Full disclosure, I played so much of iNiS's Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan trilogy as a teenager that my parents sent me to a psychiatrist when I was like 15, and the dude was like, "Yeah, she's prolly on the autism spectrum".† So it kinda goes without saying that Gitaroo Man has been a game I've been looking forward to playing for the past 15 years or so, I just never really found the opportunity or time to get around to it. Nowadays I have a pretty good PC that can run pretty much any PS2 game perfectly, so I decided to finally take some time to sit down and play this while I was on a rhythm game kick. And man, if I had actually been able to track down this game as a teenager (I spent a lot of 2007/2008 hunting down copies of this game, Pikmin 2, and Path of Radiance, but only ever managed to find a slightly overpriced Pikmin 2), it would have absolutely ruined my life.

Gitaroo Man is raw as fuck, and I don't mean that in the broadly positive colloquial sense -- I mean it's an experience that's clearly indicative of nascent talent with all the good and bad that entails. It makes PaRappa look like a baby game by comparison; if Gitaroo Man were an arcade cabinet iNiS would have been fucking rolling in money -- this game's normal mode knocked me down, kicked me into a ditch, and spat on me. But I almost feel like it's not fully intentional, some levels are a bit of a pushover, and others are so overtuned I question if the game had any QA at all.

Most of the pain points in Gitaroo Man lie with the controls and rhythm-based visuals, and while some of that is probably due to imperfect frame pacing in the emulation, modern controllers, or just skill issue on my part, it's the one thing that's really held the game's mechanical greatness back for me. The guard sections would have really benefitted from being presented in a less confusing manner (the cross formation just makes the button prompts completely unparsable for me when there's a large amount of them from all four directions coming at once), and using the analog stick during the attack/charge sections is so unwieldy that I almost wonder if they had at some point wanted the game to have its own specific peripheral. Of course, we wouldn't all be here talking about the game these days if it required a peripheral, but I feel a lot of issues would be smoothed out with a standardized controller with more finely tuned controls.

Despite all that, it's difficult to not love Gitaroo Man's full experience, and when the controls work god fucking damn it's so fucking cool. I haven't felt this sort of rhythm game high doing the hardest levels in Ouendan on the secret invisible rhythm circle mode that was only available from like, gas stations in Japan but I used a cheat engine to unlock it in my game somehow. It's an experience that you cannot get from any other game that I've personally encountered (please give me suggestions if you're actually reading this) when it's at its strongest, and it legitimately boggles my mind that reviewers from the early 00s derided it as a standard rhythm game.

And even if you could argue there's nothing special about the gameplay, the aesthetic, music, and sound design set it apart so starkly that you almost forget it's largely borrowing a lot of elements from PaRappa and Beatmania (and everything else of that era really, it's kind of the Star Wars of rhythm games if Star Wars got left in the dust as a cult classic). I want to put this game in a blender and just fucking chug it; everything down to the box art of the NA version just WORKS for me -- I very badly wanted to love this game. But I think I ended up merely liking it, even if I DO love the soundtrack, character design, and artstyle in general.

On some level Gitaroo Man is my dream rhythm game: adventure structure, anime battles, ultimate rhythm game power fantasy, and amazing music, but it's been rough getting my grips with the game as a whole. But it's really clear how much they were able to learn and refine in their Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents series, and I at least deeply appreciate it as this raw, unfiltered creative vision for a rhythm game that helped provide the seeds for my personal favorite rhythm game series. Gitaroo Man didn't quite land for me as the immaculate work I see people heralding it as, but I would say that it certainly lives up to its Legendary status, and when it rips it REALLY fucking rips. I hope someday I'll be able to play this on actual hardware with a PS2 controller to see if that turns this game from lost potential into one of my favorites of all time. Either way, it's a game infused with empathy for the world and love for life, and the older I get the more I value that the most in my media.

Could personally do without stages 4 and 5 though.
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† Okay okay, it was more complicated than that, and frankly my parents were way outta line, but it's kinda funny that iNiS's rhythm games indirectly lead to an important psychiatric diagnosis for my young self.

FUCK YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

BEST GAME.

GAME MAKES ME VERY SWEATY WHEN EVE4R I PLAY IT BUT THAT'S OK

I want to write more but i can't really think of anything.

