Moujya

The Good
Mixing and matching is a pretty novel element that can be implemented in an arcade game. We’ve seen that in Money Puzzle Exchanger , and it worked really well, so why not put it into a Puyo Puyo table?

Well the gameplay mechanics actually work okay with the ability to rotate the pair of coins in both directions, even when they are wedged between two columns. You can also rotate them when they are suspended above the coins they are about to land on for a brief moment. And for a little bit of relief from the obstacle cats with shades, you get a dog to make them vanish by pressing both rotation buttons together. Adding to the game are among the cutest and wackiest anime cats, making for good presentation, though nothing in the way of plot. Still it adds to charm. Hold your breath for the negatives, because at this point it will all come crashing down.

The Bad
Having briefly touched on the gameplay mechanics, the worst of the worst is about to unfold, no exaggeration. When you’ve barely started the game, you’ll notice that the upcoming coins fall increasingly rapidly as the game goes on. In about a minute or two, the game reaches stupidly fast speeds that you can’t match.

And that’s only half the frustration. Those obstacle cats with shades will hinder and mock your every attempt to make a chain reaction. They keep following your stacks, pile up, spam the screen, and never go away. With the machine-like movements and cat-like reflexes of the CPU an opponent, it feels like it’s cheating, you have no hope of getting through the game in one or even a few tries. It’ll keep throwing egg in your face after every continue. Even with emulator save states, there’s no going around the complex difficulty curveballs that keep coming.

The Bottom Line
Everyone likes a good game of Tile-Matching to kill time and put their mind at ease. Moujya satisfies neither of those desires. This game goes from push to shove off the edge when it comes to the horrendous difficulty, which breaks the scale tenfold. This game could easily get through 20 grand worth of quarters if it were released in the USA. Between the cute anime cats and the number of retries to beat your opponent, the game’s only aim is to straight up insult the player’s best efforts. Every playthrough I’ve seen on video has taken hours to complete. An arcade game which is ungenerous is not fun to play in the long run and goes against everything you know about gaming. Find yourself a getaway car, drive as far as possible, and don’t return until the developers decide to make the game fair.