If you just want a vanilla vertical-scrolling rhythm game, this is a good choice for mobile. There's both "Thumb" charts for handheld play and "Multi-Finger" charts for tabletop play, so regardless of your device or play style you can still get a lot of mileage out of this. Songlist is solid too with some fresh faces and a lot of familiar rhythm game regulars and there's something for everyone. There is also the "slide input" mechanic which helps out thumb-based players by allowing them to slide their fingers across lanes to avoid wearing themselves out. I also greatly appreciate what I consider "standard rhythm game QoL features": scroll speed setting, mirror mode, timing offset adjustment, and early/late indicators. And on top of that, the standard judgement setting is pretty fair and allows for satisfactory play at most skill levels, but if you want to push yourself, there is the "Lunatic" judgement option with timing windows more akin to pop'n music or EZ2ON REBOOT : R, and scores are saved separately for that judgement type.

This game features some nice visual customziation options. In additon to being able to modify visual skins for backgrounds, lanes, etc, you can also apply stickers to the playfield, whether it be for decoration or to obscure the playfield, either as a self-imposed challenge or to fine-tune note visibility for more precise or reactive play.

It does feature some bugs and typos here and there, and amongst the community the game is infamous for its inaccurate difficulty ratings -- the general trend seems to be that newer songs tend to be easier (seriously, I've played S20s released in late 2022 that are easier than early-version S16s!!). Course-related modes leave much to be desired, either due to costing a good chunk of in-game currency or having bugs related to timing offset. Finally, while I laud the game for having thumb and multifinger modes, the hitboxes in thumb mode are unforgiving and I tend to miss notes that don't feel like they should've been misses.

There's also a decent amount of free content (albeit requiring unlocking) so you can try the game out before you start to make monetary investments into the DLC packs.

Kinda-esoteric rhythm game that's quite reminiscent of CHUNITHM and VOEZ, with lanes that frequently shift in position, width, and quantity. Lots of good songs and good rhythm game QoL (accuracy-based scoring, fast/late indicators and counts, offset), but the difficulty rating system suffers from inconsistent application - I've found that many Hard 12 charts are harder than Master 13s or even Master 13+s.

If you plan to play in English note that there are a fair number of errors and a lot of song-related text (titles, artists, chart authors) are left untranslated.

If you like the game a lot do consider getting the T3 Premium membership. It is permanent and discounts a lot of features or makes them cost no extra, and also speeds up boss unlcoks.

I personally don't care for the Zero Wing side of the game, it's not badly designed but it doesn't do much to innovate or refine.

Now Hellfire, I was surprised by how good it feels to play. Having access to four different weapons at all times, each that fire in different directions, allows the player to be able to tackle threats from any direction. The 2P version of the game has multiple control schemes in addition to the original, which was infamous for being basically incompatible with rapid-fire setups due to the way the Change button works.

Check out the console ports of Hellfire too, they each add their own things. PC Engine port adds a proper story and is probably the most beginner-friendly version. Mega Drive version adds bombs and a CPU-controlled drone, and feels like a better way to experience the checkpoint-based 1P edition.

I sort of don't mind the rapid tapping mechanic, or at least I tolerate it enough to play through the game sometimes. Honestly the way the game was marketed, it looked as if one would only need to use it sometimes, but in practice about 80% of the game requires it.

Frankly this game needs a health warning.

Stellar soundtrack by HIROKKEY as always though.

If not for the game having the obvious doujin graphics and audio, one might swear this game was made by CAVE employees or former employees thereof. Imagine the scoring mechanics of Ketsui but with the isometric horizontal perspective of Progear or Akai Katana. Solid game if you want something relatively conventional, it doesn't do much to stray from the usual arcade bullet hell tropes.

Also yes, the game is not on Steam. It has only been sold as a Japan-only physical and as a DLsite digital. If you have a little time to set up an account there, the game does not have any DRM to worry about nor do you need to install some launcher app (just run the game straight from the executable), so it's absolutely worth the extra legwork.

Very solid rhythm game, if not a bit luxurious due to the high initial price tag. Once you get past that, you have over 260 songs available to you, with many more available via DLC.

This game is notable for its lack of unlock systems. Outside of one or two hidden songs, all songs are immediately available once you make the relevant purchases, on all difficulties. The only real unlocks are for the background videos for watching/listening, but beyond that, the game gives you absolute freedom in what songs you want to play. If you want to start by playing an 8-key level 20 SHD chart, go right ahead!

As far as the game mechanics go, they are quite vanilla. It's simple 4-, 5-, 6-, and 8-lane gameplay. No score multiplier gimmicks, just textbook yet challenging beatmania-style gameplay. There is a quirk of the scoring system where while it apperas to be entirely accuracy-based, you get a very small bonus based on your max combo. It shouldn't be anything too crippling though.

Songlist is good and quite varied, from EZ2DJ/AC classics to modern songs by artists that may be more familiar to present-day rhythm game players.

