The game engine lacks polish, especially on switch, the console I played this game on (I should have been more carreful and play it on another medium). The worst being some buggy hitboxes, a janky physic and performance issues.

Yet, it has a lot of wonderful ideas. I like games centered around bossfight, and the idea to sync the boss patterns with the music is very good. It creates a very satisfying feeling, but it also helps in the boss design since now patterns can be telegraphed thorugh sound, a very clever thing to do. The soundtrack is gorgeous and diverse (as it should be expected), thanks to its great variety of artists. Also, I really like the fact that the music alternates between instrumentations depending on wether the player is wining the fight or not.

I hate to give such a negative review, because the vibes and style this game exudes is great. If this were a game based solely on its character designs and soundtrack, this game would be top-tier for an indie company.

Unfortunately, I value solid gameplay equally as the aforementioned factors, and the gameplay is bad. The game basically centers around 2 things: The boss fights and the area before that fight. The latter is boring, linear, and a pain in the ass to navigate. A fixed camera means you just constantly feel like you lack any control, and when enemies off screen can and will attack you, combat increasingly becomes more and more frustrating. The difficulty from this section shouldn't come from bullshit or repetitive elements, but it does.

The boss fights are fine. They can sometimes feel unexciting and the problems I mentioned earlier can still be a problem here, but the bosses are fine.

And when the game basically only has these 2 things, the downtime between them is empty. The world is bright but also hollow. And that's the word I would use to describe the game: hollow.

Booooy do I wish this game were better.

Let's start with what I liked. The characters are charming and fun, the story is solid and well executed (if somewhat predictable), the OST is great, and the art and visuals are also fantastic. I really loved the game's world, aesthetics and music. The visuals are particularly surprising to me, with a really well done style and great animations, much better than what I expected from the game honestly. The game is also fully voice acted, including the few NPCs around the city and while the voice acting is far from perfect, I thought it was great for the main characters and antagonists (except Yinu's voice but she was funny to hear).

However, all of those things are quickly screwed over by absolutely atrocious gameplay. Particularly in co-op, which seems to be a complete afterthought, despite the game having two protagonists from the get go. You would THINK it was primarily made as a co-op game, but the camera is abysmal and there's constant bugs and glitches related to co-op specifically.

Co-op issues aside, gameplay just does not feel very good. Bosses vary, some being pretty good (the first and final bosses, for example) and a couple being straight up garbage (Sayu and Eve have a clusterfuck of nonsense going on which LOOKS really cool but always made me feel every other hit I took was kinda bullshit). Only one boss truly stood out as actually great and that was Yinu, who is the game's peak but is just the third boss out of 6. I loved her fight, it plays the best and had my favorite song in the game. But Yinu aside, bosses are more or less carried by the spectacle of their fights, because the gameplay is not really good.

Shout out to a side boss called DK West, though, who has a different gameplay style altogether where you just avoid enemies in 3 lanes for a while. Those sections played well. I also have "DK WEST DK WEST, HE IS OUE MAN, HE IS THE BEST" drilled into my head.

I primarily played the game as Zuke while my co-op partner used Mayday, so I'll mostly talk about him. He feels like shit. His special attacks (mods) are nearly useless save for one, his combos are slower and clunkier than they should and his range sucks. May seems better, but I only played her during the finale because the game straight up made me play as her only and dropped co-op, making Zuke stand around doing nothing. Another sign od the game being a buggy mess and co-op being an afterthought. Zuke was available, he just couldn't move due to possibly a glitch, basically. One way or another, the timing for a lot of things doesn't really feel like it's based on music, hitting things feels like shit and sometimes it was hard to even know WHAT hit you and WHY, due to thing like such as shoddy hitboxes. The rhythm elements were hit or miss, with Yinu making the absolute best use of them, which is one reason why her fight was so enjoyable.

Oh yeah and before I forget, before most bosses there's an "approach" stage full of trash mobs. These fucking suck. The trash mobs are annoying as hell and the stages are repetitive at best. If it was up to me, I would have these cut entirely, because they just feel like an annoyance to get through.

