Rhythmn Heaven for the DS, what an absolute blast.

This waa my introduction to the Rhythm Heaven/Rhythmn Tengoku series and it was absolutely wonderful. This game was one of my childhood classics and stuck with me pretty strongly over the years. I absolutely adore this game.

I also think it has one of the best and most memorable soundtracks in the entire series by far.

A wonderful experience and worthwhile play.

Takes a lot of the greatness of Rhythm Tengoku and amps it up a bit for me, making for a game that I find equally as delightful as that one, but without a lot of the little caveats that prevented me from feeling outright adoration towards everything it did. The biggest glow up for me is the way that a lot more of these minigames feel structured towards playing along with the music rather than Tengoku often finding itself in this slightly strange position where I felt more like I was responding and reacting to split second musical cues within any given track. It essentially led to an experience that felt far more intuitive and natural to follow from moment to moment, with the bits that did lean into making the player react to something incredibly quick/memorise what's coming up feel more in line with a playful switch up as opposed to the core approach that was taken.

I felt that this was most apparent with the way that my failures in this were primarily execution errors based on losing the flow of a song momentarily, rather than being blindsided by something that was a bit too fast for me to comfortably hit without already having such knowledge in advance. My favourite change to how the game plays however, is the tactility that gets added thanks to the tap and flick controls that this takes on, as opposed to just button presses. So many basic actions immediately feel much more impactful when accompanied by the layers upon layers of feedback that's usually associated with hitting such cues, and adds a lot of appeal to some games that I otherwise feel I wouldn't care as much about, not to mention whenever it has something a bit more unique here and there, like the bottle shaking in love labs. While not all of the remixes are great, still having a few too many moments where it's just basic interactions strung together, there are a few of them that are absolutely fantastic both musically and how it messes with the cues to make for some incredibly cool, clever moments that feel good even after you've gone through and done them a bunch of times. One of the coolest DS games that happens to also use the hardware in one of my favourite ways, essential gaming.

i love music but i could never get into a rhythm game cause something always felt off or out of time, but not on this occasion. rhythm heaven truly feels like heaven when you get it right, even though it can be frustrating as hell at times. with a unique way of using the ds's two screens, this game delivers unbelievably responsive gameplay, almost like playing an instrument. its silly looking graphics match it's casualness and each level gives you something unique while still using the same simple mechanics. i don't usually write reviews before finishing a game but i feel like i'm gonna keep it on my 3ds for a while to enjoy it over and over and hopefully if my skill permits i'll get some perfects on the levels i enjoy the most.

I have a confession to make... despite the fact I hold this game in a extremely high regard and I even already praised it when I reviewed Fever, I actually never reached its end, and you know, after finally beating it after so long... I understand why.

Rhythm Heaven/Paradise doesn't pull any punches, I don't know if I would call it the hardest game in the series, but it's for sure the most consistently challenging out of all of them, especially when going for the Superbs. In occasions it feels like the game it's saying to your face ''Oh, do you want a reward? Maybe a pat on the back? Then you gotta earn it, bucko'' and proceeds to tell that you did ''Just OK'' despite only making ONE (1) mistake in the whole rhythm minigame, and that's not something that happens one or two times, it's an extremely common occurrence... and I love it for it!

I love that it's so demanding that in some cases it asks for perfection, I love that it requires to put the DS in such a seemingly weird position and can only be controlled with the touch screen, I love that it was marketed as a game that everyone can enjoy and learn from despite its absurdity and difficulty, I just love that it doesn't feel ashamed to be what it is, and on the contrary, it constantly enjoys simply existing. And you may be thinking: ''...well, that's nice I guess, but you've said really similar things about both Tengoku and Fever, so what makes Heaven/Paradise so special?’’ and the answer to that is quite simple… FROGS SINGING IN SPANISH.

Take everything I said about Fever making you feel incredibly happy while you are playing it, multiply it by at least a hundred, and you get the exact way I feel when I’m experiencing Blue Birds; while I’d say that both games are on par quality wise, all of the rhythm minigames in both experiences being incredibly creative and fun, Heaven/Paradise has a certain charm that I find extremely difficult to describe despite how easy is to pint out; every game has its unique visual flare, the music has that unique feeling that only the DS sound font can give off while also being unlike anything else on the system and producing some absolute BANGERS, and in spite of Megamix proving that a lot of this minigames can be controlled with a button control system just fine and even improving upon them, I’d still say that is this ‘’Touch book’’ system of controlling the game and holding the handheld what makes it that much more unique and injects so much fun into it. There is not other game like Rhythm Heaven/Paradise for the DS, even if I think Megamix is the superior experience in the series, is this one that it’s the most… well, itself; the one that pulls all the stops, the one the weirder stuff (as hard as that is to believe), the one that went as far as to even have full-blown vocal translations of songs to other languages, and as such the one that feels more personal, the one that feels just like paraíso.

Even if there are a lot of re-used minigames which don’t feel expanded upon enough, even if the flicking and touching control scheme can get a bit to get used to (even tho it ends up being a fantastic way to play the game and I absolutely loved it), even when the difficulty to get 100% completion can begin feeling a bit like bullshit (Remix 6 is absolute evil), I still love it. I still love it with minor flaws and gripes, I enjoyed every single moment I spent with it, and I will never forget the satisfaction that gave me not only beating Remix 8, the minigame in which I gave up in my first time back when I played it so long ago, in my second try, but also getting a superb. I’m so glad I finally beaten it, and I’m so happy to say I’ve loved it so, so much more than those years ago, and I found value in things I wouldn’t have even considered back then.
Time sure flies, it seems so long ago, I finally got some rhythm, and we’re on our own path now…

So let’s go!


Oh and also, this game’s Remix 10 is better than Fever’s in both the music and fun department and yes, I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL AND NOBODY CAN CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE, TAKE IT AWAY, CONDUCTOR!

Repeating my We Love Katamari review here, because this likewise combines rewardingly tricky gameplay with charming presentation & stellar music. Again, a simple, cartoonish art style means the game still looks great 15 years later, and the characters & stages instantly jump out at you with loud, colourful personalities. There's a decent difficulty curve, and although a lot of the minigames are sequels, they often improve on earlier levels in fun & interesting ways. To nitpick, I had quibbles with extremely strict timing or my touch screen's struggle to tell one kind of tap from another - the game's still reasonable enough to get through, with the option to skip a level if you're struggling after a few goes, but it's annoying if, like me, you're going for 100% on the Superb & Perfect grades. Speaking of, I'd prefer the ability to get a Perfect anytime rather than having a limited window to do so, but that's a smaller bugbear given the added challenge that creates. In any case, between the amazingly catchy music & endearing aesthetic, this is still a 5-star game for me in terms of the pure uplifting joy it brings me.

Fave minigames: Glee Club; Blue Birds; Crop Stomp; Munchy Monk; Love Lab; Frog Hop; Space Soccer; Karate Man; Glass Tappers (and this is a trimmed down list, this game seriously has so many bangers)

I was listening to the soundtrack this week at work, and I got my 3DS out so I could look at how much of the game I had originally completed, and then I got sucked into it again. The soundtrack goes hard and the gameplay is fun if occasionally frustrating. Still a great one to revisit every now and then.

my personal top 5 bangers in no particular order:
- DJ School
- Karate Man / "Struck By the Rain"
- Lockstep 2
- Love Lab
- Remix 3