Support NeoGAF

[Durden77]

What is Puzzle Fighter?

Puzzle Fighter is a brand new free to play game from Capcom on iOS an Android, based on the classic Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo. You pick a team of Capcom characters and beat the shit out of other players online in puzzle matches. Your team of characters fight according to how well you're doing in the puzzle match.

The game has SOFT LAUNCHED in these territories:

Australia
Canada
Hong Kong
Malaysia
Mexico
Singapore

If you are not in one of the soft launch territories but still want in now, Android users can download the APK here. (On iOS you will have to make a dummy Apple account in one of the launch territories to access it)

You can download APK here. Scroll to the APK version history, and download 1.1.2

Keep in mind this is a SOFT LAUNCH, which means many things in the game will be adjusted during this period. The game is expected to be fully launched before the end of the year.

Sweet, Puzzle Fighter owns. Is it just like the original?

Not exactly. The core gameplay is still the same. You match gems of the same color together, and use a crash gem of also the same color to clear all the matching gems that touch. Diamond gems clear every gem of the color it touches on the field regardless of if they are touching. By doing this, your character attacks your opponent, and garbage gems are dropped on their field which they have to work around. If you match gems of the same color in the form of squares/rectangles, your attacks will be even stronger. (And in this game launch special moves, more on that in a bit.)

That all sounds good, but I fucking hate change. Makes me wanna just bite something. What are the differences?

-You now have a life bar. Not only will attacks drop garbage gems, but they will also drain life. In SPF2T, you won the game when your opponent's screen was overflowed with gems (like Tetris), where as in Puzzle Fighter, you win the game by depleting your opponent's health bar. If the screen does overflow with gems, you will lose a large amount of health, and the bottom half of your field will be erased, leaving you at a very large disadvantage.

-Every character now has 2 special attacks and 1 super attack. Specials are activated by creating certain patterns of squares/rectangles and clearing them. Not only do specials typically do more damage, but they sometimes have special traits as well, such as healing, damage boosts, or stun. Characters have multiple specials that they can unlock and can interchange, but can only use 2 at a time. Supers are activated by building a meter over time, and you can give your super meter a large boost by touching a diamond gem to the bottom of the field, yielding a tech bonus.

-The game is now made up of teams of 3 (1 main fighter and 2 support fighters) rather than 1v1. Your support character's attacks will activate once a certain square/rectangle criteria is met. Support attacks can also include special traits such as healing, damage boosts, ect.

-The artstyle is obviously different. Going from sprites to full 3D models, but still going for a chibi-ish style. Whether you enjoy the style is obviously up to personal preference, but I'd say give it a shot before you bash it too much. The presentation has a lot of character, and I personally think it looks a lot better in motion.

-But the biggest change is...

It's got free to play bullshit? What is the free to play bullshit?

Yes it has free to play shit. This Puzzle Fighter is designed around a F2P model. Characters and special moves cards are pulled with a gacha like system. Characters level up as their special moves level up and become stronger. If you are fighting a player that has a higher character level, depending on how much of a higher level they are than you, you will be fighting an uphill, but typically not impossible, battle.

You can get characters/cards from Honda's gifts after your battles, chests from various events, and just buying them with currency in the shop. This is a soft launch, so prices, and general F2P balance stuff are being tested. Premium currency is red fucking crystals or whatever which you can buy with real money, and the standard currency is coins.

All kind of sounds like bullshit, but whatever. What characters are in the game?

The current roster of characters in the game are:

-Ryu
-Chun Li
-Ken
-M. Bison
-Nash
-Dan
-E. Honda
-Frank West
-Chuck Greene
-Megaman X
-Morrigan
-Haggar
-Dante (Trailer)

Characters that have been confirmed to be added at a later date are:

-Jill (Trailer)
-Phoenix Wright
-Blanka

Game sucks. I hate it, wish I could manifest a physical face for it so I could punch it.

Yeah that's fine. Between people's love for the original, art style and gameplay changes, and F2P aspects, the game has the potential to be divisive. While opinions on the game are welcome regardless, please do not post intending to purley derail, and please, no drive by shit-posts.

I will add more to the OP as the game settles in more. I've personally become pretty addicted to the game, and wanted a more concrete place it could be discussed. If anyone has any information they'd like to be added, just let me know. You also have the abilty to add friends and fight them directly, so if there's interest in starting a GAF friends list, I will get to work on adding that.

Also, for the Jawmuncher Foundation.

