly.)

These stars can be spent on the skill tree. Each character has their own skill tree, and therefore ends up with a very different playstyle once fully leveled. Skill tree items fall into a few categories. Firstly, there's passive buffs, such as dealing more damage, taking less damage, creating more garbage, taking less garbage, getting more score, the opponent getting less score, etc. There are also some more advanced character-specific buffs, such as slowly draining score from the opponent over time, or slowly regenerating life over time.

However, the real stars of the show are the active abilities. These are abilities that are triggered at will with a button press. Most of them expend your Mana, which you build up by scoring. Active abilities can also be upgraded, often increasing their power and/or reducing their Mana cost. Abilities include clearing the garbage on your screen, sending garbage over to your opponent, freezing the enemy's Puyos, increasing the drop speed for the enemy, gaining a shield that protects you from garbage for a short time, removing the last piece you just dropped (in case you put it in a bad place), and more!

If you don't want to use the skill tree for whatever reason, its effects can be toggled on and off from the menu.

Additionally, there are held items that can be earned through various means and then equipped for further boosts. In addition to the aforementioned hardmode that is the Slime Soul, these boosts include things like the Apple Core (A Pokemon reference that slowly heals you over time), the ability to have 2 hold slots in Tetris (the second one is accessed with ZL instead of the usual L), the ability to have a hold slot in Puyo, the ability to send Puyos through garbage by quick dropping them (the garbage ends up on top of the Puyos), and much more.

All of these RPG elements and boosts can be used in multiplayer matches with your friends, if you so choose (much like how Smash Ultimate lets you use spirits in multiplayer.)

After defeating the final boss and clearing out the main map, if you still long for even more to do, you'll find it in the Star Road. If you've aquired a certain number of stars over the course of the game, you can unlock the gate leading to the first tier of the Star Road, a linear series of several challenging levels. The Star Road has three tiers, and before each one you will come to a gate that requires you have acquired a certain amount of stars in total. After the end of the third tier of the Star Road, you will come to another Star Gate. If you can pass it, beyond it you will find a set of seven challenging levels, each of a different mode and gameplay style. These are the Trials of Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Kindness, Patience and Humility. 

If you manage to clear all of these trials, and get all four stars in each of them, as well as in every other level in the entire game, you will unlock one final level: the Trial of Virtue. This is an incredibly challenging standard Swap match against a very advanced AI, intended only for the most skilled and determined of players. It's nowhere near world champion player levels, but it's still far beyond the average player (though to be fair, the previous seven trials were also beyond the average player.)



Achievements:

There are a variety of achievements, all tied to feats in Adventure mode. They're grouped into various tiers depending on how challenging they are, so a player who can't get all of them can at least get all achievements in lower tiers, and feel good about the 100% there. The most challenging achievement (besides the "get all other achievements" one) is undoubtably the one for clearing the Trial of Virtue with the skill tree disabled (so no buffs to help you) and the Slime Soul equipped (so it's hard mode), while also beating it quickly enough to get the speed star *and* getting enough points to get the score star.

That being said, now that I write out the requirements for that one achievement, it sounds a bit ridiculous...hardmode Trial of Virtue with no buffs while getting every star may be a bit too much. I'm unsure, but it may be better to scrap that achievement. In order to get every star in the game for another achievement, you already need to do it on hardmode, you need to do it while getting that score, and you need to do it within that time limit. However, none of these  have to be done at the same time, and you're allowed to use the skill tree, which makes it much easier. So perhaps it should be removed.

If you're somehow skilled enough to do all of that, then nothing else in the game should prove troublesome for you, but the achievement for getting all four stars on every single level may still take a long time to get purely because of how many levels the game has.

There are, of course, far more tame achievements than that; there are achievements for clearing every level in an area (as well as overall), or for getting every star in an area (as well as the overall version mentioned earlier). There are also achievements for finding each item (and one for getting all items in total), and achievements for maxing out each character's skill tree (and one for maxing out the skill trees for all characters, which requires every star in the game.)