I loved Touhou Spell Bubble. I played so much of that Puzzle Bobble style rhythm game, and the soundtrack was fantastic. It’s great. I still recommend it! It holds up! QQQbeats is basically a sequel of sorts, only with original characters (and some Vtubers and Vocaloids) with an original storyline. The thing is, even though it does feel like it has some updates, such as online multiplayer immediately available, it isn’t as enjoyable.
QQQbeats functions identically to Touhou Spell Bubble, in terms of gameplay. When you enter a stage, a song will play in the background. You get five seconds to fire each bubble before it auto-fires, and your goal is to eliminate bubbles to accrue more points than your opponent. Causing their screen to overflow also massively inflates your count, while giving them a chance to “counter” with an easier stage. When you eliminate a large enough chain, rhythm game indicators will pop up and direct you to tap in time with the music for greater bonuses. When the song ends, the person with the highest score wins.
In Story mode, this can mean unlocking a new character, new song, or perk to help with the puzzle elements while advancing the story of Ceena and Ame as they grow more popular as influencers and face other streamers. It’s a fluff story without too much substance, and I actually appreciated the Touhou Spell Bubble storylines revolving around competitions and incidents more.
The other options are two types of multiplayer modes. DUOps is two-player co-op that can be played online or offline. It’s fine, but I found it less satisfying than the campaign or competitive Versus. That features an opportunity to play isolated COM Battle matches against the computer, with the player able to set the difficulty, start a local battle, or go online for Casual and Ranked matches. Those are enjoyable, especially if you went through Story to gain access to a lot of stuff. However, I do recommend playing online when taking Japanese time zones into consideration, as I noticed it could take three or more minutes to find an opponent if I played with Central Time in mind.
There are over 50 tracks here in QQQbeats, just like there are in Touhou Spell Bubble, though it involves a lot of unlocking to get to them. These are tied to the Story mode, so you need to go through it and pass matches to access more. I do wish more of the songs were available right away, but it is what it is. Earning BeatCoin via Story and DUOps for things like more songs is also a lot, and I wish we collected the currency at a faster pace. When you do get access to songs, there’s a pretty great selection of tracks from popular artists, anime series, Vocaloids, Vtubers, and Touhou Project here. The original tracks also aren’t bad.
Unlocking via the Story mode also applies most of the 16 characters in QQQbeats, though right from the start you have the main story protagonist and folks like the Vocaloids Hatsune Miku and Kasane Teto, Touhou Project heroines Marisa and Reimu, and the Hololive Vtubers Shirakami Fubuki and Calliope Mori. Each person has a unique skill they can use when their gauge fills as you make matches in stages, and that can either make it easier to clear a large swath of bubbles or impede your opponent. Folks are fine, but I admit to missing Touhou Spell Bubble’s versatility. There are 20 included in that entry, even before buying any DLC. You also can choose their special move, since each has three Spell Cards available, so there’s more versatility.
QQQbeats is an entertaining puzzle game with rhythm elements, but I find I didn’t enjoy it as much as its predecessor Touhou Spell Bubble. It’s great that online multiplayer is present right away, as well as both competitive and cooperative options. There’s a pretty strong selection of songs too. The story isn’t great though, and the selection of characters don’t feel as versatile as the previous game. If you did already pick up and love Touhou Spell Bubble, then QQQbeats is worth your time. If you didn’t, then I’d suggest you start there first.
QQQbeats is available for the Switch worldwide.
QQQbeats
QQQbeats is an entertaining puzzle game with rhythm elements, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as Touhou Spell Bubble.