All these gameplay flaws aside, the game is also just buggy and glitchy as fuck. Though the game ran at a solid 1080p60fps on my PC (as it should, the visuals have great style but I can't imagine them being taxing at all). But bugs and glitches were CONSTANT. Sometimes our characters got stuck unable to move besides dodging, P2 frequently had her character glitch out in the hub world in multiple varied ways, a boss fight had me fall through the ground and get stuck in their final phase and even the credits fucked up giving us a blank black screen until I paused and unpaused which somehow fixed. There's all that and many more big and small bugs and glitches, the game is an absolute technical mess and I don't know if it's even being worked on still but I hope it is. But hey, at least I didn't get stuck with the 1010 boss causing a guaranteed crash like I heard. In fact, 0 crashes.

So yeah. All in all, this is a game that would at the very least be a solid 4.5/5 if it JUST played well. Everything EXCEPT the actual gameplay was very enjoyable. But the shoddy gameplay and the constant bugs and glitches really fuck it up. It's actually sad. I can't state it enough, everything else was so enjoyable that it actually made me and my co-op partner "tough it out" through the awful gameplay, so it's sad that it is just such a pain to play most of the time. I sincerely hope the dev team get to fix this game up and make it live up to its potential or that their next game turns out better.

has some amazing moments but feels pretty rough and unfinished in a lot of areas
there is literally no point to the approach sections and they're all pretty grueling
the bosses mostly range from neat to great with the exception of eve, who is a fuckin trashfire of a boss
ending level is also a bore cus its basically a bunch of approach sections glued together
game is also buggy as hell
at least in normal mode, the parry system is underused as hell, which sucks cus they're the best part about the combat
zuke feels like ass to control and mayday isn't that much better
soundtrack is pretty great though, and i really dig how this game uses fan content
i feel like with a little more love and fixes this game could be an easy 8 or 9

If you know me, you know I'm obsessed with several things: boss rush games, dystopian fiction, and music. And while this game is far from perfect design-wise, it's a special game that checks all the right marks for me.

The story centers around Mayday and Zuke, two rockers shunned from society because of their love for the genre. Together, they take on the members of No Straight Roads, a government that powers cities on the backend of EDM. It's a short story about rock vs. EDM, as well as a satire for various sub-genres of the music (vocaloids, boy bands, etc.). And this is all backed by a really entertaining set of characters, some witty writing, and even some excellent art direction!

The trouble comes from the game's combat. Yes, the boss rush structure of the game works well, having the player traverse a course of enemies before facing one of the NSR bosses. Combat, however, is based around this weird rhythm-based action that is "easy to learn, hard to master"...and I mean that in a way of them really not explaining how the combat system works. Luckily, I did manage to learn more as I went through the game, but it's no surprise how confused I was towards the earlier hours of the game. It's a system that'll either hook you as you parry attacks based on the background music, or frustrate you as you can't land a single hit on the enemy.

No Straight Roads is a unique title, and something I've been craving for quite a while now. It's like the love child of Psychonauts and Rhythm Heaven, and it hooked me from beginning to end. The pay-off of the story is quite inspirational, too. I cannot recommend this game enough, especially since it can be finished in around 5-6 hours.

(Worth noting that I played the Switch version, and it is unfortunately full of bugs right now. If you're interesting in checking this game out, I recommend trying the PS4/XB1/PC versions instead.)

I did not expect to like this game this much. If you are a lover of music I highly recommend this game. It's basically an action game (boss rush) with rhythm game elements attached to it. NSR has so much heart and soul put into it by the devs. Although two big issues which bring this game down for me is that this game is very buggy and janky (perhaps it due to being low budget and inexperienced devs) as well as the fact that the gameplay can be very mediocre at times. But the mix of music and gameplay here make this an amazing experience at times. The lows are very low but the highs are extremely high. I recommend playing this game for experiencing those highs. I believe a sequel with a higher budget and a lot of gameplay refinements can be a 10/10 for me. Definitely play this with headphones.

