They nail this style. My only complaints are when playing the levels for a first time I would miss like 1-3 cranes per level so it was kinda lame to play the level a whole extra time for like less than 1% of progress. This would lead me to stopping after getting to a certain point and just turn the camera a full 360 degrees to double check I'm not missing anything. Also when first playing a level, you often hit a fork in the road and it's like you kind of have to guess which direction is the optional path. You could look ahead with the camera but when unfamiliar with the level is was kind of unreliable to tell. It's like a tier down from mario maker pick a path levels because most of the time it's not permanent but it's still a mood killer. If your only goal is to reach the end of the level then I guess that's fine but on a first playthrough it's just a bummer to 99% a level and have to spend 300% more time on it just for that last percent if you make a mistake. Sometimes it's not even a mistake and it's a cheeky hidden path with like 3 cranes but not often. Unfortunately that just sets the precedent so I was like always concerned for that. All this would like really kill my momentum and I didn't enjoy replaying the levels because of that. Also very rarely, I think like twice, you sort of have to have the knowledge to get off some of the autoscroller/rail sections in order to go into an optional direction and if you miss it then you have to go back to the checkpoint. It's unfortunate when that happens on a first playthrough of a level where you have 0 deaths and like the only reason you don't get S rank is because you didn't know the level in the first place. Oh also there are definitely depth perception moments but those are pretty rare. Often times the level is considerate of that and gives you extra room to land so it's fine.

While I'm going really into this stuff, it's kind of minor towards my opinion of the game as a whole. They could just be fixed with some minor indicators or something. Well maybe not the cranes idk. Oh yeah I didn't notice until I 100%d the game that there's an option for smooth turning to be toggled? I feel like that should be brought to the player's attention at the start because that drastically changes the movement and I probably would have preferred playing like that. Oh but dying 20 mins into the 25 minute level because the platforms didn't move and trying to find an alternate path was cringe.

But yeah the presentation of this game is amazing. The replayability is there and well-incentivized. When you're on a roll in this game it feels great. I followed the dev's twitter for a bit up until release and I'm stoked for them at how well this is doing. I definitely get steam syndrome of buying a game and not playing it but I pre-ordered this for sure, not only because I was just interested in it but I really hoped it would do well for the dev's sake. Super glad at the success of this game and bird mode was my fav.

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.

I used the option where you can run and shoot at the same time. Unfortunately after level 2 I really regretted this option because after that it was mainly just boss rooms and you had to have good control of your actions. This meant that a lot of the time I would want to stand still and shoot diagonally except that wasn't an option. I'm pretty sure if I went back to change that option then I would have had to start over.

As for the actual game, for a bit I got bored because it could be pretty mindless shooting. Like I felt like it didn't really matter what I did when I was fighting the bosses. This feeling eventually wore off when I started experimenting with the weapon combinations, those were really cool. My favorite weapon combo was the homing + fire. The weapon combo stuff was a great idea and added a lot of flavor to the game imo. Oh yeah and all the melee/throwing actions they added were a really nice touch, especially for this genre. Also wow those bosses could be pretty hard, mainly Green. The dice level was really cool. They should have added more checkpoints for certain parts.

feels like superstar saga literally from the first sound effect lol. This probably has some of my favorite combat of any turn-based game. They get really unique with the attacks and being able to change the difficulty of them is really cool. There are some attacks where it's like I meet my limit and others where it pushes me to get better at the gimmicks, it's fun. Also the vibe is just so colorful, I love it. Oddly enough, this game reminds me of the feeling I get during the ending of TTYD when you get that one cutscene you know the one. It really is a tomato adventure <3
My only complaint is it feels like it drags on for like one zone too much, maybe.

It's like pretty bad but also has some charm. Your teammates can kill you and at first I was mad but then I realized that some of their dumb AI is like perfectly in-character so it can be funny. I didn't like the special attacks because they elongated the fights a ton. The specials achieved like the same effect as a second of normal gameplay but took like a minute lol. They actually put like so much work into the specials it's crazy. I haven't watched the anime since I was a kid but the characters and dialogue are so stereotypically anime that it made me buy pokemon channel because it made me want to watch bad tv with pikachu. The text is actually pretty beginner-friendly so I enjoyed being able to understand some of the stuff going on from a japanese-learner perspective. They also jermacopter in this.

definitive cat game. The world/lore is cool and it's crazy how much info they put like on every single wall. I just didn't like when it got a little too fetch questy. Oh I also didn't like how ending a conversation is a different button than progressing text. You have no idea how many times I struggled with text boxes because I was playing on steam with a switch controller so it's like hit A to finish talking but that means hit B so my ankles were constantly broken having to alternate from hitting Y to B or was it A I still don't know. Also also I wish the game told you what music notes you gave to the dude because I wasn't keeping track :(

this game hits my favorite concept/trope/evocation that exists in any form of media but this is a spoiler free comment so what's up. also literally my only complaint is it can be a bit too hard at some points lol.

I first tried playing this when it came out but dropped it because I couldn't figure out a puzzle and didn't want to look up the answer. In this recent playthrough I got back to where I was no problem but got stuck on the same exact level and begrudgingly looked up the answer instead of dropping the game for another 6 years. I was really disappointed in myself for doing that and especially so since the thing I was stuck on wasn't even for a puzzly reason. I just didn't realize I could stand somewhere because my depth perception was bad lol. I actually looked up a text guide that had the solution written out step by step and I was still stuck for 20 minutes thinking "what do you mean that doesn't work" lol. Actually now that I read the other reviews on here, it seems someone else might have gotten stuck on the same level and dropped the game from there nice

After that I almost looked up the answer to one other level I got stuck on but ended up figuring it out after over a week of thought. I actually realized the answer in the shower because I had the level burned into my memory at that point and was trying to think of solutions then lol.