I simply haven't played this game in a while because my PC isn't up to snuff and I need a newer, more powerful one, and I don't have a particularly good keyboard with at least 1000 hz refresh rate.

Interesting and esoteric rhythm game with a dynamic judgement line that sometimes moves and rotates. Sometimes, it's judgement lines.

Lots of aspiring niche musicians in the songlist, along with some familiar names.

My only real complaint is the scoring system. I do not like combo bonuses in rhythm games. In this case, 90% of your score comes from note accuracy and the remaining 10% come from max combo. This often leads to incidents where one loses a whole letter grade because they missed one note in the middle, and it ends up being more punishing than missing 5 notes near the start or end. There is an "accuracy" rating shown next to the score but it's de-emphasized and there's no explicit notification for when you beat your accuracy record (unlike when beating a score record), so the game doesn't quite incentivize pushing on even after a missed note.

captain_whatyousay.png

Didn't really care for it. The enemy capture system seems like it would be fun but all it's good for is making ad-hoc shields. There's nothing groundbreaking about this game nor does it execute the existing shmup formula in an outstanding way.

This is one of two side-scrollers Toaplan made (as opposed to top-down shooters, which make up the bulk of their output) - I prefer the other one, Hellfire, much better.

I picked this game up over the summer after noticing it looks very similar to Project SEKAI. The most notable aspect to me is that despite being an "idol" game with gacha, it features accuracy-based scoring, and unlike D4DJ Groovy Mix, which features accuracy scoring too but behind a monthly paywall, accuracy scoring is available as part of the basic package - no payment needed. And like D4DJ there are no "perfect lock" (a skill that converts imperfect hits into perfect hits) cards either, so you don't have to worry about your full combos or all perfects feeling less legitimate just because it turns your your party has a perfect lock card. And grades and rewards are based around it too. This I find to be a shocking and pleasant move because presumably, most gacha/idol-based rhythm games on mobile make the player's score dependent on card parameters and skills in order to nag people to roll the gacha, and likely spend money on gacha gems for pulls in hopes of pulling that ultra-rare card.

The basic gameplay itself, which is variable-note-length "hallway"-style vertical scroll rhythm gameplay, is where people immediately run away because "oh, this is a ProSeka ripoff". Yeah, it looks a lot like ProSeka, but to me it feels like a more refined version of the game: Holds don't have to be released with perfect timing, holds with flicks at the end are colored differently so you know to expect flicks partway through and/or at the end of the note, and there are segments where the chart turns into fixed-width-and-quantity lanes that look pretty and emphasize that this part of the song is special. Yes, Goods break your combo in this game, but they still award score and given that there's not one, but two different types of Perfects, and Great, I think this is fair. (From what I've seen: Shiny Perfect is 101%, Perfect is 100%, Great is 70%, and Good is 10%.)

Now at first glance, there seems to be four difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, Extra, and Stella. These charts potentially provide a tough but fair challenge to even tablet playres. But perform a certain action and you unlock *Olivier difficulty. Olivier uses its own difficulty scale and is where you find charts that may require 3 or more presses at once, and where the game starts to get seriously spicy.

That said, don't think that because this game features free accuracy scoring, it means you can just ignore the gacha. There are a series of missions that are needed for song unlocks, and those depend on gacha-based score instead. And good gods, the way card skills and parameters work in this game are surprisingly complex. Instead of just card skills being "[score multiplier/healing/whatever] every time you pass this point in the song", each song has a unique chart detailing where card skills will activate. And card skills also have cooldowns: If the cooldown on a skill has not finished by the next activation point for that card's skill, it will not activate.

The songlist is okay. Of the originals, "Diamond no Chikai" stuck out to me the most. There are some covers as well, such as "Shiny Smily Story", and I was amused to find a cover of "Snow halation" from Love Live!.

Now, in the interest of transparency: I only know basic Japanese at best. Only enough to know some basic sentences and vocabulary, both general and rhythm game-specific. So my assessment of this game's system isn't exactly fair. If this game ever gets a localized release in English or Tagalog, but fat chance, or if I bother to re-study Japanese, I will be able to make a better assessment about this game's mechanics besides "hit note get points".

I played this quite a bit on an an iPad. Excellent song quality and variety, and beautiful song artwork.

This game used to have song packs unlocked one chapter at a time every 100,000 downloads, until the fulfillment of the 1,000,000 downlaod campaign, which was met. Now only a few song packs are locked by DLC and over 180 songs are available with the initial purchase.

I like the scanline note presentation and it's one of the few rhythm games where I don't mind the speed of notes being based on BPM. The timing windows are fairly loose, which might be a turn-off for more "hardcore" players but there are certainly players who don't mind it too much. Also, the difficulty scale is out of 9 and there's a huge spread of difficulty in the level 9 range. Also scoring is combo-based, with all the problems that entail (miss 1 note in the middle and it's worse than missing several notes at either end); there is an alternate scoring system called TP that is accuracy-based, but it's heavily de-emphasized in favor of score.

Frankly I prefer this over Cytus II. Cytus II is too grindy and reliant on DLC purchases.