I found two speedruns of this game on Easy, watched the better one, and thought "I'm better than this..."

So I downloaded Hanagumi Taisen Columns for MAME, and got it to work. What didn't work, however, was my strategy of getting my attack up to level 3 as quickly as possible then using it. I expected those to be fatal to opponents given the video, but they were surviving most of them and throwing powerful attacks back at me when they cleared themselves when the dice blocks ended!

I even tried it with the character used in the video, who dumps something like six rows of dice blocks that last 8 pieces at level 3, but my opponents were STILL surviving it! This character has a weak defense, only clearing one row of gems per level off the bottom of the field, so you should almost never use it defensively with this character!

It's hard to figure out the Japanese character stats without knowing the language, but I do know that each character has different properties with how many rows of dice blocks they drop at each level attack, how long the dice blocks last, how scrambled in colors the dice blocks are, and defensive power (you can use it to clear gems off the bottom of your board as well.)

So could the key here be intentionally playing slower, or not setting up as many chains if the pieces are falling fast, so your opponent builds up more (and/or you build up less!) so that when you use your level 3 attack, it's fatal? It's useful to know that you can ONLY use your attacks right after reaching their requisite levels... and the attack is even LOST if you don't decide quickly! Or could spamming level 1 attacks for a bit before building up a level 3 attack before your opponent be the trick here? I've tried that with a little more success, but they still get me too often.

I honestly haven't done too much research on strategies for this game yet, but a few runs I've seen on youtube (or possibly niconico, I forget where I watched) by Japanese players tend to go for either a level 3 attack and have a quick chain ready to go on the next drop for a level 1 attack, and keep up with level 1 attacks, or just to try to blitz level 1 attacks.