Samba De Amigo: Party Central, as it hints at in the name, is a party focused rhythm game. Using the Joy Con like maracas, you have to shake them in time with the music to try and get a good score. Notes are sent to 6 different directions on screen (top, middle, bottom, on both left and right sides) and to hit these different notes you have to tilt the Joy Con in the right direction. Straight up for the top notes, horizontal for the middle notes, and titled down for the bottom notes. While this does work to a surprising degree, it does also lead to frustrating moments as notes are missed because the gyro of the Joy Con had become desynced. This issue is more frequent when songs ask you to make big gestures like arcs or zigzags because you don't get enough time to realign the Joy Con once you notice it's been knocked off centre from doing a lot of motion with it.
Now there is an option for button controls which could be helpful for those who don't like the motion controls but personally I found the beat maps to have been designed around shaking which meant the button controls never quite felt comfortable to me.
Despite my issues with the controls, I did manage hit some perfect scores with the motion controls and it nails that rhythm game feeling of achievement when you do manage a perfect.
The song selection is mostly a bunch of greatest hits from recent pop culture with artists like Ke$ha and Carly Rae Jepsen and whether you like that or not is down to personal taste in music. For me the selection was fine, I found a decent amount of tracks that were fun to play along to but the dlc songs were a lot more to my liking with songs from Sega games like Sonic, Yakuza, and Space Channel 5 as well as a Japanese selection with stuff from Jujutsu Kaisen and Hatsune Miku.
There's a bunch of things to unlock through playing the songs like costumes and different styles of maracas as well as a generous amount of online multiplayer stuff and leaderboards to compete in if that sort of thing interests you, so it's a pretty comprehensive rhythm game package.
If you have an itch for a fun party rhythm game, then this should provide a decent scratch for it. However some issues with the control scheme stops this game from reaching its potential, though it still manages to provide a decent experience despite that.
Now there is an option for button controls which could be helpful for those who don't like the motion controls but personally I found the beat maps to have been designed around shaking which meant the button controls never quite felt comfortable to me.
Despite my issues with the controls, I did manage hit some perfect scores with the motion controls and it nails that rhythm game feeling of achievement when you do manage a perfect.
The song selection is mostly a bunch of greatest hits from recent pop culture with artists like Ke$ha and Carly Rae Jepsen and whether you like that or not is down to personal taste in music. For me the selection was fine, I found a decent amount of tracks that were fun to play along to but the dlc songs were a lot more to my liking with songs from Sega games like Sonic, Yakuza, and Space Channel 5 as well as a Japanese selection with stuff from Jujutsu Kaisen and Hatsune Miku.
There's a bunch of things to unlock through playing the songs like costumes and different styles of maracas as well as a generous amount of online multiplayer stuff and leaderboards to compete in if that sort of thing interests you, so it's a pretty comprehensive rhythm game package.
If you have an itch for a fun party rhythm game, then this should provide a decent scratch for it. However some issues with the control scheme stops this game from reaching its potential, though it still manages to provide a decent experience despite that.