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Melo Jello 2 may look similar to Puyo-Puyo in terms of style, but it actually has a lot more in common with Columns.

Yes, it is good old 'match 3 colours in a line' style gameplay, and I have to say it took me quite a while to actually work that out as there is no sort of instruction or tutorial to speak of. In terms of visuals the game looks nice with a clear menu screen in the style of Tetris, where you can choose your difficulty, how many lines start on the board, the type of game and the music. Ohhh, the music! By far the stand-out feature of this title is the soundtrack composed by Soundsync5000. It really is exceptional, and I could easily listen to it outside of this game. So far so good.

Sadly, the game falls down slightly where it matters - the gameplay. As previously mentioned, the game has two game modes: marathon and 25 Line Clear, and both offer utterly punishing difficulty. As the blocks come down the screen in groups of four, preventing excess blocks filling up the screen rapidly is extremely difficult. Not helping matters is the somewhat jerky scrolling of the blocks, and clearing lines results in the blocks instantly teleporting to their destination, rather than 'falling', giving you zero time to assess the board change before the next block starts falling. To help you out after a few combos an arrow appears allowing you to instantly clear lines by pressing select (not that I ever would have known that without visiting the developers' website), but ultimately you aren't going to last very long.

In conclusion, Melo Jello 2 just slightly falls short despite exceptional presentation, and if the gameplay was tweaked and tightened up slightly, it could have been excellent.