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We've played a bunch of this edition's rhythm games and also the brand-new Beatspell RPG mode on the Switch 2. Here's our David Caballero's impressions.
"The 5th Rhythm Heaven, or Paradise, or Tengoku, depending on your region, is finally around the corner. Or the 4th main entry if we consider 3DS's Megamix exactly what the title says it is. Either way, this comes after an endless 10-15 year hiatus as the series missed the whole Nintendo Switch generation until now. The new entry in this unique rhythmic series created by artists Tsunku and Nintendo's Masami Yone is about to release on the original Switch and of course it will also be playable on Switch too. And as it kind of works as a bridge title, we tried it out for about an hour on the newer hardware. If you don't know what to expect here, you might be surprised by one of the best formulas in gaming to deal with rhythm, and even to explain rhythm to all audiences in the most fun and simple way possible. And you might also be surprised by its silly, hilarious humour. Minimalistic and absurd fun, both qualities being very similar to what you find in the WarioWare series. The cool part here, and our main takeaway from our hands-on time, is that we had already played 3 out of the 4 previous titles, and yet we still had a fantastic time. Mostly laughing but also feeling cleverly challenged by the new rhythm games included, but how does that work if the mechanics are pretty much the same? Well yes, they are, but Nintendo has come up with new scenarios, tweaked the button prompts ever so slightly, and once again managed to put an inevitable smile on your face, regardless of whether you've played the series before. The new songs and ideas are just that good so far. By the way, one interesting thing we noticed, the couple of J-Pop songs we played kept their Japanese voices. Previous games had fantastic adaptations to local languages, for better or worse, so we'll have to see what the final game's purest vs mainstream approach ends up being."
"As per tradition, the regular single player rhythm games are split into columns and we were allowed to play the first full column. That included 4 games, or songs, and then remix one where you have to alternate all the mechanics you've just learned in a final, normally faster paced curveball filled track. The first one was Hooptrun Link. Following series traditions, the very first game has clearly been chosen with care. It's simple and charismatic enough to act both as the introduction and as the poster child you'll remember later. These badly drawn round guys jumping through rings are immediately adorable and hilarious. You are the last one in a line of 5 and the perspective plays tricks on you, making it way more difficult than it seems. You'll always press too early."
"That being said, we got a superb medal on our first attempt. Then came Brolly Good Show.
Nobody on a licence here, but things get a bit more complicated as you have to follow the lead and combine A with down on the directional buttons to either open or close your umbrella.
It's even more adorable than the previous game and even more hilarious when you miss."
"Here we got an A+, but no medal. Then came our favourite of the day, Disc Dog. How can you not like a game called that? You are the doggie being thrown a frisbee on the beach, which feels very appropriate for the season, and you have to count 7 beats in your head then jump right on that 7th beat since the dog catches the disc on the 8th. It's smart, fresh and of course challenging when the screen zooms in and you can no longer see the dog or when several discs are thrown in a row. So we bounced our knees to keep hitting the bars and our Disc Dog managed to collect every single pink disc. The accompanying puppy was impressed, we got a superb medal and it would have been a perfect had we been challenged."
"By the way, this is fantastic training for DJs.
The last song in that first column was Feeding the Beast. This one is more standard but also harder as our dragon had to eat all the flower buds being popped towards it. There is a lot of syncopation here and some confusing visual clues led us to our worst result but the Japanese dance tune is so good. After that we were offered one of two games from the third column, the now well-known Slice and Dice Kitchen from previous trailers or Hop, Stop and Roll."
"And we picked Hop, Stop and Roll because, well, it's all about kitties. Again it uses a formula we've seen in previous entries. You are the 3rd or 4th Japanese roly-poly doll and you have to jump to the beat with A, roll when you get the cue by pressing right in the direction of buttons or stop when prompted. It's more complex button-wise because you are keeping the rhythm almost all the time with A and it already shows how the gameplay will evolve and the second J-pop song gave the whole thing an epic anime feel. We meddled it too. Meow. The main challenges with Rhythm Paradise always come from nailing the songs to get the high scores and we really mean nailing them. First you chase medals, then if you're crazy enough you try to get a perfect on every song once challenged. And that's when you realise how something so simple can go a long, long way because yes, this is all about pressing buttons to the beat or to the backbeat or weirdly syncopated or two or three times between beats. The music and visual clues are there to both help you and mess with you and believe us, it gets deep. Finally, we didn't have time to try out the multiplayer mode and we were really intrigued by it after the Nintendo Direct, but we did try the innovative RPG mode called Beat Spell which was unveiled during that very showcase. We didn't progress much and we think the key to its challenge in depth will be seeing how much you can combine the different attacking and defending spells against the monsters. But once again, it felt unique and like the team was trying something new in a cool setting. Here the button pressing combos are trickier, the turn-based combat depends on your agility and your pace to the metronome and it allows for some creativity while rewarding your perfect hits with critical damage. We'll see how far it goes, but it looked very cool. If you haven't tried any Rhythm Heathermentry before we'd urge you to either buy Megamix for the 3DS if you still own the system as it really is one of the very best titles in its entire catalogue or to wait for our final verdict on Groove in a few days before it releases for the Switch systems on July 2nd. But right now this looks and sounds fantastic, its design is something else, they're making it bigger and it still has that educational touch that naturally trains your sense of rhythm while you're just having fun."
