Rhythm Fighter is a 2D rhythm-based roguelike produced by Echo Games and authored by Coconut Island Games. In a world where countless animal species reside in peace, an evil force has turned all vegetables sentient and only a few heroes, with the help of Dr. Disco can help to save your day.
At least, I think that was the plot. From the moment you boot up Rhythm Fighter the cutscenes and text boxes start flashing by far too quickly to see or comprehend completely. Fortunately, the sport drops you straight into a demo to help acclimate you to definitely the non-intuitive controls. The game adds a rhythm element to what would certainly be a fairly standard beat ’em up. If you move or attack on-beat with the music playing, or even the pulsing metronome below your feet or at the end of the screen, you rack more damage. Missing your beat all too often leads to stalling out.
It’s easy to stay on beat when only faced with one enemy or so at any given time. But as soon as different enemies with ranged or moving attacks come up and you get surrounded, staying on beat becomes very hard. It’s not unfairly difficult. If you're able to discover the enemy’s patterns, dodge around them to line them in a tactical order, and calm and remain on beat, you can win fights unscathed. It’s just very difficult.
By default, the conventional controls need you to press left or right to manage the direction you want to move or attack along with a single trigger to maneuver or roll and also the A, B, X, and Y buttons to fight. You may also make use of the so-called advanced controls, that we slightly preferred, where rather than embracing the right or left you utilize buttons on either side from the Switch controller to do mirrored actions in either direction.
Neither control scheme really felt intuitive. Having to turn around with the standard controls meant feeling like I had been missing a beat do not ever to do this. But while using mirroring advanced controls had me constantly confused about which button was to move and which was to fight. The movement is associated with the triggers, that is totally counter-intuitive to my expectation that a trigger would attack and the A button would be to move. Maybe this really is my own insufficient coordination simply making the game harder, but you cannot remap the controls on the Switch, so I am left unable to determine if I'd be more skilled with different controls that fit my intuition.
Despite the steep learning curve of Rhythm Fighter, it’s a neat remix of the tried and tested formula. Death is inevitable while you start with a single character, weak stats, and we do hope you find enough strong items, health drops, and powerups to fight through waves of enemies and hazards. Your objective would be to clear the game’s increasingly difficult five randomly ordered stages, but until you unlock more characters and upgrade them, you won’t receive too much at the same time. All of the game’s elements are typical fare for any roguelike.
I particularly appreciate the progression system. It’s tied to in-game achievements, which include tasks like clearing levels, killing a certain number of each enemy type, and other mostly simple tasks with a few grinds thrown in. I appreciate it because they’re mostly simple tasks that you could accomplish just by playing enough. So you’ll also have the chance to progress even if you don’t fair everything well. Another kind of progression originates from collecting certain currency and spending it to change your characters. Additionally you collect this naturally, however, you collect more the greater you do, therefore it adds a far more complicated and challenging layer to progression as well.
Another complaint I must lodge is the fact that all the music sounds basically the same. Fortunately, it’s a good beat that keeps you engaged and doesn’t get too complicated it throws off your rhythm but isn’t so simple as to kept boring too rapidly. I do wish though that it would combine both sonically as well as in tempo. It’s stuck at a perpetual 130 BPM: not too fast but not not fast enough. There are specific enemies that make you mash the attack button or increase against a separate rhythm to deflect projectiles. These help break things up in combat whilst providing you with some needed respite from another enemies who are around you. But changes towards the tempo for different rooms is needed keep things fresh as you go along.
The art direction for Rhythm Fighter is strong. It’s a simple art style, but quite visually appealing. Its simple tyle fits the world and it has endearing characters. I’m not really a huge fan of creating food the enemy, it provides me “vegetables are icky” vibes and I love veggies an excessive amount of for your. But the playable characters are endearing and make you wish to keep playing to unlock much more of them. Each character also includes unique stats, powers, and buffs to inspire you to definitely use them all. The stages are very stereotypical depictions of various world cultures. But they are enjoyable enough to look at at least.
While I have been rather harsh on many aspects of Rhythm Fighter, overall, I like the game thoroughly and recommend it to enjoyers of rhythm games and roguelikes alike. It’s an innovative blending from the game types that isn’t overly complicated in its mechanics despite a steep learning curve because of its controls.
Rhythm Fighter is currently available on Nintendo Switch, PC, and Mac.
