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The important thing to remember about video games is that, at some point during the process of play, some kind of fun should be had. A little would be nice, although a lot is better, but the point is that there should be at least a little entertainment along the way. Otherwise you're left asking yourself "Why on earth am I playing Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi: The Genie and the Amp"? The short answer for me is "Because I said I would when asked", but if I was a 10-year-old girl who was a fan of the show the game is based on, it wouldn't be so easy to answer.
Basically, Puffy Ami Yumi is a side-scrolling brawler. The plot, revolving around a genie in (as the title implies) an amp, is an excuse to have musical girls Ami and Yumi travel through time and beat on three to five different creatures per level. Pounding enemies can be done with either the face buttons or the touch-screen, but the buttons are much more practical. While the main action happens on the top screen, the bottom one shows four strings of a guitar running horizontally. Touching a string performs one of four different attacks, and strumming all all of them sets off a super attack that changes depending on the equipped guitar. Unfortunately, movement and jumping with the left hand while touching strings with the right just ends up feeling clumsy, so the face buttons end up doing all the work. While an interesting idea, the guitar-string attack method just isn't practical.
It's too bad "interesting" can't describe the combat, though. Hitting a string (or button) three times breaks out a combo, but four and five hit combos are also possible by moving up or down one string. Score is calculated by the strength of the final hit landed, so gameplay comes down to memorizing one five-attack combo and performing it endlessly. 90% of the game can be completed by hitting X-A-Y-B-B over and over and over again, although XXAYB, BBYAX, and BYAXX are also options. The reward for anything else is a lower score, although the last few levels finally have some enemies that the One Magic Combo won't work on. It never actually becomes fun, but at least the boredom gets broken up a little.
As poorly designed as combat is, there are other issues with Puffy Ami Yumi ranging from annoying to bizarre. Why have a money system when everything is so cheap it can be bought immediately with plenty of cash left over? Why is the post-level activity of running around a stage picking up icons thrown by the crowd completely challenge-free? Why is easy too easy and hard so aggravating, with no middle ground? Why do enemies only attack two at a time, no matter how many are on screen at once? And why, when the side-scrolling is disabled in certain sections, can ranged enemies attack from off screen, effectively invisible and invulnerable?
Puffy Ami Yumi isn't all bad, though. Graphics are colorful and nice, and well represent the cartoon the game is based on. There's also a system to power up one of the girls' stats after each level by making sushi. Monsters occasionally drop an item when defeated, the odds increasing depending on the girls' luck stat, with three different items possible per level. Each item effects a different stat, and only one can be used. Additionally, only a single serving of sushi is made, so either Ami or Yumi gets one stat bump per level. If the Puffy Ami Yumi was any fun at all, it would provide plenty of replay value to max the girls out.
In the end, Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi: The Genie and the Amp is everything that's wrong with licensed gaming. It feels less like a game than a branded product designed to sell to kids who like the show its based on, with no attempt at making something worth playing. It looks good, of course, but half-baked ideas combined with tedious, repetitious button mashing make for a game that's both really boring and aggravating at the same time. Credit where credit is due, that's a really tricky combo to pull off.
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