Game looks great, who knows maybe SEGA/Atlus will wisen up and give the franchise a shot. I mean, for a long while they didn't think Miku would have a market here.
A key factor to remember is that unlike the past, the guys at SEGA and Atlus are paying attention to what people are saying. For example, on Twitter
John Hardin "reports" that Sam Mullan "died" because of the many mentions of Puyo Puyo Chronicles. In a similar vein there's a hashtag on Twitter called
#PuyoChroniclesForTheWest, where even non-fans are throwing their support.
But the weird factor is that the game is getting attention from social media and gaming journalists, which 10 years ago was an alien concept, where Puyo Puyo would normally be ignored since it's traditionally a Japan-only franchise. Not helping that years ago SEGA was having a rut when it comes to being third party, having an experimental phase during the GCN/PS2/XBOX era and the infamous rut during the Wii/PS3/Xbox360 era. It's also noting that the series was an "antithesis" at the time SEGA started having control of the franchise. The 2000's was arguably when people wanted games to be taken more "seriously", so naturally there was more demand for T or M rated games, especially when games like Halo was a success and Grand Theft Auto was starting to pick up steam. It was also a time when the puzzle genre was starting to wane in popularity, where even big ones like Tetris were normally regulated to low budget games on the GBA at best. When you combine both factors, Puyo Puyo didn't jell with the general audience, and it shows with games like Puyo Pop and Puyo Pop Fever quickly falling into obscurity.
The factors as to why Puyo Puyo Chronicles in contrast is getting demand from people outside of Japan might be a side effect of varies things that gradually built up.
- The puzzle game genre has been revived in recent years, albeit for an entirely different reason. Mobile games like Puzzle & Dragons and it's varies clones means that people are having more exposure to the simple yet effective premise these type of games generally have, and even before that there was people interested in games like Bejeweled. However, a straight forward "drop block" variant is still scarce in the market. Even in recent years Tetris has been under fire for it's controversial games like the badly programmed Tetris Ultimate or the microtransactions with Tetris Blitz. Attempts at trying to bring back franchises like Magical Drop also fell on the wayside for similar shoddy handling. So Puyo Puyo holds a valuable niche that has been lost or abused in recent years, which is one of the reasons why the franchise is still going strong in Japan in contrast to many SEGA franchises that eventually die off.
- Relating to the above, but Puyo Puyo Tetris. As a side effect of Tetris Ultimate not being exactly "ultimate", people looked into an alternative, which is where Puyo Puyo Tetris comes in. No tricks or lies, Puyo Puyo Tetris is what you would expect from any good Tetris title, but because of the Puyo Puyo elements like the cute comical characters it also has more personality then a generic game of Tetris. It also helps that the game is easily available on platforms that lack region locking like the varies Sony consoles or the XboxOne, so it's very easy game to get.
- The Cranky Food Friends controversy. Cranky Food Friends would of been just another throw away mobile game in the same vein as any other Puzzles & Dragons clone, if it wasn't for the factor that it was a reskin of Puyo Puyo Quest. In this day and age, a type of localization like this doesn't fly with people anymore, unlike in the 80's and 90's where this type of practice was common due to banking on the ignorance of consumers. Also it was around the time that SEGA Vice President Haruki Satomi stated that he wanted to improve the image of SEGA, so Cranky Food Friends being soft launched around the same time was a case of bad timing.
- Project Diva games tend to reference different SEGA franchises, like Sonic, Fantasy Zone, After Burner, Virtua Fighter, and so on, with Puyo Puyo being no exception. However, Puyo Puyo takes it a step further by having a simple minigame in Project Mirai DX that acts as a straight forward game against 5 opponents, and also including costumes based on Arle and Satan.
- The recent movement in localizing games. SEGA has notoriety for not localizing games, which became a problem since for a while SEGA's offerings like the shoddy Sonic titles or movie license games were not winning people over. Not helping that games like Phantasy Star Online 2 were not localized despite the large amount of interest. However in recent years this problem gradually started to reverse itself, where even games that everyone doubted would get localized like 7th Dragon III or SEGA 3D Classics Collection suddenly appearing. It also ties into the recent controversies regarding to SEGA of Europe being adamant about releasing said games to their countries.
- SEGA 3D Classics Collection as mentioned above has an arcade perfect port of Puyo Puyo Tsu, one of the most popular and influential games in the entire franchise. No trying to disguise the fact it's Puyo Puyo by making "3D Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine" or anything like that, and it's one of the selling points of the collection since this game normally doesn't get included in the many SEGA compilations and it's (or technically was) an exclusive. In fact the game is so popular that this specific version even got an independent release on the eShop in Japan.
An important thing to remember is that this is a snowball effect in action. By itself these wouldn't drive people to be interested in Puyo Puyo Chronicles, but when you combine all these factors into the equation, suddenly there's support for an otherwise neglected franchise. It also helps that the game itself shows a lot of promise. A fresh look along with an ambitious RPG mode, along with a lot of multiplayer features, it's easy to see why this would appeal to people. Another important detail is that since this is an 3DS exclusive game (at least so far), it means unlike Puyo Puyo Tetris there isn't an easy way to simply import the game without either modding and risking your 3DS to be bricked or importing a Japanese 3DS.
