This game pisses me off so much, it has some of the best pure action gameplay I've experienced in the medium, with beautiful graphics and a killer soundtrack.


THAT BEING SAID, it has so much wrong with it and for the first few hours I was hating on this game HARD; I still stand by a lot of those opinions which I want to go into below:

-The writing gets better as the game goes on, but those first few hours are actually insufferable, the plot in general is incredibly standard and by the books, it was fun to riff on with my brother but if I was playing this alone I think I would be skipping cutscenes. Its physical comedy is top notch but the actual joke writing is 80% miss and 20% hit (& that's being generous)

-The character design is generic at best and pretty damn uncomfortable at worst; Chai is about as forgettable a design this game could muster for a protagonist, 2 out of the 3 female characters wear denim booty shorts and the less said about Macaron the better. It's like the rejects of Overwatch.

-The pacing at which the game shows its full hand can be a bit off at times, not giving me a parry until a few missions in is an insane move!!! It's platforming is weak and I wish there was some better downtime other than what feels like the most base level busywork in-between fights.

And despite all of that, I can't bring myself to give it a lower score because the actual combat and flair this game has is just that good
The first impression it gives off is one of trying wayyyy too hard, and it absolutely does, but like the protagonist of the game itself, Hi-fi Rush wins over the player with it's nonstop energy and just plain good game-ing