Quaver has an interesting development concept, which is an attempt at making the definitive 4-key rhythm game, featuring the qualities seen in other games of the genre like smooth gameplay and customizing options of osu!mania and the detailed statistics of Etterna. It does manage to do what it sets out to do, it plays very smoothly, is highly customizable, has very complete graphics and leaderboards, and has a nice modern-looking GUI. It’s a great game, but it does have some flaws (some of which aren’t even the developers’ fault). It’s a game that’s supposed to be community-driven, and for being so niche and so recent has comparatively very little made for it. Few charts and skins (although you can import osu! skins onto Quaver), let alone good ones. I do however believe that it’s a game that will age like wine. 3.5/5, since it doesn’t present anything really new to the table, and doesn’t feel very special at all, being basically just a big mashup of modern 4-keys.

I haven't played standard keyboard rhythm games since like osumania 8 years ago or something. Wait no I've played a little bit of dj max in 2022. I think it's cool to have a community-driven steam option that's good to pick and play for free where you can download songs quick and easy. Also having a good leveling system is good for knowing where you're at and what you should play to improve. I played a level 25 7k song off the bat and failed immediately. I was so confused because I thought I could read what was going on and playing accurately in response. I was just like guess I'm not as good as I though I was? I played like 5 more songs with the same result but did fine it 4k. After an hour I realized you could change the visual offset along with the calibration offset. People said they do like -40 or something so I just did that and immediately passed what I was failing earlier and was pretty shocked. I was like wow I was legit convinced I was the problem but no I just had to pick a random number. On top of that I still wasn't as accurate as I thought I was? I assume because I just randomly picked -43 for the visual offset. I wish there was a way to accurately get a preferable offset but that doesn't seem like an option? At least for my case? There's a good selection of songs and charts so that's cool, but I literally cannot find a setting where it's comfortable/natural to play. If you can find a good setup then hey it's a traditional 4k/7k rhythm game and yeah those are great. Oh also the only reason I stopped playing was because my client closed unprompted in the middle of a 7 min song so that's cool.

lots of style, ...mediocre substance. quaver has some benefit on being on steam and being compatible with the file formats of its competing games (.sm and .osu), but it ultimately falls under obsolescence when it offers nothing new to the table. it's not innovative in any way besides having a pretty ui (COUGH) and its "way of doing things" as in its calculator and playfield customization etc just makes me want to go back to etterna.

i also want to note the rating distribution for this game on this website looks like a middle finger that is kind of funny