This game is super sick! I think what stands out the most to me here is the music. It covers so many different genres and nails it. From funk to dnb to rock and acoustic guitar, there's a lot of really great tracks. The difficulty pretty much consistently ramps up, and there's definitely a learning curve to it, but nothing feels out of reach in the base game. It just takes a bit of practice to make it through. And the music being so good is just an added bonus.

In terms of gameplay, there's kind of two different rhythm games melding together here. One is pretty standard where you're pressing specific buttons to the timing of the song and on screen (defense), but the other has you using the analog stick to line up with different notes and play them on time (attack and charge). I had a lot easier of a time picking up the defense side of things, and the attacking is where it gets a little more tricky on a technical level. It's a really cool way to add in all of the guitar effects, and although it took a while to figure out, I really enjoy the balance between the two.

I think the art direction is also super cool, and while it's definitely pretty dated in that early 2000s 3D modeling style, it's got a great use of color and really charming character design. I also love all of the visual effects going on in each song. It can definitely be a little distracting at times, but I love seeing like the little frogs sing along or seeing the people cheering.

This game has a lot of heart, and it's got a really nice challenge to it. It's been on my radar for a while, and I'm so glad I took the time to play it!

"This is the sound, that glorious sound...we'd forgotten this sound for so long..."

I listened to the Legendary Theme, and from then I knew I had to play this game for myself, and despite the damage I probably did to my thumb, It was SO worth the trip. From the opening movie alone, I don't think anyone could resist being hooked. It's fun, it's got so much charm and style, and the ENTIRE soundtrack is great; toss that all up together and you get what's one of the best games of its genre

This game isn't afraid to immediately dump you into the den of bloodthirsty rhythm demons out of nowhere, and you'd better believe getting the best ratings will give your hands permanent blisters. With that in mind, this is a must-play for anyone who loves rhythm games and niche PS2 titles.

