When comparing Puyo Puyo Tetris vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best single player games on PS4?” NieR: Automata is ranked 19th while Puyo Puyo Tetris is ranked 86th. The most important reason people chose NieR: Automata is:
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Two strategic, classic games in one
This game combines the fun and strategy of Tetris and Puyo Puyo together.
In Tetris, shapes drop from the top of the screen at varying speeds. You can rotate these shapes around to form lines at the bottom of the screen. When a line is formed, it clears out space on your screen, which allows you more room for more matches. Tetris is a beloved classic that has stood the test of time.
Puyo Puyo is a color matching game. Colored pieces fall from the top of the screen onto a tile-based board. By matching four pieces of the same color in rows or columns, all the matched pieces will disappear (called "popping") which gives you more room for more matches. The real fun in Puyo Puyo comes from making strategic matches that cause large amounts of tiles on your screen to pop and cause a chain reaction of matches (called "chaining").
Whether it's the shape-matching of Tetris, or the color-matching of Puyo Puyo, both games offer a lot of room for strategy. Getting both games (not to mention the dozen different game modes) in one package is a great deal.
Pro Fast and frantic competitive play
The smooth mix of Tetris versus Puyo Puyo really lends itself well to competitive play. Getting matches on your side and sending your friend trash pieces (while they do the same to you) is a great way to blend the two games into some frantic head to head action. Scrambling to outplay your friends is made even more interesting by the fact that you're playing two completely separate games side by side. In some modes, your boards will even swap at random meaning you'll have to pay attention to the action on both boards at the same time.
Pro Very interesting gameplay premise
Putting the shape-matching nature of Tetris head to head with the color-matching style of Puyo Puyo sounds weird, but it works. One player will be playing Tetris, while the other is playing Puyo Puyo. The goal is to make as many matches as fast as you can, which will send trash pieces to your friend's board. The seamless blend of two different games combined with over a dozen different modes results in matches that play out in extremely interesting and creative ways.
Pro Tons of game modes
There are training modes that teach you how to play, a story mode where you can watch an adventure play out, and even a free mode where you choose the rules. Some interesting multiplayer modes include: a mode where your boards swap at random, a mode where you both play the same game, and a mode where one player plays Tetris while the other plays Puyo Puyo.
In total, there are six challenge modes, five arcade modes, three lesson modes, and also an adventure mode with a hundred stages. Regardless of your play style, you'll easily be able to find an exciting mode that suits your tastes.
Pro Great online experience
The online community for this game is very friendly and welcoming of new players. Finding quick matches with others is also quick and easy due to the rather large pool of players who actively play this game.
Pro Level skip for tricky puzzles
A handy level skip keeps adventure mode fun without being frustrating. If you're ever stuck on a certain level for way too long, you can just skip over it and keep progressing to watch the story play out.
Pro Fast-paced, action-packed combat
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Pro Unique storytelling with a real emotional impact
NieR: Automata's outlook on storytelling is incredibly special. To get the full experience, you have to run multiple playthroughs of the game, each of which offers a new experience and perspective. Your world view of the story events and characters expands drastically as you complete each playthrough, playing on your expectations to help you develop a deeper emotional bond with the protagonists and become invested in their plight.
Things take a real turn on your third playthrough, putting you on an emotional roller coaster all the way to the true ending. The plot twists and knocks on the fourth wall elevate the story to a truly unique place. Getting all the way to the very end can be a religious experience from how much heart and meaning you discover in the symbolism.
Pro It's got a hauntingly beautiful environment
NieR: Automata is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape after Earth has been overrun by hostile machines, and the artists really nailed what that would feel like. Abandoned and overgrown cities litter the landscape along with old refineries, graveyards, and eerie forests. When you add the beautiful soundtrack to the experience, it fills you with a bittersweet mix of loneliness and hope.
Pro Varied genre-spanning gameplay elements
NieR: Automata has different types of gameplay to keep things interesting. From the very start, you're on an on-rails bullet hell section, and then you switch over to the more traditional action RPG style of fast-paced combat. Things change up again not long after with some side-scrolling platforming from a 2D view. Later on in the story, there's a hacking mini-game where you navigate a tiny ship through a short puzzle, with the music changing to a charming retro sound to fit the theme and mood. This is a game that doesn't stay boxed in a single genre.
Pro An incredible amount of content
Outside of the main story, there's plenty of optional content to dive into. The side quests are the best way to get to know the characters and lore of the world, with some of them giving clever and subtle foreshadowing of the game's most critical events. There are also weapons to collect and upgrade, each of which offer nice little tidbits of lore after you get them to max level. And after reaching a certain point in the story, you get access to Chapter Select that lets you go back and replay whatever you want. You can easily spend 60+ hours exploring the world and still have much more to do.
Pro Gorgeous, ethereal soundtrack with amazing vocals
NieR: Automata's music is out of this world. It's so stunning and elegant in a way that nothing else can really live up to. The soundtrack manages to emotionalize the game through music, from the action-packed tracks with hard-hitting wind instruments and percussion, to the softer, somber songs that encapsulate the hauntingly beautiful environments and story moments you encounter. Vocals in the lore's indescribable language makes the music even more memorable, adding to the ethereal quality of the sound. This soundtrack is definitely one that you can go back to again and again without getting sick of it.
Cons
Con Unfair matchmaking in online mode
There is no organized skill ladder, and all online matches are completely random. This can lead to some very unfair games at times, especially when skilled, experienced players are matched up against new players.
Con Has some balance issues
When you go head to head with another player, one of you will be playing Tetris and one will be playing Puyo Puyo. Not only does each game feature different mechanics, but there are some overpowered tactics (on both sides) which can send way too many trash pieces onto your opponent's board. Some more tuning is definitely needed.
Con Tetris is slowed down
In order to be balanced with the speed of Puyo Puyo, the Tetris game has lots of artificial delays in pieces dropping which prevents you from playing as quick as you are capable. This can be frustrating to some, especially experienced Tetris players.
Con Story mode will not appeal to all
The characters in the story mode are from the Puyo Puyo anime. Unless you're a fan of the show and its characters, you probably won't get much entertainment out of it.
Con Limited open world
Even though NieR: Automata is technically an open world game, it doesn't always feel like it. It's more that there's a big open space in the center of the ruined city you explore, with branches that lead off to vastly different environments, like a desert, a village, and a few other places. These locations aren't that spacious, either, and it's a bit of a stretch to even imagine all of these places being so close together in the first place. It's not too much of an issue as long as you find the story and combat engaging enough.
Con Second playthrough can get repetitive
Once you get to Route B, your second playthrough, you may find that too much is the same. There are some big differences, such as the new way you get to see things play out, but a lot of it rehashes Route A, your first playthrough. There's a ton of hacking you have to do as well, which gets pretty boring after repeating it over and over again. But if you stick with it, Route C and onward are absolutely worth the time spent getting to that point.
Con Some boring fetch quests
The pacing gets messed up when you're forced to run certain fetch quests near the start of the game. This is somewhat forgivable after the fun and action-packed introductory level, but the quests themselves are still a drag to play through. Some of the side quests can also boil down to the same thing. Even though these quests give a lot of useful information about the world, they're not all that fulfilling, and you may dread having to repeat them when playing through the game again.
Con Buggy on PC
Some players complain about the game crashing, freezing, their save files mysteriously disappearing, and more. As of June 2018, over a year after the game's initial release, there is still no patch to fix these problems. Not everyone on PC will have these bugs, but it's still quite prevalent. If you continually run into issues, your best bet is to find a mod or play the console versions instead of waiting on an official patch that may never happen.