I got the Capcom Vancouver Community Manager asking who I want in Puzzle Fighter. I need ya'll to like the hell out of that tweet
https://twitter.com/Jawmuncher/status/913892791528370176
Regina in Puzzle Fighter would be better than nothing for me

 

[The Abominable Snowman]

Those characters look impossibly ugly and charmless but I still want to play out of love for the original.

 

[Durden77]

Those characters look impossibly ugly and charmless but I still want to play out of love for the original.

Believe it or not, the animations are actually pretty bursting with charm and character. Lots of legit cute an on point stuff (Haggar's intro recks). In motion is where this game's style shines, not so much in stills.

 

[Jawmuncher]

OT title should’ve been - Where is Dino Crisis

 

[angelic]

You either die a hero or live to become a F2P mobile game with crates.

 

[chrono01]

I doubt I'll play this much, and I'm still tempted to re-roll for Morrigan. Because...Morrigan.

 

[Strangelove77]

Jesus Christ this is one ugly looking game. Capcom's on a roll.

 

[Ravelle]

Can I have the original on Switch please?

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Yeah, the artstyle is actually really tolerable once you start playing, and the original animations really add a bunch of character. I wouldn’t let that deter you.

The core of PF is still there, even if it’s in a F2P/grinding wrapper. The discrepancies between high and low level players isn’t big enough to make it impossible to win or anything. You’ll have caught up anyway by a handful of games.

Really addicted. The complaits about changes are overblown after sinking in dozens of matches. I would still however trade it all for a barebones classic mode.

 

[Tizoc]

Chibi Haggar looks kinda cute

 

[RedAssedApe]

Chibi Haggar looks kinda cute

Came here to post this too. Dat smile Lol

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

We got a good looking chibi Mega Man:

From that to this:

I mean, they're two different Mega Men but still. It's rough.

 

[Solidus187]

In the other thread, a few people were talking about how it's a bit of a battery hog, which is my biggest mobile game deterrent. Is there any kind of low-performance or low-battery mode?

 

[Om3ga]

I started playing this on the weekend. The only thing that sucks is there is no, "colourblind" mode. I was still able to see the difference in colours on the arcade, and GBA without it and on the home console I just adjusted the tint to be more green.

On iPhone (i believe there is a setting in android as well) there is a way to adjust the colours on your screen, but it doesn't really do much for me other than make things worse. So while I do enjoy the game for the most part it takes strategy out of it for me, and makes challenges extremely hard to complete.

Most other colour coded games that I play use shapes and colours so it's not that hard, but they also use a better choice of green and yellow.

Also hope they add more single player content other than challenges. After I get my 7 PVP wins and 3 challenges there isn't much to do except farm coins in PVP.

 

[N30RYU]

Everyone keep away from this shit...

And I don't mean that ungly shitty graphics... they turned a great puzzle game in a pay to win fuckfest.

This game is fucked in so many ways I don't know where to begin with.

 

[Durden77]

OT title should’ve been - Where is Dino Crisis

I added your tweet to the OP. I owe you for always havin Snake's back in Smash anyway.

 

[aka_bueno]

I don’t have a problem with the games visuals, it looks pretty clean and sharp on my 8 Plus. The animations are cool, and there’s a good level of polish so far.

Game is def in a soft launch stage though, I expect a lot of tweaks for full launch. They need to explain some basic mechanics to the player, like how do support characters work and how is their power calculated? How exactly do supers charge? What exactly do stuns do?

And they need to tweak the timers and values for their F2P stuff big time. Like, seasons are 30 days long? Really? So all the rewards you can earn by going up in rank you won’t get til the season ends, which is 30 days? Yeah, good luck holding people interested.

Also, when I first downloaded the game, the season was ending after about 48 hours. So I got up to Super Bronze. Then the season ended and I didn’t get any of the rewards (chests) for reaching that rank. The season timer just reset to 30 days and my rank is the same, so nothing reset they just...extended the season by a month?

Also, only 3 single player missions per day, like really? And right now the missions I get are 7 levels above me now, might as well not even play them. Wtf.

 

[Tizoc]

We got a good looking chibi Mega Man:

From that to this:

I mean, they're two different Mega Men but still. It's rough.

I think what you're trying to say is, they should've just hired that artist to chibi-fy the cast for this game.

From the looks of it, it's like someone saw the 'yelling guy' that is the icon for Clash of Clans and just went crazy applying to every character in the game.

 

[Durden77]

Yeah, the artstyle is actually really tolerable once you start playing, and the original animations really add a bunch of character. I wouldn't let that deter you.

