Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival

I want to start by saying that I basically live and breathe music, it's a mainstay of my life and without it I don't function at optimal levels, it's just that simple. I have to listen a little bit every day and not least I have to play a little bit every day, either plinking away on one of the guitars or playing around in Logic with the MIDI pad and just making sounds. It's probably the closest I'll get to meditation in my life I think. That said, I've never been a big fan of games where music is played. Partly I find it quite difficult and a lot of that is because the guitarist in me goes crazy standing around pressing a bunch of buttons on a little plastic guitar. For that reason I never liked Guitar Hero; put a real guitar on my lap or sit me in front of a drum kit and I'll figure it out, music is in my blood. In game form, however, I have to struggle considerably more and it just feels wrong somehow. But where games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band died out, Taiko has continued to drum for the last twenty years and that is of course admirable, perhaps because they chose to niche themselves with just drumming on what is a traditional Japanese wadaiko, I understand. But the more I dive into Taiko, the more I understand how it has hung on all these years, because it is much more than just playing drums.

I throw myself into the fictional town of Okimo and am immediately greeted by a number of game modes. In Taikoland there are three different modes to choose from, Great Drum Toy War where it is basically duels against either the computer or someone online, Run! Ninja Dojo where you have to compete against three others and finish first, smashing as many notes and tones as possible as quickly as possible and Don-cha band where you play a song with four other players, either with four friends if you have that many or offline with AI players. It is by far the most fun game mode, you don't want to be the one who ruins the rest of the band with your bad playing and it gives it all a little extra edge. In Taiko Mode you play yourself and can choose freely among the 76 songs in the order you want and what level of difficulty. Finally, there is also Dondoko Town, which is the online mode where you can matchmake with players from all over the world of course. However, it is worth pointing out here that you can play against others in all modes and not just Dondoko Town even though it is the more purely online mode.

Before each game mode, you can choose to either play with the regular controller or the specially designed drum controller, however, I do not have access to the latter so it had to be the regular controller even though the game feeling is guaranteed to be better with the second option. It should be said, however, that it works just fine with normal controls. However, I don't think such a control is even available for Xbox, but that option has probably just been included when porting the game from Nintendo Switch.

At first glance, this may seem quite simple, there are really only two buttons that need to be used as there are only two notes to be played. Initially, it is also very easy and after warming up on the easiest difficulty level, I felt ready to increase a little. Then of course it immediately becomes more difficult, there are still only two buttons to keep track of but the tempo increases significantly and then it clearly becomes a real challenge to keep up and keep your fingers in check, I feel I need sharper reflexes

For starters, there are 76 different songs to play included, you can also buy songs separately or there is also the Taiko Music Pass with over 700 songs extra if you feel that it would not be enough. Of the 76 songs that are available, it may not be some we necessarily have on the top charts here in the Western world but Namco original songs and what I guess are Japanese pop songs or maybe a little K-pop, I'm very unfamiliar with that genre so don't take my words for it. I thought I recognised a song for a second when 'Bad Guy' came on but it wasn't the one with Billie Eilish, I quickly realised. Where I recognise music instead is from the classical section where, among other things, Beethoven's fifth is included as well as a bunch of other classics. There is also a lot of game-related music for the nostalgic from the Japanese gaming world in particular, such as the Super Mario Bros. theme and Mega Man, which is nice, but unfortunately there are otherwise very few melodies I recognise.

In this type of game, it is of course important that the game control is tighter than bicycle trousers on a sumo wrestler and fortunately I can only complain about my own inability and slow reflexes when I play. When I play easy and normal, it usually goes pretty well, but if I raise the difficulty level, as mentioned earlier, it becomes considerably tougher to hit all the notes. Not in any way unfair though. However, it would probably have been easier if there had been songs I actually recognised and knew, but with a little effort I think I can master this fairly well eventually. As with many other things, it is easy to pick up and start playing with the simple arrangement but difficult to master. It doesn't require any tutorial either, it's just a matter of learning which buttons to use and then getting started and playing.

There's a story involved too, of course, but it's absolutely nothing remarkable or directly deep, but it's also not something I had expected. It's a pretty simple set-up and in the role of Don-chan you go to the fictional city of Omiko where you simply have to become the very best Taiko master. There's not much more to it than that and sometimes it's just enough, it does get a bit scattered and messy though as there's no clear-cut story mode, my feeling is that it would have been a bit more fluid if you'd chosen to go down that route instead. But this is so full of charm and fun that it doesn't really matter, it's not something I focus on much at all.

Taiko no Tatsujin Rhythm Festival has the potential to entertain for what feels like endless hours. Not least thanks to the fact that you can buy 700 songs if you wish, but also thanks to the fact that there are so many game modes to choose from where everyone entertains on their own terms. I'm really charmed by it and it's playful in all modes, plus it's just as fun to play by yourself as it is to play with friends on the couch or online. I've never played any of the Taiko games before, even though the series has been around for over 20 years, but it certainly feels like this sets the bar pretty high. A very pleasant surprise for me, but it's entirely possible that old fans of the series won't have as much new to pick up here.