Melody's Escape 2

As a project I think this is cool. As a game I paid money for its simply not worth a price-tag. I played the first one, so I was hoping that the sequel would be more of an upgrade than it was. The central gimmick of auto-generating maps for custom music works better than I'd expect, and I can kinda feel an improvement from the first game, but its slight, at least for my music. It has never and still doesn't even compare to properly developed or community mapped songs for other games though. My biggest issues with the game are the animations and the 3D environment. The intro and outro walk animations are smooth but all the other animations feel rough, don't transition particularly well, and lack any flare. The environment in the first game implied running and jumping around the tops of buildings, but this new environment just feels like jogging along a path, albeit surrounded by a kind of ocean. The sense of imagination and escapism is lost for me. Together these issues make the game just feel kind of lifeless and like a really boring way to "play" my music.

TLDR: buy the first one instead. 217 hours in the original, 30 in this. Full release today. I think the first game is still better. Biggest downgrade by far is that difficulties in ME2 don't go high enough. Minor things are that in ME2 there aren't as many obstacles, obstacles only have one color instead of being color coded per direction, most obstacle inputs and animations are reversed from what you would think (up to dive down, left for right turns, etc.), and I find it more fun how in ME1 you need to press both directions for obstacles at the same time instead of just one. Both games have the huge problem that you have to have a library of music that happens to be around the BPM (=difficulty) you want (or in first game around either 100% or 50% of the BPM you're looking for). You don't know the BPM until you click a song, wait a couple seconds for it to load, it says it's way too easy or hard, go back, and repeat until you find one. I really really wish either game would automatically nightcore any song to whatever target BPM I set. Only in my dreams.

I had a blast playing the first edition, and this edition is also giga fun to play too. The most enjoyable rhythmic game IMO. I wish there is a map editor to make or adjust engine generated tracks which can be shared to the community to download and try, I believe this will add track variety and more interesting content to play.

I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite game on the Citadel.

It's ight, it's harder than it seems but still on the easier side. Intuitive controls, decent music. Just probably won't come back to it because I don't have a lot of my music downloaded in a way that's playable in the game.

He jugado este juego desde el principio, he visto toda su evolución. Definitivamente los creadores han logrado un fantástico trabajo. Felicitaciones por el reciente lanzamiento oficial del Juego.

Great game! Didn't expect much but was quickly charmed by this one. Some songs you put in are very hit or miss depending on the genre, from the ones I like, the very intense metal ones had the worst feeling both for the game's vibe and for the generated chart. From the game's bundled songs the ones from the "Dance" pack are cool, but I disliked the "Indie Folk" pack so I didn't bother playing them, and these are the only 2 that come packed in. I found the best genres to play in this game were EDM or rhythmic game soundtracks because they consistently generate cool charts and match well with the visuals. Techno, Gabber, Trance, Hardcore, DnB, Eurobeat are always well translated for the charts. I also have the oldschool Dance Dance Revolution soundtracks in a folder and those are really fun to play in Melody's Escape as well, and since they're all usually short tracks they don't put a lot of strain on your eyes, which might happen due to the stunning colorful visuals when you play a long-ish song or have long sessions. 1:30~4 minutes are the sweetspot for length in my opinion. The highest difficulty is challenging enough for a veteran(although not very skilled) rhythm game person like myself, very enjoyable experience overall. Give it a shot if you like music games, or even if you just want to vibe to your favorite songs. There are easier difficulty options that simplify it a lot or even a pure visualizer mode if you want to just sit back and relax.

This is THE go to game if you want to play any song easily in a rhythm game. The dev still supports it as of this review, please buy a copy.

For reference, got this on sale for $7.49. This is much more satisfying than the first game and feels way more immersive with the level creation using your own music. This and the first Audiosurf may be the top two best games to use the player's music. Graphics being in 3D also works well. Hoping maybe for other game modes, like a DDR type thing with arrows coming down or something similarly fun. Amazing game. (IMO, more fun and accurate than Audiosurf.) 8.5/10

At the time of this review, I have played around 20 hours of the first Melody's Escape and about 3 hours of this game. In all good faith, I want to be clear that I think the original Melody's Escape is a better game than this one. While the graphics are worse, the art style has an iconic feel to it. The first game has many more settings and options for how YOU want to play the game. By all means, it is one of my favorite rhythm games of all time. But this review is for Melody's Escape 2, not Melody's Escape. So here are all of my thoughts: This game is pretty. I wouldn't say it is dropdead gorgeous, but it is very pretty. Importing songs is incredibly fast and easy. The concept is very easy to pick up and play. Just throw in a song, and press the corresponding buttons as they appear. Yet there are many quirks that bother me about this game. The first thing that really confused me was the timing for when you're supposed to hit the note. This isn't one of those rhythm games where you are matching a note to a track, your character is just running on top of the directions. My instinct was that I was supposed to hit the corresponding note when my character either stepped on the note or stepped on the very middle of the note. However, the perfect timing is actually when your character steps on the VERY FAR EDGE of the note. There is no clear indication of this and it took trial and error after turning on a hidden setting to reveal if you were too soon/too late. This indicator is a big improvement over the first game, which only tells you if a timing was "good" or "great" or "perfect". Another gripe I have with the game is that it's simply too easy for a seasoned rhythm game player. Even on the hardest difficulty, I can't enter a "flow state" because the notes are just too sparse. If the FOV was higher, perhaps they could have increased the amount of notes-per-section-of-track to compensate for this... but as is, some songs just get too cramped to fit all of the notes and somehow they still come too slowly for a rhythm game player. My other gripe is with the control scheme on the hardest difficulty. This game has two kinds of notes: bubbles and boxes. The bubbles are controlled with WASD and the boxes are controlled by arrow keys. Unfortunately in Melody's Escape 2, which wasn't quite the case in the first game, WASD is easily 3-5 times more frequent than the arrow keys. I find my fingers start to cramp, wishing that the arrow keys were the bubbles and WASD was the boxes. Lastly... there are times when the notes after an obstacle may be nearly impossible to see before they need to be hit. This is quite rare, though, and I haven't yet seen any that are truly impossible... but I wouldn't be surprised if they exist. TLDR; If I have all of these complaints, though, why do I recommend this game? Because it's great! You get to play your own music as a rhythm game and it comes with a lovely visualizer of a girl running to the intensity of the music. If that sounds appealing to you, then you should try it out :)