The core of PF is still there, even if it's in a F2P/grinding wrapper. The discrepancies between high and low level players isn't big enough to make it impossible to win or anything. You'll have caught up anyway by a handful of games.

Really addicted. The complaits about changes are overblown after sinking in dozens of matches. I would still however trade it all for a barebones classic mode.

I have actually grown to quite like the changes. Besides the obvious issues when it comes to player levels not being the same, the special move system along with the health bar adds a type of character variety that I never felt much of in SPF2T (although I didn't get to technical with that game). Playing a character like M.Bison feels much different than playing a character like Ryu for instance. The supports add to this as well, although they seem pretty flat unless they have a special support ability like healing or something. In general though, it seems to give access to more playstyles than SPF2T did.

Chibi Haggar looks kinda cute

Came here to post this too. Dat smile Lol

Chibi Haggar has stolen the show for me. His intro is so good, wish I knew how to make a GIF of it.

In the other thread, a few people were talking about how it's a bit of a battery hog, which is my biggest mobile game deterrent. Is there any kind of low-performance or low-battery mode?

Game can definitely hit your battery hard, or at least mine on my old Galaxy S5. Unfortunately at the moment there it no power saving mode either, but the game is still in soft launch mode, so let's hope that it's added.

I started playing this on the weekend. The only thing that sucks is there is no, "colourblind" mode. I was still able to see the difference in colours on the arcade, and GBA without it and on the home console I just adjusted the tint to be more green.

On iPhone (i believe there is a setting in android as well) there is a way to adjust the colours on your screen, but it doesn't really do much for me other than make things worse. So while I do enjoy the game for the most part it takes strategy out of it for me, and makes challenges extremely hard to complete.

Most other colour coded games that I play use shapes and colours so it's not that hard, but they also use a better choice of green and yellow.

Also hope they add more single player content other than challenges. After I get my 7 PVP wins and 3 challenges there isn't much to do except farm coins in PVP.

Colorblind mode is another thing they will hopefully add after the soft launch as well. The game is pretty much useless without it for people who have trouble with that, so if they have any sort of sense they will. Right now I kind of like the amount of things to do per day though, because if the game had more stuff to do I'd probably spend way too much time playing it. But hey, more content is always a good thing, and something like an arcade mode would be nice.

 

[Spukc]

wow this shit is almost offensive to fans imo

 

[Jawmuncher]

I added your tweet to the OP. I owe you for always havin Snake's back in Smash anyway.

My Man

 

[dan2026]

Christ this looks fucking gash.

 

[Spman2099]

I would play it if it was on a system I owned. Begrudgingly, but I would play it.

 

[enzo_gt]

why the fuck does this give me Level 11 challenges when my best character is only Level 5

Bison creaming my ass with little effort

 

[N30RYU]

I would play it if it was on a system I owned. Begrudgingly, but I would play it.

you would play it till you see how pay to win this game is... 'cause you don't really stand a chance against an average player that had put money on it.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Everyone keep away from this shit...

And I don't mean that ungly shitty graphics... they turned a great puzzle game in a pay to win fuckfest.

This game is fucked in so many ways I don't know where to begin with.

have you actually played it beyond deleting it after seeing one bar fill or something? I haven't paid a dime and have been schooling peeps levels above me based on skill alone.

 

[Toshin]

I have a few chars unlocked, is there a way to level certain chars/moves specifically or am I at the mercy of missions and chest rng to get powered up?
Yeah I see those lvl 10 missions to kinda hard when your only lvl 3.If they are this hard, how do we get 1500 mp points per season?

 

[aka_bueno]

have you actually played it beyond deleting it after seeing one bar fill or something? I haven't paid a dime and have been schooling peeps levels above me based on skill alone.

Any tips? Like chaining and block placement for groups and stuff? I’ve been getting by winging it but really interested in actual strategies to get better!

 

[aka_bueno]

I have a few chars unlocked, is there a way to level certain chars/moves specifically or am I at the mercy of missions and chest rng to get powered up?
Yeah I see those lvl 10 missions to kinda hard when your only lvl 3.If they are this hard, how do we get 1500 mp points per season?

You can buy some at the store. They sell certain cards there, for instance I needed 2 more basic Ryu cards to level up the basic move and the store was selling them at the time for I think 5 credits or something. Was also selling some Chun Li move card for 20.

But yeah other than that, it’s mission chests or PvP win boat rewards mostly.

 

[seady]

The ugly art style obviously "inspired" by Clash of Clans.

