Has perfectly scratched the rhythm game itch I've had lately. Between the massive tracklist and the huge amount of difficulty customization you'll always have a good amount of songs that are in the perfect sweet spot of being fun to play while also providing a reasonable challenge.
About the tracklist here - it's decently large, it covers a fair amount of genres (some of which seem like they straight made them up), but it won't be everyone's cup of tea as techno and D&B are wildly overrepresented, and if you're not a fan of K- and J-pop either the pickings are somewhat slim. The hip-hop here ranges from uninteresting to god-awful. The best offerings in both gameplay and music here come from YUKIKA (understandably) and other rhythm games. I don't want to link the whole tracklist here but I do really want to highlight some of the most bonkers shit that's on here: their tokusatsu parodies, the worst song I've ever heard in a rhythm game, this song that sounds like every alt rock song that was on American radio in 2002, and my personal favorite - whatever this song turns into.
About moment-to-moment gameplay - the timing is fairly lenient, but you get virtually no buildup on your "Fever" meter if you're more than slightly off, it just lets you keep the combo. Notes are clear and it's fairly easy to sight-read songs, even with the music videos (which exist for every song) playing in the background. They're charted well, and it's always fairly easy to tell what sounds you're actually "playing" in the song. If it's hard to tell the difference between chords and slightly offset single notes, it's probably time to turn the note speed up a bit. The UI can be changed pretty thoroughly (and to some pretty absurd, borderline-unusable elements), and doing so makes it pretty easy to find a combo that makes the game more readable or gives it some personal flair.
Quite possibly the best rhythm game on PC at the moment - at least, the best among the games that have a fixed tracklist.
Some minor gripes:
- The music video illustrations are DeviantArt-tier, which is mostly fine, especially because you can just turn them off while you play if you really hate them.
- Why bother with volume sliders if they bottom out at 50%? At the lowest possible setting this is still the loudest game on my PC by a mile.
- I can't really tell how the "random" button on the Freestyle menu decides what difficulty to pick.
- Not really a complaint, but I thought the "missions" would be a good introduction to the game. In a sense, they are, as long as you only stick to the first, like, three missions. They ramp up in difficulty extremely quickly and are very clearly more of a challenge mode than anything.
- DLC pricing is downright punitive. I hope you don't like any of the rhythm games they've collaborated with, because if you want any songs from your favorite three-dollar rhythm game it'll cost you six times that price.
- Why can't I favorite songs in the live-play "Air" mode? I get that it lets me play songs that I don't own, but at least let me favorite the songs that I do. It doesn't show the title of the song after you play or when pausing either, so I hope you remember what it said before you started playing.
- I am so goddamn sick of hearing that League of Legends K-pop song, good god.
About the tracklist here - it's decently large, it covers a fair amount of genres (some of which seem like they straight made them up), but it won't be everyone's cup of tea as techno and D&B are wildly overrepresented, and if you're not a fan of K- and J-pop either the pickings are somewhat slim. The hip-hop here ranges from uninteresting to god-awful. The best offerings in both gameplay and music here come from YUKIKA (understandably) and other rhythm games. I don't want to link the whole tracklist here but I do really want to highlight some of the most bonkers shit that's on here: their tokusatsu parodies, the worst song I've ever heard in a rhythm game, this song that sounds like every alt rock song that was on American radio in 2002, and my personal favorite - whatever this song turns into.
About moment-to-moment gameplay - the timing is fairly lenient, but you get virtually no buildup on your "Fever" meter if you're more than slightly off, it just lets you keep the combo. Notes are clear and it's fairly easy to sight-read songs, even with the music videos (which exist for every song) playing in the background. They're charted well, and it's always fairly easy to tell what sounds you're actually "playing" in the song. If it's hard to tell the difference between chords and slightly offset single notes, it's probably time to turn the note speed up a bit. The UI can be changed pretty thoroughly (and to some pretty absurd, borderline-unusable elements), and doing so makes it pretty easy to find a combo that makes the game more readable or gives it some personal flair.
Quite possibly the best rhythm game on PC at the moment - at least, the best among the games that have a fixed tracklist.
Some minor gripes:
- The music video illustrations are DeviantArt-tier, which is mostly fine, especially because you can just turn them off while you play if you really hate them.
- Why bother with volume sliders if they bottom out at 50%? At the lowest possible setting this is still the loudest game on my PC by a mile.
- I can't really tell how the "random" button on the Freestyle menu decides what difficulty to pick.
- Not really a complaint, but I thought the "missions" would be a good introduction to the game. In a sense, they are, as long as you only stick to the first, like, three missions. They ramp up in difficulty extremely quickly and are very clearly more of a challenge mode than anything.
- DLC pricing is downright punitive. I hope you don't like any of the rhythm games they've collaborated with, because if you want any songs from your favorite three-dollar rhythm game it'll cost you six times that price.
- Why can't I favorite songs in the live-play "Air" mode? I get that it lets me play songs that I don't own, but at least let me favorite the songs that I do. It doesn't show the title of the song after you play or when pausing either, so I hope you remember what it said before you started playing.
- I am so goddamn sick of hearing that League of Legends K-pop song, good god.
Reviewed on Jul 09, 2022
averypaledog
1 year ago