No Straight Roads is rhythm themed 3D beat em up that's like an indie band with heart and soul, but falls flat on stage because they lack fundamentals.

The biggest strengths of the game are the aesthetics.

The bosses have creative and vibrant designs. Boss encounters are typically grand in scale and are well characterized by their lively animations.

Each boss is themed around different a different music genre and attempt to capture the overall feel and aesthetic of that genre.

The story is a bit sloppy but tries to have a feel good message in the end.

Unfortunately, the gameplay surrounding the aesthetics needs more tuning up.

Enemies are supposed to attack you along the beat of the music but audio and visual cues aren't strong enough to properly anticipate attacks, leading to cheap shots that feel unfair to the player. Enemy variety leading up to boss encounters are also lacking. With essentially 3 basic enemies the entire game.

Player character attack animations lack impact and make all encounters feel unsatisfying to beat.

Player movesets also feel shallow and mostly devolves into mashing because of lack of moveset variety.

There are needless rpg mechanics added in the form of one time use stickers added to the characters' instruments that slightly improve stats but barely change how a characters feels to play.

There is however some replayability in trying to gain enough fans to unlock new abilities in a skill tree. Prioritizing the double jump and air dash early gives the player more defensive options but overwise doesn't add much combat depth.

Ultimately the game has a lot of style and heart, but fails to nail the basic elements of the beat em up genre and its ultimately unsatisfying to play.