This game is what I wish all roguelikes aspired to be. Fantastic core gameplay that the procedural generation actively improves, items being tools that individually matter and change the way you interact with the game, and all capped off with a skill ceiling so ridiculously high that I'm still coming back nearly eight years later and enjoying it just as much as I did all those years ago.

Tying rhythm to dungeon-crawling necessitates extremely quick decision-making and situational awareness, marrying dungeon crawling with fast-paced action in a way that pushes said decision-making to the forefront just as much as the action. Weapons grant completely unique attack ranges which vastly change the way you approach the entire game - for instance, a whip lets you hit long distances around corners but risks hitting enemies when you wanted to move instead, or a flail sacrifices range for a knockback that disrupts enemies’ attack patterns - even working against minibosses - and allows far more aggressive play. And the procedural generation elevates all of this to its fullest potential, as each run puts you in vastly different situations - both due to minor differences in enemy and terrain placements and more obvious differences in the equipment you have - creating a game that’s fiendishly fun to play over and over purely on the merits of its core gameplay. And that’s without even mentioning the multiple story modes, or the tens of optional characters that all change the game in a completely different way, or the handful of extra gamemodes, or the-

The most obvious downside is that with all these moving parts, it’s really fucking hard. The story modes do help ease you in, but mainly by making the game more forgiving rather than easier (though it does do that as well). But push past the initial hurdle and you risk running into the second issue - this game is so ridiculously good that it has completely warped my perspectives on videogames for the past eight years. I feel exhausted whenever I see any new roguelike nowadays because it just won’t be as good as NecroDancer. I looked at Hi-Fi Rush with extreme skepticism when it dropped because there’s just no way it’ll be as good as NecroDancer. Anything that’s even slightly similar to NecroDancer is immediately compared with NecroDancer, and NecroDancer always comes out on top. NecroDancer has irreversibly destroyed my taste in videogames.