Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
I love to have a Theatrhythm: Sonic the Hedgehog, but Sega won't do it... which is a shame because their current sound team is super-stellar and they have the musical repertoire to back this sort of thing up. Sega can just develop it themselves because they have experience with the rhythm genre already.
Wacky Workbench (Past), Dragon Road Day, Flying Battery, What I'm Made Of, Live and Learn, Spring Yard Zone, etc. would be extra fun to go through in a rhythm game setting. All of their composers don't stick to the same variety of music because they seem to like to mix up their genres every now and then (Senoue notwithstanding; I'm referring to Ohtani, Hataya, Kumatani, and Tokoi). There's a plethora of tracks to utilize for that sort of game. Not utilizing the same sort of art direction as Theatrhythm as I don't think it fits, period.
While the game didn't really have an obvious story mode (and it doesn't need it, admittedly), having the player get 10K Rhythmia and then Chaos suddenly popping out of nowhere was kind of... weird. It's not an arbitrary number, but the fact that you have to get so much Rhythmia after clearing basic and then doing expert/ultimate for a while to rack up Rhythmia to get the final boss to pop up and accrue enough Rhythmia to unlock even more songs and characters is a little disappointing. You have these characters who aren't taking their roles completely seriously in a Dissidia-like manner, so I sort of expected a parody of Dissidia. And the Chaos Shrine basically rotating a few songs even though it probably forces the player to employ more strategy in terms of who they use and what they have equipped is disappointing. I don't like having to play the same songs ad nauseam to grind XP and rhythmia because it gets slightly tiresome.
Another thing, which some have addressed already is the difficulty and the fact that you've had to take on Basic prior to unlocking everything else. EBA at the very least seemed to challenge the player from the start. Balancing the play in favour of the RPG elements like HP and strength kind of takes away from the challenge of getting into the rhythm. A way they tried to introduce difficulty in this game, which I've addressed before, was to switch instruments in the middle of a BGM, which really screws around with you. They want you to play around with the ensemble as opposed to a singular instrument, when in reality, certain instruments' time signatures are more difficult to replicate on a touch pad, so perhaps a smarter idea would have been to stick with a certain instrument for certain difficulties. This constant shifting makes it feel like the levels have little consistency. For a game that concentrates on music, it's very strange; it's like you have one page of sheet music dedicated to your choice of instrument, and then when you get to the second page, some silly fellow seems to have mixed in sheet music for another instrument (like hi-hats, for example). Of course, this is likely done to mix things up a bit over the course of a 1-2 minute beat experience, but I can't help but to feel that this inconsistency adds to the lack of cohesion that the game seems to have, imo.
Ah well. It's still an enjoyable game, but I can't see past some of its flaws. People are completely welcome to feel differently about this, though, and I know they would, but this is how I'm feeling about the game at the moment.
Wacky Workbench (Past), Dragon Road Day, Flying Battery, What I'm Made Of, Live and Learn, Spring Yard Zone, etc. would be extra fun to go through in a rhythm game setting. All of their composers don't stick to the same variety of music because they seem to like to mix up their genres every now and then (Senoue notwithstanding; I'm referring to Ohtani, Hataya, Kumatani, and Tokoi). There's a plethora of tracks to utilize for that sort of game. Not utilizing the same sort of art direction as Theatrhythm as I don't think it fits, period.
I think it's disappointing that you had to go through the Basic courses before everything else opened up. In addition to my previous criticisms, I've noticed that this game sort of lacks cohesive flow. At least--if we have to use an example--EBA sort of had something like that (since you had a map, missions to solve, and a final mission that brought everything together in a neat little package). You don't necessarily need a fully-fleshed out and developed story for cohesion as other rhythm games will teach you, but there should be some cohesion in the form of light glue or some sort of goal to achieve to string the different stages together.PixyJunket said:
While the game didn't really have an obvious story mode (and it doesn't need it, admittedly), having the player get 10K Rhythmia and then Chaos suddenly popping out of nowhere was kind of... weird. It's not an arbitrary number, but the fact that you have to get so much Rhythmia after clearing basic and then doing expert/ultimate for a while to rack up Rhythmia to get the final boss to pop up and accrue enough Rhythmia to unlock even more songs and characters is a little disappointing. You have these characters who aren't taking their roles completely seriously in a Dissidia-like manner, so I sort of expected a parody of Dissidia. And the Chaos Shrine basically rotating a few songs even though it probably forces the player to employ more strategy in terms of who they use and what they have equipped is disappointing. I don't like having to play the same songs ad nauseam to grind XP and rhythmia because it gets slightly tiresome.
Another thing, which some have addressed already is the difficulty and the fact that you've had to take on Basic prior to unlocking everything else. EBA at the very least seemed to challenge the player from the start. Balancing the play in favour of the RPG elements like HP and strength kind of takes away from the challenge of getting into the rhythm. A way they tried to introduce difficulty in this game, which I've addressed before, was to switch instruments in the middle of a BGM, which really screws around with you. They want you to play around with the ensemble as opposed to a singular instrument, when in reality, certain instruments' time signatures are more difficult to replicate on a touch pad, so perhaps a smarter idea would have been to stick with a certain instrument for certain difficulties. This constant shifting makes it feel like the levels have little consistency. For a game that concentrates on music, it's very strange; it's like you have one page of sheet music dedicated to your choice of instrument, and then when you get to the second page, some silly fellow seems to have mixed in sheet music for another instrument (like hi-hats, for example). Of course, this is likely done to mix things up a bit over the course of a 1-2 minute beat experience, but I can't help but to feel that this inconsistency adds to the lack of cohesion that the game seems to have, imo.
Ah well. It's still an enjoyable game, but I can't see past some of its flaws. People are completely welcome to feel differently about this, though, and I know they would, but this is how I'm feeling about the game at the moment.
