I really, really want to like this game. I basically never leave negative reviews, but I'm doing so in hopes that the developers make some serious changes, fixes, and additions to bring this game to its fullest potential. If/when that happens, I will happily update my review.
I am a solo songwriter and producer, and I love writing multitrack songs in an Ableton-esque loop setting. Virtuoso seemed like a fun, casual way to write songs and jams in a new virtual space. I never expected production-quality music here, just a chill creative time. Unfortunately, Virtuoso has several issues that make even a simple jam sesh a challenge.
The first, glaringly game-breaking bug for me is that in my experience, the game likes to crash right when you save. I have written entire songs, with elaborate parts and structure, only to go to save my work and be crashed to desktop, losing everything. That happened twice, and yes I probably should have been saving along the way, but losing all that work not once but twice was absolutely heartbreaking. I still get save crashes even not so far into songs, but I've since learned to save early and often. Regardless, that is an unacceptable bug for a music creation app, because the whole point is to develop (and keep) creative work. Why it takes like a full minute to save, I also don't fully understand.
The other main issue is what I'd call a general performance sloppiness. All drum or key hits feel late, and you have to get used to playing way early to be in time with the click. The "sync to tempo" quantization feature is haphazard at best, where somehow you have to hit your notes even earlier for it to sync when you want it to. Even with quantization, parts feel out of sync. And I'm talking about synths here, not even the mic recording (which is also wildly out of sync, but at least has a latency slider). The problem is a lack of ASDR control, since the majority of the synth sounds have long attacks and feel late when quantized. All this is to say, actually PLAYING music in this music app does not feel satisfying at all, and I've found myself spending way too much time trying to resync out of sync parts in the advanced editing tools (which are also very hard to use, especially precisely).
The sounds themselves are lackluster. There's a very limited selection of very mediocre-sounding midi instruments, drums included. The instruments are super cool and neat to play around with, but the scale layouts are bizarre to me, and one or two instruments with purposeful 3d space just repeat the same notes on adjacent z-axis rows and columns instead of using that space for other octaves or helpful intervals. I don't really understand the purpose. The scale tools themselves are even confusing, and there's virtually no customizability. I'd love to be able to adjust button and z-axis functionality.
If this game was in early access, I would be able to excuse all of this, and all the many many features that it currently lacks. But it's not. It feels like an early beta of a demo for what could be a VERY cool VR experience for musicians. I don't have high hopes that fixes will be made and features added, but I would love to be proven wrong.
This review is way, way longer than I initially intended already, but I want to finish off with a list of requests, in case the devs actually do read this:
-Fix the saving issue. Please. #1 priority.
-Please add an option to turn off the opening music when the game is launched! Nothing is worse than having a new song in mind, only to have it immediately washed away by menu music after opening the app.
-I would love to have proper sections, with a proper timeline, that we can arrange into proper songs.
-Mix or bus effects would be awesome
-I'm not sure why it seems like the in-game Midi instruments are being recorded as audio, but it really should just be midi, and we really need to be able to adjust things like reverb or even the sound itself after recording.
-Please fix the loop not starting in the right place when saving
-Please fix sync issues
-More sounds, more environments, more instruments. Just needs more content to be considered a full game! There's so much potential for cool VR instruments
-Index controls are rough. I'd love an option to turn off the "grab to move" entirely, or adjust controls manually
-More time signature options would be nice. Tap tempo?
-Delayed sync multiplayer would be incredible for live looping jam sessions, but that would require quite a lot of development so that's just a dream goal
-The drum pads in general really need work
-Let us adjust synth filter cutoff, ASDR, etc. Just more control and customizability in general, all around.
I am very grateful to have at least A music creation software in VR, but I really wish this was more than it is, and I wish it did the little it does do, better.
