SRXD is insanely solid and probably my favorite rhythm game that I've ever played - the absolute GROOVE that this game instills into you is practically unmatched in rhythm games. There's nothing quite like spinning and hitting your mouse to the beat, and I love it. The difficulty curve is extremely well done, especially with the locking of more complex mechanics behind higher difficulties.

The soundtrack for this game is additionally great - seeing a lot of glitch hop and color bass/melodic dubstep in a rhythm game is great, they feel like genres you don't see too often. Additionally, the customization options are the perfect touch to round this out.

The game's level editor is pretty well put together, even if it does feel like it drowns in hotkeys. As in: Everything in this editor is a hotkey. I do wish you could just click on something in the hotkeys list to place it, as I'm always looking there to figure out what to do next anyways. Side note - the game's custom chart offerings are great.

Guitar Hero was my first rhythm game craze, I got so hooked on it that I wound up buying a real guitar and learning how to play, eventually even going to university to study music and working as a gigging musician and a music teacher. All this to say that I REALLY got into Guitar Hero. I've always looked out for more rhythm games to capture me the same way it did back in the day, but I haven't found one that does that. Until Spin Rhythm XD.

Instead of guitar-centric rock and metal tracks, this game features a ton of EDM, wubs and warbles and all of that. Not to mention the insane amount of custom tracks available - it seems like the game is garnering a pretty small albeit very passionate community.

Playing songs in this game feels very satisfying in a way that's very hard to describe, and even hard to convey in videos. This game might just become a mainstay in my rotation for the foreseeable future.

There used to be a time when SRXD felt more like a fun concept than a game, where the dev and designers were throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks. That time has long passed, and now it feels like a pretty fully fledged music game experience.

Visually it's very nice, especially by music game standards. On top of that menuing is very responsive and minor things that add up in other games are near flawless here, such as time between song restarts and load times in general.

General control in SRXD feels satisfying, and there's a myriad options to tweak to your comfort level regardless of setup, so there should be little to no barrier of entry there. On top of that, the gameplay design here is solid and feels quite unlike any other game in the genre, which is important when a lot of the peak of the genre just comes down to vertically scrolling rhythm game with [x] number of buttons. SRXD definitely stands out here as a game with fun, unique controls that also isn't restrictive to input devices, accepting just about anything you'll throw at it.

The tracklist is kind of a miss for me, but not in the sense that I dislike the music. Rather, my main issue with the game in general is track length. Songs that take upwards of 4 minutes feel way too long for a game in this genre, and often get tedious before the end of the song.

As a whole, while I don't think it quite reaches the level of quality attained by genre leaders like DJMAX, if you are looking for a music game that is less about testing your APM and more about reading charts well, this is gonna be up your alley. If you're more interested in the high APM many buttons aspect of the genre, or the long songs are too big a negative to ignore, I would sooner look towards DJMAX Respect V or EZ2ON Reboot -R- on PC, or whatever options your local arcade might have in terms of Bemani games.

Ever since early access one of the main points that sold me on Spin Rhythm is that motions add so much feeling to playing a song. When you are in the zone and everything flows, you feel the buttons, the slides, the spins, it is just fun.

While playing the songs with a controller always felt good for me, even after the 1.0 release and a brand new UI there are still some rough edges for actually navigating the menus, but it is much more friendly and should be mostly good after a few patches.

Personally, I think the tracklist could be better, but really everyone will have different opinions about this. What really is reflected in my score is how good I feel like this translates the music to movement and gameplay, a very unique and solid take on rhythm games.