No Straight Roads is charming, and a great concept for a game. The game wears its No More Heroes influence proudly, with the same leaderboard interlude between fights, and lengthy boss fights intersperced with cutscenes, but the shoddy gameplay and massive amounts of jank are dealbreakers.

Its one of those games that looks more fun to play in still images, but is nowhere near as good in practice. Attacks lack feedback and weight, the rhythm of the song is more or less irrelevant. Even with parries, which are optional and unnecessary aside from challenge modes, No Straight Roads is a rhythm game that can be easily beaten with the sound off, which tells you how much the core idea of the game doesn't really work.

Its still worth playing via subscription, because this game has a ton of fun, campy and stupid cutscenes, a high quality soundtrack, and it doesnt overstay its welcome at only 4 hours. It's a case study of how far charm can carry a game that sucks at its core.

A 6 out of 10 is absolutely a generous score, but there is a lot to love here in spite of the glaring flaws. Lots of early reviews criticize the game for being buggy and having a bad camera, but the patches since launch have fixed them. It's just a shame they couldn't commit to making an actual rhythm game and not a half baked DMC clone.

Uneven, but with a lot of good. It’s got some wonderful aesthetic sensibilities and an interesting art style that feels psychonauts inspired at times, but with its own bend.

All of the characters and levels are very interesting from at least a visual standpoint and sometimes from their characterization itself. The dialogue is borderline painful but the overall plot is pretty fun with some good moments.

The gameplay is also not totally perfect, feeling fairly clunky with some extraneous elements but largely feels good enough for its runtime.

Altogether while it has a lot of rough edges, it comes together pretty well, with enough variety to carry it home

No Straight Roads is a fantastic game bursting with charm and personality. There's great music, gorgeous artwork and fun characters around every corner and that's only scratching the surface of the great things this game has to offer.

Not everything's perfect, but there's so much soul here that you can't help but have your heart taken by the game. For sure a must play, then a must "listen to the soundtrack on repeat for the next 4 months" kinda game.


(Note: One thing that originally let the game down for me was the combat system, which although it had its cool moments, it felt like I was required to hit tank for too much of the game.
I somehow... missed the entire upgrade system and suffered through the game without any of the helpful buffs which also add a lot of variety to brawling/bosses? Not sure HOW I let this happen but I feel I can't really discredit this part of the game when I flat-out played it wrong.)

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.)

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

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.

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.

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.