Sympathia

Hours played at review time, across 27 reviews with recorded playtime.

"Mild", more like "Mald" A Rhythm game + Bullet Hell dodger (not a shmup) with a vertical difficulty spike. I don't think this game was made for humans - you're probably meant to be assisted by a sentient robot bunny/cat(?) sitting on top of your head and playing for you. If you're not used to rhythm games and/or bullet hells, the default difficulty, "Mild", will feel very stupid - you will die often because something takes you off-guard, or because it's too hard to coordinate pressing the notes and dodging at the same time. If you can get past the learning curve and over the board difficulty - you may find levels to be exceptionally well designed, with your presses, including moving around and not the notes, very carefully synced to the music. You'll mess up a lot beforehand, but when you "solve" a pattern - it feels very satisfying because the track and all your inputs will be in-sync. It feels like dancing. The soundtrack itself is insanely good, capturing a certain sense of insanity while still feeling carefree in the end, fitting the game's theme and plot well. Had me come back to the game and keep trying to beat each level, because I wanted to hear more. There are only 2 real flaws: One - the default difficulty is just *too* high to be considered "easy". If this were Taiko Drum Master I'd probably say the difficulty felt like Muzukashii or higher. As a rhythm game noob I'd really appreciate an easier difficulty, at least "Futsuu" tier, to get used to the game. (Thankfully, the developer is working on "Very Mild" difficulty now. Too late for me since I already beat Mild, but hopefully future players will appreciate it) Two - the default control scheme for keyboard is really unwieldy. It's already weird to be using 2 directional sets of buttons, but default "OKL;" right hand controls just feel very unnatural. Thankfully, it's a mild flaw (pun unitended), because you can remap the keys to whatever you prefer. I've kept it at "WASD" for set 1 and mapped it to arrow keys for set 2, I recommend all keyboard users to try that first. All in all - a very exhilarating experience, well worth the effort put into learning to play it. Haven't felt this hyped up since Akashicverse, and never from a free game. Please give it a try, it's worth it