one of the ways I know I strongly like a game is when it genuinely feels like it's rotting my brain because it keeps invading my mind when I'm doing other tasks. this is one of those games.

bit tricky for me to describe, but the basic premise is that you rotate blocks so that all of the marked sides are touching marked sides of other blocks. your goal is to form closed shapes, and doing so causes all of the blocks in that shape to disappear. bigger shapes earn you more points, and so does forming multiple shapes next to each other in rapid succession. and oh my god is this game addicting.

there's a few modes of gameplay you can choose from. there's ポタポタ/Potapota (trickling/drop by drop) mode in which blocks will continuously fall, forcing you to combine them to disappear before the screen gets filled and it's game over. next is ギッシリ/Gisshiri (tightly packed) mode, where you're given a full screen of blocks to form shapes. this is your time attack mode, where you have 90 seconds to rack up as many points as possible. finally you have パズル/Puzzle mode which contains lots of individual stages that each challenge you to create combos in order to clear out all of the blocks. Potapota and Gisshiri modes allow you to play by yourself or against a computer/second player.

really hard to not compare this game to tetris, and I would be willing to say I have equally as much fun with both of them (a difficult task for any puzzle game like this to reach). it's a shame there's so little information/apparent knowledge of this game out there, as it's one I encourage checking out!

these rotating blocks are going to appear in my dreams tonight I just know it

definitely a clear "something's wrong" with the hit detection on notes, but I don't think it's as broken as people make it out to be. a lot of the notes are phrased in really bizarre rhythms compared to how you might initially expect them to be based on how parappa actually raps each phrase, which is the big reason I think people struggle with gameplay. I also feel like the game can kinda cheat you at times with certain second/fourth phrases (looking at you, last two lines of cheap cheap and the freestyle section of the final concert).
regardless, the overall Parappa Energy baked within every aspect of this game's design brings me insane amounts of joy and makes this one of the few titles I can fail repeatedly and still have a great time. this silly whatever-animal-he-is has a permanent place in my heart.