Well it's... marginally better than a 1/5 I guess?

Trozei is the arcade puzzle spinoff of Pokemon, and it's the 2nd Pokemon game released on DS, after Pokemon Dash. The goal is to align 4 or more Pokemon in a row. then align 3 or more Pokemon in a row immediately after that to start Trozei Chance, where you can then combo clear Pokemon simply by touching two of the same species together and hopefully clear the screen for that juicy point bonus. This continues until you clear the stage by clearing more than the threshold listed above, and any caught Pokemon are added to the Dex. You're also told in advance of opportunities to catch rare Pokemon that will sometimes drop, but you'll need to gather Ditto by clearing 3 or more of the same species at a time during Trozei chance to catch those (and there's no real incentive or reward to finishing the Dex...).

It's fun enough to begin with (and it's pretty hard to mess up an arcade puzzler), but the game really starts feeling like an endurance test with some of the boss fights that will begin throwing rocks your way (which you must clear with Dittos, nothing else will do) and love to black out the screen so you have to make do with silhouettes to get clears and light the screen back up. These later levels have thresholds in the several hundreds, and you'll need to stay extremely vigilant and patient because having your screen fill up quickly will mean that you'll be sent back to the beginning and have to grind all over again.

Now like I said, it's pretty hard to fuck this up: the arcade puzzler works on creating a simple yet engaging gameplay loop, and the colorful Pokemon pixel art + the funky tunes are great! The story's pretty forgettable admittingly, but you won't mind too much. That said, there's one giant dumb design decision in all this; once you clear the final boss, you are immediately transported to hard mode and your map progress reset (wanted to play old levels for practice/rare mons? Too bad!), with no way to go back to normal mode unless you reset your save data. Goddamnit Pokemon Company, why is every Pokemon spinoff game released in the 2000s that I've played this year somehow crippled by dumb design choices that made it past Q & A?

Needless to say, I think Pokemon Trozei is at least serviceable; if you just like the core gameplay loop, I think endless mode will provide a fun enough experience, and there's some cool multiplayer interactivity in the form of "espionage" and other agent missions if you know of a sucker friend that's also willing to play this alongside you for some reason. I remain baffled that they couldn't even be bothered to have an option to switch between difficulties after beating the game, but I suppose that's just par for the course during this era. A shame that Trozei hasn't aged as well as when I first laid my eyes upon it at the Pokemon 15th anniversary mall events, but I'm sure I'll get used to this wave of disappointment of spoiling my Pokemon childhood ramblings. Eventually.

The cool retro spy theming for the story mode is super cool and as I recall it was completely absent from the marketing and I've never ran into anyone talking about it. The cutscenes are minimal but stylish as hell and were honestly most of what I was playing for.

The puzzle mechanics themselves work and are extremely frantic (careful not to hurt your wrist!) but aren't super compelling...other than playing faster I never really put together any strategies or felt like there was much to learn. It's fine enough and I'm sure one could find additional depth, but Trozei never really clicked with me like that.

and hooo boy Aquarella,,,

Man, I don't know if this game's difficulty curve is a right angle or if I'm just bad at puzzle games. I'm probably just bad at puzzle games. Like, it's definitely a fun game for a while, but it gets really unforgiving after a certain point and it just stops being fun. It doesn't really help that the warning music is just bad! Everything else is kinda funky, if repetitive, but the "you're about to lose" music just amps up the frustration.

Anyway, the real strength of this game is the aesthetic. I really like James Turner's art in this, and I think that's kind of why I tried to play this in the first place. It wasn't really enough to keep me going on to finish it, though, much less try and complete the Trozei list.

Recently circulating on Twitter was one of those checklists which show one hundred logos for you to get your score based on how much you’ve “completed” a genre.
The latest was Nintendo games, I was surprised by how low my score was but amongst the early NES games and Wii U online play things I had never played was this game.
It immediately jumped out, I love a little puzzler and I enjoy Pokémon.

I was also aware however that it was another one of those games where they have reskinned an existing title with Pokémon because… people love it!
Last time I played a puzzle game reskin was Pokémon Puzzle League, I had played Panel De Pon (the game it’s a reskin of) prior to this though and although I didn’t dislike Puzzle League it didn’t really bring anything worthwhile with the reskin bar some FMV sequences which were fine but it lost more than it gained such as Panel De Pon’s interesting bosses - however that’s that game.
As far as I was aware Trozei is based on Yoshi’s Cookie, a game which I don’t recall playing so I wouldn’t have anything to directly compare to.

