You might have been skeptical when Famitsu gave the game 35 last week... 35 points for a rhythm action game, huh? Well, they're pretty much on the mark for this one. My first hour with this game suggests that it rocks hard.
First, the types of hit... you've got odd beats, that just appear as a 1 with a circle around them. The circle gets smaller and when it reaches the size of the number, you have to hit it. Then there's the sequences going 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. again with the circles that diminish in size until the beat hits. Third kind of hit is a rolling hit. A circle shrinks around the number and when you hit, you keep hold of the ball that appears and roll it along a line, keeping your pen inside the ball space, and letting go at the end of the path. Finally there's the spinning disc. Every now and then a disc will take up the bottom screen and you have to spin it as quickly as possible (either clockwise or anti-clockwise is ok) to build up excitement.
The story is told like an interactive manga. Squares appear telling the story, you do your rhythm thing and in between parts of the song, more manga appears. The story depends on your progression in the song, and there are different degrees of failure and success. Your "life" is measured by a spirit bar which automatically ticks down with time and you must keep it filling up by getting good scores. When it runs out, you fail totally and have to start again.
Levels can be chosen freely to some extent. At the start of the game, there's a map of a city which you can slide around the screen, and there are four people you can help at first. Succeed with all of them and another five open up. It's worth pointing out that the first four are quite straightforward and I passed them all on the first or second try. However, the second group of people are all die bitch hard... really. I've tried a few of them several times and still can't get past them. You Gitarooman fans are gonna love this! You really have to get to know the song well to succeed, which is a satisfying requirement for this type of game.
The music so far has been pretty good j-pop. If you hate j-pop, you'd best avoid this, but it seems that j-pop and the rhythm action genre have a long history together, so it's not really anything to be surprised by. The songs fit well with the stories told and there's some classic slapstick humour going on.
As far as longevity goes, it's a tough call right now. It looks like it's going to take a while to even pass some of these songs, and then there's a tough ranking system which extends a looooong way across the screen. It's going to make a nice break from Famicom Wars DS for an hour or two, then I'll come back to it properly when I've beaten FW.
Got Pac'n'Roll too... not that impressed really. The gameplay is pretty cool, but the camera is a bit annoying and the view is just too small. Value-wise, this and Pac Pix should definitely have been sold as one game, but I have two Pac styli now, so that's one perk, at least.
