Gems are the things you use while playing Puzzle Fighter II. They range from colors or Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. They are dropped in pairs. Gems become Power gems when at least 4 are stacked in a block shape. Power gems can be as big as you can make them.

Crash gems look like gems except they are circle shaped with a flickering star in the center. You use them to break regular gems, and even other crash gems. The color of the crash gem is the color of the gem/crash gem you can break. When you break gems you send countergems over to your opponent.

Countergems are gems that you send over to your opponent after you break your own. The difference between a countergem and a gem is that a countergem has a timer on it. It usually starts on 5 and counts down by 1's each time you place down more gems. When the timer reaches 0 the countergem will become a regular gem, the coor depends on what color the number of the countergem was. The only two ways a countergem can be destroyed is by either breaking regular gems next to it causing it to break as well, or by using supergems which will be explained later.

Supergems look like diamonds. When you place a supergem on a certain color gem all the gems and even countergems of that color will be destroyed and countergems will be sent to your opponent. The downside of this is that the number of gems you destroy and send to your opponent is cut in half. Say you break 40 gems with a supergem, only 20 countergems will be sent to your opponent. A supergem should only be used as a defensive strategy and not for offensive purposes.

1. When you destroy gems make sure you don't destroy them so you are only sending less than 5 counter gems to your opponent. These small attack give your opponent lots of one colored coutergems allowing them to set up for a super counterattack. Try to constantly make powergems to keep your attacks high.

2. Never leave empty columns on your playing area. You need all the room you can get to place your gems and set up for attacks. Leaving open columns is just putting more of a handicap on yourself then it is helping you.

3. Try to study your opponents Countergem pattern. They can be seen either in the Puzzle Fighter booklet, or on the character select screen. This lets you see where to set up your gems for counterattacks.