Happiness Drops!

[h1]And the prize for the most infuriating game goes to…Happiness Drops![/h1] I usually try being as gentle about reviewing as possible. After all, developers and publishers have to work a lot to bring us various games, and all efforts should be appreciated instead of being mixed with mud. However, Happiness Drops is one of the exceptions when I just cannot but give it a negative mark and tell off people who managed to develop such a monstrosity of the gameplay. When I bought this game, I was expecting a lighthearted story with cute characters and moderately challenging gameplay. After all, how can a lovely-looking title cause any trouble, right? Wrong! Just about four hours of suffering was enough for me to start fuming. And I thought that Kotodama was a true torture! Ha! If Kotodama at least had good translation, an intriguing story, and a pretty nice cast of characters (as well as decent length for the asking price), Happiness Drops has next to none of the above. Instead, it presents very short story with google-translated text and tons of tedious Tetris-like stages that become repetitive after the first three characters, if not faster. But let me describe everything step by…

This game is a fast-paced arcade puzzle game, which I feel has gone from a staple of Japanese gaming to an underrepresented genre. It is very, very mechanically similar to Puyo Puyo. But it's got two big differences. The first is that you only need to match 3 same-colour things together, instead of 4. The second is there's a meter you can build up and if you push both left & right rotation buttons simultaneously, it does a special move, to remove grey blocks and counter your opponent. There's also a minor difference in that you don't get a bonus attack for completely clearing the blocks on your screen. Regarding difficulty: I guess it all comes down to how naturally making chains is to you. I found that the 3-block match and there only being a few different colours on the board means that it's actually perhaps too easy to make a match, and you're constantly trying to think in terms of not screwing up the chains you're constructing, which means I was really taking a different approach. However, I also think: "Very Easy" and "Easy" modes are maybe too easy. "Normal" mode... I played for 45 minutes and just was stuck on the first battle. Not in danger of losing, but hardly about …

Giving this game a slight pass only because its a throwaway game for fans of the "Happiness!" franchise and its low price tag. It's about as basic as a drop-style puzzle game can get in this day and age where you connect three of the same object to eliminate it from the playing field. As you are attacked or eliminate junk, you raise your special (magic) meter and when it's full, you can unleash an ability unique to each of the game's five main characters to turn the tables. The one slightly notable trait is that when a character pulls off a large combo, junk is dropped "in waves", and the closer you are to defeat, the more your special meter scales in an attempt to help you make a comeback. As such, there is a strong counter element to the game. Reading the other reviews, I thought I was playing a completely different game as this title is ridiculously easy for the most part due to its match-three system and limited amount of drops and I'm not a professional puzzle game enthusiast (I've played many puzzlers over the years, but I'd get curb stomped on the higher levels of more difficult games like Puyo Puyo, Puzzle Bobble, etc.). At any rate, the graphics are serviceable with som…

This game is a really bad knock-off of Puyo Puyo. I spent like 20 minutes on the first stage and neither of us was winning.

Such a lazy release. The tutorial only displays gamepad controls, and it's not at all obvious that you have to press Z (why?!) in order to progress from the win/lose screen after a match. There doesn't seem to be any way to get back to the title screen either. There's no point in the story mode since it's been either machine translated, or translated by someone with a very tenuous grasp of English. The gameplay is pretty standard Tetris/Puyo Puyo stuff, which I enjoy, but I have no desire to keep playing because of the poor quality.

The art is cute. I don't regret trying this. But if you like to have fun when you play a game, then this is not for you. The gameplay is pure boredom. Nothing ever happens; you just keep making combos by putting three of the same colour together in pretty much any pattern, and the computer does the same, and since nothing happens, nobody ever loses, ever, for a hundred million years. You would expect unbalanced, badly paced, slow and boring gameplay from a lesser quality fanservice H-Game, but this is an innocent vanilla game, with very pretty art, very annoying music, and somniferous repetition that passes for gameplay. I wasn't expecting the genius of Puzzle Fighter 2X, Bust a Move 4 or Puyo Champions, or the personality of Huniepop; I was expecting a stupid but fun, relaxing indie game with cute art to waste a few minutes. And I still left disappointed. And yet, sadly, I kind of want to play another round every time I spend half an hour with three-line-high screens of jewels and choose to exit the game because it's so boring. It's "what the hell am I doing with my life" boring. It's "I should just organise my sock drawer or lie down and look at the ceiling for 40 minutes" …