 

[Dynamite Shikoku]

The ugly art style obviously "inspired" by Clash of Clans.

i thought it was inspired by a pile of rotting dog shit

 

[Toshin]

I was just playing just now and I think they ajusted the point tiers?.....

 

[Durden77]

I don’t have a problem with the games visuals, it looks pretty clean and sharp on my 8 Plus. The animations are cool, and there’s a good level of polish so far.

Game is def in a soft launch stage though, I expect a lot of tweaks for full launch. They need to explain some basic mechanics to the player, like how do support characters work and how is their power calculated? How exactly do supers charge? What exactly do stuns do?

I also definitely wanna know more about the intricacies. I still don't know what stun does, and supers definitely seem to be calculated different for each character. Haggar for instance definitely gets his super slower than Chun Li. I think they have to be careful though. It's good with these type of games to tell you the basics and let the players figure out the rest. But I definitely think at least telling us more about status effects would be good.

As far as not getting your rank chest, that's weird. Yeah the first season ended really soon after the game launched, but I still got my chest.

I was just playing just now and I think they ajusted the point tiers?.....

Definitely. I just jumped up like 200 points. To get to ultra Bronze is 900 now.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

I can't fucking believe MVC Infinite ended up not being the ugliest Capcom crossover this year.

 

[aka_bueno]

I was just playing just now and I think they ajusted the point tiers?.....

They def did, I was at 733 points but when I logged in I was at 933 and they adjusted the point brackets for all tiers. I think they even changed the icons for silver tier, I don’t remember them being so blue.

They’re def adjusting stuff as they go, still in soft launch.

So far I noticed them adjust the cost of unlocking new missions a couple days ago, and extending the season length. Now today with the PvP tiers.

 

[Durden77]

There's definitely some shit with the costumes. Just fought a dude with the hot Ryu outfit and he got a super way early, and then another later. Never seen 2 supers in one game. Could have had him if I woulda known that too, was savin a square for too long.

 

[slosherbomb]

IM really enjoying this game and feel it captures the more classic capcom feel in terms of care for characters and love for those games

 

[aka_bueno]

Getting better at it, was satisfying to beat a level 10 M. Bison SP Mission with my level 4 Chun Li hehe

 

[Durden77]

Ok so I've been super lucky with getting characters. The only characters I'm missing now are Dan, Nash, and Ken. Haven't spent any money.

It's awesome having them, but it's also kind of limiting me getting out of the lower levels because I get so many cards spread across so many characters. Can't complain, it will work out in the long run.

 

[ffvorax]

The "western" face design is ugly as hell.... just why?

Still want to try it.

 

[Mothman91]

Fucking aye, childhood classic game, I have very conflicted feelings on what to do.

I wanna try it but....this is not what I wanted...

 

[N30RYU]

have you actually played it beyond deleting it after seeing one bar fill or something? I haven't paid a dime and have been schooling peeps levels above me based on skill alone.

I have played it over a week. and once even the missions are against characters with 6 or 7 levels above you it difficults even getting some cash to buy moves with ingame money in the shop...

I got up to medium silver I think it was called and then the game is barely unplayable if you don't put real cash on it.

with almost the only option left to wait till the end of the season to get the reward or just pray to fight against someone around your level in online matches.

This game is the description of pay to win game unless the one that put money on it doen't have any clue about how to play... but if is clever enough to go for the color gems and shapes he needs you don't stand a chance 'cause more lvl doesn't only mean that their gems do more damage... also means that they have more life bar.


Is as simple as if you pop a lot of gems and you can't kill the other player in that move 'cause he have more life than you then the counter is almost sure that will kill you 'cause if he has more life bar means that his attacks are stronger and doing the same move he can deal more damage than you.

A socalled puzzle game can't be this unfair to ppl that won't put money on it.

 

[ffvorax]

I have played it over a week. and once even the missions are against characters with 6 or 7 levels above you it difficults even getting some cash to buy moves with ingame money in the shop...

I got up to medium silver I think it was called and then the game is barely unplayable if you don't put real cash on it.

with almost the only option left to wait till the end of the season to get the reward or just pray to fight against someone around your level in online matches.

This game is the description of pay to win game unless the one that put money on it doen't have any clue about how to play... but if is clever enough to go for the color gems and shapes he needs you don't stand a chance 'cause more lvl doesn't only mean that their gems do more damage... also means that they have more life bar.


Is as simple as if you pop a lot of gems and you can't kill the other player in that move 'cause he have more life than you then the counter is almost sure that will kill you 'cause if he has more life bar means that his attacks are stronger and doing the same move he can deal more damage than you.

