TL;DR: Many gameplay issues make this game near unplayable and very much unfun. Not recommended.
[b]First impressions:[/b]
- Menu is a bit lacking. Pretty much no options. The game is way too loud by default and I had to use the Windows volume mixer to turn it down to an acceptable level.
- Song list UI is also lacking. Only shows song name, artist and a short description. Needs at least some sort of difficulty rating and maybe a high score if the song was played before?
- Guitar Hero controllers are supported. However, the support is partial. Since the game is focused on keyboard and gamepad play, the strum bar does not do anything and pressing the corresponding fret buttons is enough to hit the notes. Would be nice to have some sort of "guitar mode".
- The visuals lack polish. The whole game very much has a "first Unity project" kind of vibe to it.
[b]Playing a song:[/b]
Sadly, here's where the game completely falls apart.
- [b]No latency/offset settings[/b] = no way to calibrate for hardware lag (input/display/etc). This means that all songs are off-sync with the visuals and there's no way to adjust it. Come on, this is a basic feature of all rhythm games!
- On top of that, it seems like the game slowly falls out of sync as the song progresses. Pausing and unpausing makes it even worse. This makes the game almost unplayable.
- No visuals or sound for misses or incorrect notes. If you're not paying attention to the "health bar" on top, you'll inevitably end up failing for seemingly no reason.
- Gameplay area is way too small. I get that the music videos are supposed to be the focus here... but then, why not make them fullscreen, and then overlay the gameplay on top like Guitar Hero or Rock Band does, but with a partially transparent background?
- Scroll speed cannot be adjusted. It's way too slow for how note-dense most of the songs can get at the highest difficulty.
[b]Hit detection:[/b]
The hit engine is very weird in pretty much all aspects.
- The frontend is almost nonexistent compared to the backend. You can still hit notes as they disappear off the fretboard, but hitting them just a bit early will result in a miss.
- Speaking of misses, they sometimes randomly happen for no reason, even if the note was hit correctly - it will count towards the score, but still break the combo and remove a bit of health.
- Anchoring seems to exist in some form (you can hit a higher note while still holding a lower one), but it's a bit random whether it decides to work or not.
- The game accepts hitting just one note of multiple in a chord. Seems weird to me, but could be intentional.
[b]Music choice:[/b]
I don't have much to say in this regard. I didn't know any of the bands featured in the game, but I liked a few of the songs (or at least the parts I was able to hear before inevitably failing due to desync). Looks like they're all smaller artists, which I'm okay with, especially if the game is supposed to be focused on discovering new bands.
[b]Summary:[/b]
Because of all the issues (especially desync and lack of calibration) the game is pretty much unplayable.
Unfortunately, it almost seems like more effort was put into the weird "rewards program" that is featured in the game (which also features cryptocurrency and NFTs for some reason???) than the actual game itself.
Not to mention, it is a [b]paid[/b] game after all, no matter how cheap it currently is - and based on the early access blurb, it seems like the devs have plans for more features but haven't really considered how playable it is in its current form.
It's not a very fun experience at all, and I would definitely not describe it as "fully functional".
I can't recommend this game to anyone, as there are much better rhythm games in the style of Guitar Hero or Rock Band currently available to play - many of them are completely free passion projects made by fans. Heck, you could probably even get a copy of Guitar Hero III for PC for a similar price at a thrift store.
