Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S review – pleasant, playful puzzling

Tetris is one of my all-time favorite games. Things can’t get much better than stacking colorful blocks together at increasingly manic speeds. Or so I thought, before I started playing Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S and discovered the strange joy of puyo battles.

Despite my love of cute anime games and puzzles, I’d never tried a Puyo Puyo title prior to this review, but I’ve always been curious. Luckily, Sega rereleased its Tetris crossover sequel exclusively for the Nintendo Switch 2, so I decided to jump in for the first time. As it’s a rerelease, the story is practically the same as 2020’s game, which we covered in our Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 review, but it’s still new to me.

Following on from the first Puyo Puyo Tetris game, the worlds of Puyo and Tetris are separated once more, and Ringo, Tee, and their companions can’t remember anything about each other. Regardless, they team up to chase down a new antagonist, Marle, across Suzuran, Primp Town, and the S.S Tetra, recruiting allies and taking part in Puyo Puyo and Tetris battles along the way. As Ruby mentioned in her original review, the story and interactions can get a little repetitive over time, but the character designs are adorable, it’s fully voiced, and the writing is pretty funny. Plus, you can skip cutscenes to get straight to the puzzles if you prefer.

As I said before, I love Tetris, but Puyo Puyo is unknown territory for me, so I faced a bit of a learning curve getting used to chaining combos. Luckily, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S has an entire section dedicated to lessons for both puzzle games, so I’ve had a browse and slowly my Puyo skills have improved. The battles are also a little tricky to get your head around at first, as you have to balance your puzzling skill with characters’ special abilities and item modifiers, but each level comes with a recommended loadout, and you can switch game modes if, like me, you’re more comfortable with one than the other.

While I love a challenge in my puzzle games, I don’t enjoy bashing my head against a wall to progress, and Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S has a bunch of features to make experiencing the Adventure mode fun rather than frustrating. As well as the battle mode options I just mentioned, you can change the difficulty level of fights whenever you want, or just skip a stage entirely if it’s giving you a hard time. I love it when games acknowledge that there’s no shame in playing on easy mode or skipping levels. Games are meant to be fun, at the end of the day.

Puyo Puyo’s character design is one of my favorite things about the series, so I really enjoy getting to customize my profile with different avatars, frames, and backgrounds to match my character. I’ve been playing as Yu and Rei, the pair of ghosts who were new to Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S, and my profile is very cute to match them. Sadly, I’ve not been able to show it off to many people, as every time I’ve tried to play online, I haven’t been able to find a match.

This is a real shame because, although beating a CPU can be rewarding at first, I would much rather test my skills against strangers online and climb the Tetris ranks. I’m not sure whether this is down to a lack of marketing for the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, or if the intended audience is happy to stick to the original version from five years ago, but not being able to engage with a huge part of the game is a big drawback.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S’s major new feature for the Switch 2 is the support for mouse controls. Generally, I’ve been a pretty big advocate for the potential of mouse controls for the Switch 2, especially as you can use a third-party USB mouse when the console is docked, but I’m not quite sure they work here. This game’s control scheme for docked and handheld play is so intuitive already that trying to adapt to an entirely new, single Joy-Con system feels unnecessary and fiddly. Of course, some pro players out there might find that mouse controls give them higher precision and faster reaction times, but I highly doubt it using the Joy-Con mouse. I’d much prefer an arcade joystick peripheral for Tetris to emulate its origins.

Overall, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S is a fun and lighthearted puzzle game with a wide range of game modes and multiplayer potential – the local multiplayer is still a blast, even if online isn’t viable right now. It’s the same price digitally as the original game for the Nintendo Switch, but with a couple of new features, so if you’re after a new addition for your Nintendo Switch 2, you should give it a go.

If you’re still undecided on Nintendo’s new handheld, make sure you read our extensive Nintendo Switch 2 review. We’ve also written a Mario Kart World review, a Cyberpunk 2077 Switch 2 review, a Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut review, and a Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour review to give you the full picture of the console’s launch titles.