I played this some time last year when it came out in japanese. I was pleasantly surprised, but didn’t really go back to it.

Now that it surprisingly came out in english, I decided to give it another go, and I’m having just as much fun as the first time.

This is gonna be a short review, but I thought I might talk about the game anyways.
Read on!

Looks and sounds
The graphics are very very basic stuff. Basically everything in there, other than a few 3D elements and some more advanced 2D effects, could easily be done in Paint. The animation is also really simple, with only a few frames of animation depending on what you’re doing with the touch screen. But all this works really well. There’s almost always some kind of visual cue to tell you what to do, and there’s always a visual cue to tell you if you screwed up. This fits really well with the style the game wants to have, and frankly it looks pretty good. No complaint about the graphics whatsoever.

The sounds… Well, the game is mostly some j-pop-like music. This can be a big turn off, but it works pretty well and it’s fun to listen to anyways. Each stage has it’s own song/music, which is always complemented by sounds made by the in-game characters/machines/whatever. And there’s almost always some kind of audio cue to tell you when to do something(early example: in the signing game before the first remix, when the conductor says “Together now”, you have to be ready to slide the stylus). The audio is real nice, and my only gripe in the english version is that the english voices aren’t too great sometimes, but they’re at least bearable.

This is a game that looks and sounds really good, and the style is definitely there.

Gameplay
That was the part that really surprised me. If you know me, you know I hate Wario Ware, and when I first saw this I was expecting a crappy minigame compilation in the style of Wario Ware. Well, I was proven wrong fast enough.

The game is really basic. There’s 3 things to do: Tap the touch screen, hold the touch screen and flick on the touch screen. That’s really it. When you first start the game, you get a tutorial on the flicking so that you’re able to do it right from that start. It’s simple: put the stylus on the screen, slide it fast and let go on the way.

Each stage requires different uses of flicks, taps and holds, and all of that is relatively well explained. Before each stage you get a tutorial and some time to practice, so, other than a few stages, it’s not to had to get a hang of it.

Each series of 5 stages is comprised of 4 stages with 1 mini-game in it, and after those 4 stages you get a “remix” stage, which includes all the 4 previous stages, but constantly switches between the 4 mini-games depending on the music. And it’s really fun.

As for challenge, well, the learning curve is pretty much absent, but the game can still be kinda hard. Some minigames are actually pretty demanding. Just a few errors mean you fail completely, and sometimes 1 error prevents you from getting a medal. Sometimes when you get the medal you’ll eventually get told to go back to the stage and try to get it completely perfect, which unlocks music.

Overall, the gameplay is really fun, and surprisingly varied (considering there’s only 3 things to do).

Overall
This is surprisingly a really good game. A fun rhythm game with a unique style. It’s definitely worth picking up. Nothing more to say. There’s little reason NOT to get a hold of this.

jobocan Games, Handheld, Review