After finishing the early access, there are multiple instances in which the player experience can be broken.
First and foremost, the performance of the game. There are some performance issues in the game that needs to be looked into. I could see the assets being loaded real time, having the missing textures as it's replacement during it. There are also instances of frame drops and the game just lagging in general. Any instance of lag will ruin the experience, making it impossible to even get past the first note of a command.
Continuing with the music and sound. I have observed that the music does not align with the metronome after a while. Though, it seems even with the music on mute, it does not matter as being on beat with the metronome is more important. However, being a rhythm game, it is quite upsetting. I have also observed that even without any noticeable frame drops or lag, I sometimes miss a beat. It could be that the timing was strict, I was too fast or slow, or the aforementioned performance issues. Now, I do not have any experience with music, so i do not have much comments. Apart from it being sounding the same? However, with the gameplay, personally, it does not fit well.
Now, for the actual gameplay. The rougelite itself takes place in the level design, enemy and obstacles spawning, and the shop, so I am not going to go too deep into that. However, it sometimes leads into funny encounters with having 2 dead cats or 7 digging sapling enemies in a row. It also leads into this annoying instance in which any balloon moving into the armored balloon will collide with it, making this collision sound over and over.
As for the rhythm gameplay, with the problems with performance, and the music becoming boring as the gameplay moves on, it's quite disappointing. Next, the rhythm gameplay being inspired by Patapon. I should state that the gameplay itself is not similar to Patapon, just inspired. Rather than having a break between commands, you can continuously order commands and cancel commands anytime, you just have to be on beat. I don't know if this is the intended gameplay. Although, continuous commands such as attacking (and the only command you will be spamming) will make them not attack anymore. Combined with the music, it does not feel right? Like the music does not interact with the gameplay? I don't know how to properly convey this. It might be because of that lingering Patapon nostalgia, but I feel like the gameplay should somehow interact with the music. Crypt of the Necrodancer does this very well.
The difficulty of the game is not hard. There might be enemy spams, but the defend command negates all damage for a short time. I believe the difficulty comes from inputting the commands with the aforementioned issues. There are also instances of enemy attacks not damaging the players. I noticed this with the fox enemy not damaging the cats, even if I didn't do anything to defend. The bosses are quite easy because of the commands. The bosses should attack more.
I like the art of the game, however, after viewing it for quite some time, I notice it doesn't blend well together. What should be the foreground feels like the background at times. This also leads to obstacles like the gate, being out of place. I believe the designs could better. However, this is far from being a problem and more of a personal gripe. I also like that they want to give voice to animal abuse, but the current story and design of the game does not convey it properly.
That ends my review. In its' current state there needs to be a lot of polishing and fixing. Combining rougelite, rhythm, and combat is difficult, but I do hope the developers succeed.