I really, really wanted to like this game. The general aesthetic is great, the music is fantastic, the characters are likable and the story is simple but good. It pains me to say that I found everything regarding the gameplay to be insufferable. The game has insane difficulty spikes, the levels are repetitive and the bosses felt like they weren't playtested (Eve's boss fight in particular was a nightmare, I didn't even know what was hitting me half the time). It's a huge bummer because we need games like this. I genuinely hope they give the IP another try without rushing it next time.

I think mostly anyone who has played this or read all the reviews will know how this blurb is gonna go. While the presentation, characters, music, concept, and literally everything else is top notch, the gameplay and controls do their very best to derail all of that love for this game. I can't stress how awkward it is to play a rhythm-based platformer that is inconsistent with its focus on the rhythm. It's very easy to fuck up and the game is not very forgiving even on easy difficulty. The only reason you power through this is because everything else surrounding it is so strong, and you want to see what happens with the story. The main characters are goofballs but have a formidable mission to end the tyrannical reign of EDM. It's worth the trouble just for that I would say. Other than the game, I would strongly suggest checking out the soundtrack. It's pretty killer~

for the most part i like the game quite a bit, i like the presentation, the music is great as well. by far the biggest problems for me is the draw distance and the camera, there is NO camera control whatsoever in the stages which can be really detrimental for seeing dangers and obstacles offscreen that you need to se to avoid damage. the draw distance is a minor issue though, it doesnt harm the gamke at all for the most, it can just be REALLY apparent that stuff is despawning on screen.

just for the music alone it saves it from lower than a 3 in my eyes.

as buggy and weird as this game is, i enjoyed every moment i played it, and i'd gladly revisit it as soon as possible. the game's music is absolutely astounding, and the environments really were as original as a game could get. i followed this game's development from the earliest demo of the Yinu boss fight, maybe circa early 2019? and i'm very pleased with how the game came out in the end! maybe not the best game ever, but for something that placed innovation over anything, i really think the game succeeded where it needed to. i do wish the game were a bit less glitchy, however, as it DID kind of ruin my playing experience at times. nothing game-breaking if you're dedicated, but sometimes it was pretty rough

Si os mola los hack and Slash y los juegos rítmicos. Este es vuestro título. Está desarrollado por gente que ha hecho grandes proyectos como final fantasy xv y street fighter V. La historia es sencilla, pero es lo que hace que este videojuego sea la polla.
Se me olvidaba mencionaros la banda sonora. Es absolutamente maravillosa, la manera de mezclar la música tecno con el rock en distintas zonas, es apabullante.
Lo que más, peca para mi de este juego es el diseño de algunas zonas que llega a ser bastante lineal ,y la aparición. De algún otro bug.
Pero a lo que os iba mencionando desde el inicio. Si os gusta tanto los hack and Slash y los juegos rítmicos, os lo recomiendo.

I do enjoy this game, but it also plays like it is not meant to be its final released version. There are some aspects of it that would have been significantly better if there was more polish, for example, the gameplay itself. The fact that you cannot move the camera during fights was definitely a bit annoying. The gameplay also does not feel like it is at its full potential in general. It's not really as "rhythm game"-esque as it seems like it would be at first.

However, I am not really displeased with any of this because I still have a fondness for it. The characters are likeable. The game also has a humor about itself. It's not taking itself too seriously, it's just a game with a simple story, fun characters, and good music. I think it is clear to me that even with the game's flaws, there were a lot of good ideas put into it that makes me still find the game very charming.

I especially liked the boss fights. Each boss fight was unique and the ideas put into them were very cool. The DK West boss battle is also pretty fun. The ending was sweet. I don't care if the plot is predictable because it really never felt like it was trying to be something you have never seen before plot wise. Overall, it is a charming game that I enjoyed that I can see myself replaying, although the gameplay was slightly lacking from what I think could have been a much more polished game.