Gitaroo Man is both a prime example of that specific Y2K Humanitarian Aesthetic that is typically equated to stuff like FLCL or Team Ico games, while also being a sisyphian nightmare about conquering impossibly difficult sequences that, if I was a less game-literate reviewer, would call "The Dark Souls of Rhythm Games". I stayed up all night to beat this game, foolishly opting into the "hard" option which I weaved in and out of in the late game, each of it's 10 fights taking longer than the last (with 3 exceptions). For every attempt, I stood, nodded and danced through it's vicious trails of riffs and thumb-blistering QTE's. I hesitantly give it a five, because the four others have so profoundly impacted my life in the time I've had apart from them, and I just cleared this game this morning, but screw it. I wrote 1000 words about it's lauding it's philosophy and aesthetic sensibilities, so I might as well commit to a perfect score, although I will gladly admit the game is occasionally quite imperfect. This is the first game I played after a 3-day process of installing an HDD into my console and possibly the last game I will complete before heading off to college for another year after a year off. It's become both a comfort that hurts me and the very thesis for how I've grown in the last year. Be it how I appreciate works, analyze the intent of an ideas presence, my philosophies or the types of music or aesthetic that appeals to me, this game seems to be the perfect manifestation of it. Whether anyone is reading this or not, I don't care, I just want to try to put to words out there in the void about how profoundly this game impacted me. I typically dislike rhythm games. Parappa, to me, was an aesthetic nightmare, Rhythm Heaven too menial, and many others having difficulty towing the line of too technically simple and brain-meltingly difficult. Nonetheless, I went in with high hopes. From visuals alone, I was hooked, if not concerned by the fact I had died 5 times to the second level in the game. It was almost shocking to me that I had never encountered a rhythm game that sounded this good. Sure, Muse Dash had it's moments, but each song was both perfectly crafted for the exact visual and emotional experience and a complete piece of music in a vacuum from the original IP. After the techno-bliss that was the UFO level, I faced possibly one of my greatest video game boss experiences I've had since the Bloodborne DLC or the infamous Senator Armstrong: Mojo King Bee. A sublime and jazzy combination of Disco Stu and the Bumblebee Man from The Simpsons, battling against this suave man and his legion of swamp creatures as back-up vocalists was such a massive difficulty spike from the previous two encounters that I had to give my all to get through. I downed three cups of water during my attempts, my mouth drying out completely after every encounter. I motivated myself with a snack when it began to feel hopeless. I collapsed to the floor a couple times, my heart crumbling with each overly-seductive "oh... you lose", swaying, tensing with every note, I had to become the rhythm. The thrill I felt reaching the "Final" stage of the fight with a good pool of health left, nailing every note, heart racing at 150+ BPM, someone is knocking on my door, but all I can push out is a scream to usher them away. As the final note passes, I collapse, the sense of euphoria that washes over me can only be described as orgasmic. My stomach dropped, having not eaten in eight hours and I ate my snack. I had gotten better, tapped in to what I can only describe as an extended, more dynamic cut of the Undyne Undying boss fight without the pauses to choose attacks. Each fight is not only a battle of attrition, but conceives a new way to challenge your very dexterity, all while jamming out. Each fight brings forth this very specific emotion, a new music genre, that perfectly reflects how the main character, Uichi, feel: confusion, swagger, fear, love, obligation, control, melancholy and destiny. The fights seem to each be a physical manifestation of what it means to grow up. This game broke the very limit of what I thought I was capable of, and I haven't yet been able to clear the first episode of master mode. Like life, this game beats you to a pulp, then offers it's hand to give you another chance until eventually, through all that you have seen, learned and tried, you are able to fight to the goal post and smile, the emotions spilling out of you justifying the time spent and passing on a glorifying sense of accomplishment, no matter how ultimately minute the victory may be. The next morning after conquering the final boss, I returned to Mojo King Bee and, after a few unchallenging attempts, cleared the fight with an A-rank and a nearly full health bar. Over night, I had "got good", so to speak, developed my rhythmic intelligence and dexterity enough to crush that which had, only twelve hours ago, physically brought me to my knees. This game kicked ass, kicked my ass and made me long to live. It never cheated me, only asking for absolute skill, and will continue to challenge me for days to come. I'm thrilled to know that the music of this game is now in my life and that I can always come back to it to see how much I can challenge myself and grow in it's tiny space amidst 70 other titles in OPL. As I've written this, I've had the pillows-esque Legendary Theme looping in the background, languishing after that feeling I can only describe as "Keep riding on towards the setting sun, across monumental steel bridges and grassy roads... With wind in your hair, music in your ears and love in your heart, never stop. When the gas runs out, run. When you tire, walk. Just keep moving forward and live for every second of that journey". A near perfect gaming experience I am absolutely delighted to have come upon and one I will be telling people with zero interest in retro gaming about for days to come. Listen to the soundtrack, play the game if you can (can really only recommend on original hardware to prevent experience-ruining spurious input lag) and keep living on.
And if all of that didn't sell you on it, the love interest is voiced by Princess Bubblegum.

Gitaroo Man is a game that, at a surface level, is about a kid figuring out how to develop good self esteem. This is a good thing.

It just so happens that this also occurs through the process of his dog tossing him a magic guitar, turning him into GITAROO MAN. This leads him on a magical journey into outer space where he faces off against many foes, and through the power of music battling develops said self esteem. Its honestly pretty great.

The loop of Gitaroo Man is simple: find a foe, charge up your health meter, defend and attack your foe during a battle phase, and ride off into the sunset through each level's musical finale. Gitaroo man attacks and charges his bar through timed presses of the face buttons must be made while the analog stick is held in the correct direction. During battle phases when enemies attack you must guard by pressing each of the four face buttons in time to the beat of the music. Do this across a course of ten musical stages in order to clear the game.

It is very simple on paper. In execution it is excruciatingly finicky and difficult. Through charm, both musically and through localization, it manages to be an absolutely wonderful experience.

Gitaroo Man is a generally wonderful weird PS2 game. The precision placement of the analog, and the constant requirement to hold the analog stick in distinct directions makes it incredibly off putting to play at times - that Dualshock 2 stick just ain't made to be loved that way. The way later stages require you to jam your fingers over the face buttons to keep up pace with the game can lead to frequent hand cramping as well.

And yet, though I didn't particularly enjoy playing Gitaroo Man, which took about an hour or so, its charm and enthusiasm for its world structures makes it an infectiously fun experience. It's too silly. Too strange. You can't fight it, even your right hand desperately wants to.

To put it succinctly: I AM THE TRUE GITAROO MAN.