A socalled puzzle game can't be this unfair to ppl that won't put money on it.

Well my hype has been killed after that... still I will try it but damn... Crapcom again? :\

 

[Ben Morales]

Finally got to play it and one thing I can say is the music is incredible. A lot of the characters look a lot better in motion as well. But the UI is really garish and ugly and on my iPad there is a lot of artifacting on some of the graphic assets. Hopefully they smooth that out.

Any word on cloud saves though? I would like to switch to playing on my Android phone in the future (current version won't run on Oreo) but I would hate to start over.

 

[Durden77]

Finally got to play it and one thing I can say is the music is incredible. A lot of the characters look a lot better in motion as well. But the UI is really garish and ugly and on my iPad there is a lot of artifacting on some of the graphic assets. Hopefully they smooth that out.

Any word on cloud saves though? I would like to switch to playing on my Android phone in the future (current version won't run on Oreo) but I would hate to start over.

Music fucking owns, glad to see someone notice that. Most are remixes but it's Puzzle Fighter as fuck.

On the cloud saves, not sure but on iOS it haves you pick an Apple IS when you star right? I'd assume it's just saved to that. I assume it's just saved to my Google account. But someone posted about them in the initial soft launch thread. I'll see if I can find it.

 

[Dreamwriter]

I brought this up in the older thread but don't forget this is a soft-launch. Which means the number of people to be matched up against is low (so you will likely face off against a greater level difference than normal). And, a soft-launch is basically a beta test, where they study how real people play the game and then make adjustments in the final game based on the results. They can get crash reports, detailed information about the matches, see how people use microtransactions, and learn whatever they need to balance the final game, and do whatever it takes to make the game good enough that lots of people want to play it and keep playing it. As a mobile game developer, I've added major features, optimized for different devices when we saw how many devices the game was being played on (or removed support for older devices in one case), and even removed pay walls based on soft-launch results.

 

[rudger]

Wow I miss 2d art. This and the new bomberman are just depressing to look at knowing that 20+ year old versions look better.

 

[panama chief]

Regardless of art, I'll slide this game into the rotation if they nailed the feel of the mechanics. Any controller support?

 

[Durden77]

I brought this up in the older thread but don't forget this is a soft-launch. Which means the number of people to be matched up against is low (so you will likely face off against a greater level difference than normal). And, a soft-launch is basically a beta test, where they study how real people play the game and then make adjustments in the final game based on the results. They can get crash reports, detailed information about the matches, see how people use microtransactions, and learn whatever they need to balance the final game, and do whatever it takes to make the game good enough that lots of people want to play it and keep playing it. As a mobile game developer, I've added major features, optimized for different devices when we saw how many devices the game was being played on (or removed support for older devices in one case), and even removed pay walls based on soft-launch results.

Indeed. I tried to stress that it was a soft launch in the OP, but judging from the amount of drive by shit posts in this thread, people don't read the OP. Cool knowing a little more about it from someone that's worked in the field though.

Regardless of art, I'll slide this game into the rotation if they nailed the feel of the mechanics. Any controller support?

No controller support that I know of. The controls work well though, and you can adjust the sensitivity of them, even though I'm not sure exactly what that does.

Well my hype has been killed after that... still I will try it but damn... Crapcom again? :

It is honestly not as nearly as bad as he makes it out to be. It's more about finding a team that works for you more than pure character level. Yeah you might have to wait a bit to unlock some stuff for the characters that make your team, but once you have something going skill still trumps. I've been wrecking higher level people left and right. I just beat a Ryu that's entite team was 2 levels above me that ALSO had the hot Ryu costume (which gives some kind of buff) due to skill.

 

[Mr_Zombie]

After an hour or so with the game:
- the artstyle isn't as bad when you actually play the game; it's still a far cry from the cute chibi characters from the original game, but isn't ugly either; looks much better in motion;
- touch controls are good, except from those moments when the game suddenly lags (I had a couple of those) and you end up putting the gem in the wrong place
- the game is pretty addictive
- I don't like the lifebar mechanics; it makes the game much shorter and at the same time complicates the gameplay
- the super moves that appear out of nowhere and interrupt the game are frustrating;
- too much bars to fill, items to collect and mechanics that are locked behind timers; what was once a simple puzzle game is now filled with useless mechanics, treasure chests, bars, coins, gems etc. Eh, modern mobile games design :/
- I still don't understand how you level up characters (I have the money, but the game doesn't allow me to level up moves)