Rhythm Heaven is a fun and exciting way to spend brief periods of time with your DS and still feel like you’ve completed something. It captures the sense of the more main-stream rhythm games but still sets itself up as a mini-game collection. With more than 50 songs ranging from very different types of music, you’re in for a great time. Though one may find themselves a little thrown off when faced against its sharp learning curve and immediate difficulty.
The basis of the game play comes down to playing along with the game’s music by three main tasks: tapping, holding and flicking. At first glance this would appear as a very simple and an almost too minimalist style of game play as it gets too close to the style of mini-game collections. And though Rhythm Heaven is mainly a collection of mini-games, it structures them in a way that makes almost every one of them unique and engaging.
This brings up the best part of Rhythm Heaven: the music. The music can range from country and jazz all the way to rock or techno. Every song you play will be very different than the last and they’re all upbeat and enjoyable. It will be quite hard to go through the entire game and not find a song you really like. This truly makes Rhythm Heaven a game for everyone.
While listening to the music, you job is to perform actions that play along to the song’s beat. However, Rhythm Heaven actually has quite a high level of difficulty to it that makes itself relevant right from the get go. It becomes quite a difficult game due to its demand for a high level of precision when timing your taps or flicks. This steep learning curve is also the game’s biggest down fall. Going into a game aimed more towards the “casual” gamer and finding it this hard immediately isn’t a good thing. Even veteran gamers may fine themselves failing a couple times on the very first level.
To add to the difficulty, the game doesn’t do a very good job of teaching you what you need to do for each individual task. There is a practice mode that plays before each game (which you can skip if you wish) and for the most part it gives you a good understanding of what needs to be done. Though, there are some cases where I found that even though they told me what motion to perform, I still couldn’t get it. The problem is, Rhythm Heaven will tell you what to hit, but they don’t narrow down enough of when exactly you need to hit it. The majority of the time you’ll be faced with “tap after you hear ‘Yeah!’” And in game, this will sometimes mean to tap on the beat of “Yeah!” or the beat just after – the game doesn’t tell you which. There was even a case where it told me to tap on a beat that registered one too soon. This didn’t help the game as I was struggling on some of the tasks already.
Though it may be hard to first get into, once you have the basics down, it gets very fun. You will be ranked on each game and getting almost a perfect will net you a superb score along with a medal. You use these medals to unlock more mini-games to play with and, just like the main game, these games will require a sense of rhythm to play as well. These games can range from an entirely new song to play along with, or a variation on one you've already come across.
There is also a ton of different games to choose from in the main menu. Rhythm Heaven sets itself up in columns and after you play four songs, the fifth is a combination of the previous ones called the Remix. This lets you revisit the tasks you had to do in a new, fused together song. It also adds different images playing on the screen than the original song had. This adds up to the Remix mini-games being a great idea.
Along with the chance to play more than the main section of the game, you will be constantly reminded that you should try and score a perfect rating on past songs. Any time you achieve a superb score, the game will notify you after a while that you are good enough to try for a perfect. Playing the song perfectly will unlock you the song to listen to in the game’s playback feature. Though, it also comes with a bit of a risk. You only get one chance to play the song while going for a perfect score. This means that a perfect score can only be gotten when the game has notified you of it. So if you got 100% the first time you played, you won’t unlock the song. It also means that if you mess up your one chance, you need to wait till the game notifies you again. This was a bit of a disappointment as I found myself really enjoying a few specific songs and though I played them enough to achieve a 100% rating, I wasn’t unlocking my favorite songs.
Overall, Rhythm Heaven is a great game that, with enough practice, everyone can get into. It features a huge selection of music and wide variety of games to play. And though the game may start off a bit on the difficult side, it makes up for it with being fun and humorous. And the level of enjoyment you will get out of it will overcomes the difficulty as you will be playing the songs many times. The songs are all catchy and easy to enjoy while the inclusion of fun animations playing along with the music makes for a great time. Rhythm Heaven is a game that shouldn't be missed by any fan of the rhythm and music genre and will provide hours of entertainment.
Overall: 8/10
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