In Falsus

Came from their other game Arcaea for the challenging rhythm gameplay, but stayed for the story, art and voice acting. The visual novel elements are so good, it blew my expectations. Song selection is goated as always from lowiro, but this time they really blew it out of the water with the BGM as well. VN segments doesn't feel like I'm listening to the same BGM loop, thanks to the variety of tracks. And of course, the rhythm gameplay is very unique and challenging. For a control scheme that might feel clunky to some, the chart design is incredibly good for such a new game. They clearly took their years of incredible chart design from Arcaea and applied it well here. The card integration mechanic is also interesting, although it isn't shoved in your face too hard. It reminds me of Theatrhythm or ONGEKI's battle mechanics, but you craft cards to equip stat sticks to survive song battles. It gives a nice RPG/puzzle-like flavour on top the VN / rhythm game hybrid. There is just so much detail to this game's for a niche genre, everything has clearly been crafted with dedication and passion. Although the launch price tag did surprise me even as a lowiro glazer, I did not regret a single dollar spent on this game. Definitely worth the full price tag ($50 AUD time of writing).

my life would be so much easier if left click and right click replaced the shift and space lanes uhhhh solid songlist, decent charting (ive seen so far, i do 8-11s), good story, good voice acting, cool art/character designs, interesting mechanics for building cards that kinda terrify me, and lots and lots of potential to get even better

The crafting/mastery/discovery puzzles were surprisingly fun, the rhythm game itself is very good, I liked the songs. I just wish some of the "fights" or whatever they are were harder, I just matched colors and picked big numbers for most of the game, and I didn't have to use any traits until the final fight.

MIXED REVIEW, sadly Steam removed these. There are so many issues with the core game that I can't not see, as lowiro would say. Story's great, characters are interesting enough you want to learn more about them, but the pacing is horrendous for the first few hours. I'm all for world building and character development. However, these first two hours are just way, way too slow. Having to go back on every single character's point of view about the SAME situation, one by one, four to five times just to get one single piece of information on their background is overkill. There are ways to make this much more digest, and the game's intro chapter doesn't live up to my expectations of a story-focused game. Please note, I'm talking about chapter 1 here. Pacing does significantly improve down the line, but gosh that isn't newcomer-friendly. Now, for the rhythm game... Love the weird 6k with one hand take. Honestly, really fun once you get the hang of it, well executed all the way through, from charts to song/artists selection. Now, where's the calibration tool? An absolute must in every rhythm game, because everyone's setup is different? I still haven't figured out mine, and it's utterly frustrating. Come on, Arcaea has a simple beat count tool, you know how to make these, that's all we were asking for here as well. Same thing for a visual offset, where the option just doesn't exist altogether. And worst of them all, no visibility options. I absolutely hate how invisible these red notes are on the far right, timing judgement is either way too high or way too low, on top of being way too small anyway. I just ended up not caring about timings anymore... in a rhythm game. Finally, to add insult to the injury, highest difficulties are locked through scoring a few songs from the previous tier. Great, one might say! You can learn the game with these lower difficulties, then go up one... Oh. There aren't enough "free" (= not gatekept behind story progression) songs to unlock these? Why? I was cruising through FBD 10s, had to wait for AGES to get a third one for the game to allow me to try my luck on FBD 11? And the same thing happens for FBD 12???? Why? Let us play the way we want, playing through Normal and Hard was already more than enough. I was really, REALLY tempted to leave this as a negative review when seeing such glaring issues that could be fixed with a little more effort, but I don't want it to be detrimental to the game's reach. For once, we have innovative rhythm games coming to PC, and that's great! But please, for the love of everything that has six fingers on each hand like me, get some QoL improvements here and there; that alone will make the whole experience much more enjoyable. Story's a done deal, let's just hope new players will push through the utterly slow paced intro. Rhythm game-wise however, you have so much experience already, I can't possibly understand your choices there.

不如pigurous

this game is clearly intended to be multifaceted and long, i'm not yet done with the game but i've progressed to arc 3 so i think i can write this now i have time and i will take my sweet time for this game, whether it be practicing gameplay, reading the story, or studying the crafting mechanics, and it has been worthwhile so far. if i want lots of content and adrenaline i can just hop on osu. i'm here not for that, and in falsus has provided something beyond instant gratification for me

In Falsus is a visual novel / rhythm / puzzle game. No part of the game feels particularly undercooked and all is fun. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and even took the extra time to get all of the achievements. I'm not great at the rhythm game but still had a lot of fun. I'm also not too good at puzzles, but aside from asking friends for help with one card I managed to get all of the challenges done by myself. The difficulty is there if you want it, but if you want to play the game casually and enjoy all aspects it's all there and the experience isn't diminished for it. The art is good, the story is good, the music is good... It's well worth the price tag. It's a good piece of art and I would highly recommend supporting the developers. The story also took me out back and shot me repeatedly. I love all the main characters. I love Mei and Story and Iris especially. Reading about a character who shares my name though is really weird.