There’s no question that the Picross puzzle series is one of the most reliable and satisfying out there in the genre. It features clean interfaces, polished gameplay, plenty of different puzzle types, options to play with friends, and control methods. Pretty well every feature you could have requested from the folks at Jupiter at the outset of this generation has been accomplished, pushing the team to come up with new and different angles to help enhance the excellent play already in place.

The result of that effort has been a variety of titles with different licenses and sometimes some original ideas. Given that Doraemon has been around, even in the US, for quite a few decades, this particular entry in the series has gone with a re-skinning of sorts, replacing the game’s typical backgrounds and everyday pixel puzzles with those tied to that property. If you happen to be a big fan, this will no doubt make for a nice plus on top of the normally excellent play of the series, but given the penetration of Doraemon being more limited in the US and some other regions, this may be a tougher sell.

Aside from the property itself, which you may or may not have experience with, I’d also argue that the degree of integration is also much more limited than some of the team’s past efforts. In particular, the Sega and Namco versions both included far more elements from their respective back catalogs. Not only did they both have plenty of great 8-bit characters and art that made for nostalgic puzzles, their music and general art were also far more present even in the screens and interfaces you worked though. You’d have a hard time completely missing the Doraemon characters being included here, but the depth of use simply isn’t as high as some of the team’s other editions. The puzzles and interface still remain uniformly excellent, you’ll just need to decide which editions suit you the best before buying.