What struck me with Trozei from the start was it looked nice, the art of the protagonist and villains were quite different to what I’d normally expect from Pokémon but this along with a story that made some actual sense, Trozei felt like it was its own thing - it was hiding it was a reskin fairly well.
That story in short is that Team Rocket or whoever it is in this, have stolen tons of Pokéballs and stored them in warehouses.
Trainers can only carry six around in the normal Pokémon lore so a single person infiltrating these warehouses wouldn’t be able to free the tens or hundreds of ‘mon on their own… unless.
In comes the Trozei device which can scan balls to see what’s inside without opening and by grouping four or more together can teleport them back to base.
This way of making the game work within the lore isn’t the most genius thing in media I’ve ever come across but smart enough to give me a smirk and believe it. Believe it as much as anything in the Pokémon world.

As explained in the story, Trozei is a matching game. You can slide rows and columns to try and match ‘mon into fours or more in a straight line, once this is done a Trozei starts which allows you to combo, getting a three, then as many twos until the timer runs out.
Your win condition is to match X amount of Pokémon before the screens fill up vertically, pretty standard affair.
The tutorials explain the sliding and combo systems but what the game doesn’t really inform you is how you’re meant to get highscores or complete your Pokédex, because of course it has one.

Each stage will show some silhouetted creatures, these appear when… well I’m not quite sure, I assume it’s based on getting a certain amount of combos but if it told me I never saw it.
Due to these rarer monsters appearing in smaller numbers the easiest way to get them is from Dittos, if you don’t know Pokémon Ditto is a little pink slime that changes into other Pokémon so in Trozei it counts as one of any kind and the game drops them in if you score with more than you need (matching five rather than four).
This collection list should be something that adds replay value but it simply highlights a lot of the game’s problems.

Due to the time restraint, the speed the screen fills and looking at both the top and bottom it feels hard to prepare as much as you’d like. It’s easy to set up a couple of things and just keep pairing until the Trozei stops but after a while it feels manic and not fun, just quite random.
I’m sure there are top level Trozei players that can see the two screens and think twenty slides ahead but it never felt natural and I could list a dozen games in this genre where it does.
These high scores and rarer Pokémon are not needed to proceed, which is good because it would become tiring but also bad because I simply moved right on and never went back.

Also if I wanted to go back after completing the game I couldn’t. On completion the game unlocks hard mode and resets. Essentially NG+ without the option to say no.
An awful design decision that, if I didn’t already have the overwhelming feeling of “thank god it’s done” on completion, would not help save the game and give it more lifespan.

One interesting thing the game does is there are a handful of bosses from Team Plasma or whoever it is in this.
They occasionally replace ‘mon with rocks that can only be deleted with Dittos, they turn the lights out if you’re not moving giving you only silhouettes to use to get the lights back on, some even occasionally shove lines to mess up the patterns you’re trying to make.
At first this stuff is cute and interesting but as you face each new boss it does nothing to change things up as it goes bar make the scores you need to obtain higher and higher and it becomes a slog.

Trozei’s campaign could have done with half the levels it did but then I guess how could they possibly fit in all the monsters… who cares is what I say, it sucks.
Also the dialogue is quite boring and a lot longer than it has right to be, I almost stopped the game before it ever got started, because it had to explain we’re saving Pokémon from Team Skull or whoever it is in this game.

There are a few training levels which ask you to clear a screen in one combo.
The funny thing is these show how the game could be quite smart but the main gameplay is just pushing so much on you and rushing you to keep up that it can never really be appreciated and it’s never really hard just grueling.

To go back and compare this to Pokémon Puzzle League, I feel with my limited knowledge Trozei does a better job as a game reskin.
The issue is that under the skin is a much worse game.
Panel De Pon is great, play that on Switch online.
I will not be bothering to play Yoshi’s cookie or any variant in the future however.

This quirky and fun puzzle game incorporates the Pokemon license differently than you may have seen. While there is nothing groundbreaking or inventive about this game, it is still a fun match-4 puzzle game that is easy to pick up yet hard to master.

Truly, the only drawback to this game is how simplistic it is. This game uses the Pokemon license as a means to collect all the Pokemon and find a way to capture specific rare Pokemon in a given stage, all of which is random, but otherwise, nothing else is implemented. This makes playing for long hours become monotonous and stale.

This is still a fun and competent puzzle game that I hope they return to someday. An expanded version with more in-depth mechanics would be a very fun and interesting time. If you like puzzle games then check this one out.