Rift of the NecroDancer

Its kinda ridiculous that the game has gotten progressively worse after release, everything in the game at that point is still really really good. Every volume 1 song and beatmap, the story, minigames, bosses and especially the art. The first couple of dlcs were fine, Super Meat Boy was free at least, but I'm not a big fan of the music and the beatmaps were not fun. Celeste has really nice music but its paid, the free beatmap wasnt fun and the other beatmaps are not worth a single cent of mine. This trend kinda went on for every single dlc following (there are wayyyy too many) I'd suggest playing the demo and seeing if you like the style of rhythm game, if you do then the base game will be really good, just stay away from the dlcs, those actually suck so much.

- Love how female characters aren't sexualised and have as much love put into them as the male characters. - Minigames are funny, actually fit the theme of the game and are quite a refresher in the story. - Love the unlockable, gives incentive to actually play the story. - I love how each enemy does a different mechanic. Colour coding them actually helped a bunch with figuring out mechanics as well. - Mixing fast mechanics with slow mechanics makes for a good challenge. Wouldn't recommend doing DLC before main story.. as it throws everything and anything at you.

Just try the demo to see if it's your cup of tea. From a mechanics standpoint, this is really awesome. Ignore people complaining about difficulty, there is plenty to do leading up to the actual madness (I have 20 hours and I can’t even consistently beat intensity 14-15 levels). The game has a rather lacklustre tutorial/intro. I think if you’ve played the predecessor before (that game is so good omg), it makes complete sense, but if this is the first of the two you play, it’s quite confusing. It’s a bit funny they kept the awkward submenu to access the individual monster tutorials in between the games, haha. I recommend just starting on Easy and working your way up, try to play the story on Medium, see where it goes. You can always go up to Hard and see if it kicks your ass. In regards to the story (something I only realised this had 4 hours in), I think that it’s pretty bad. Like, so bad it circles back to being hilarious (is that on purpose?). I was very entertained. Just don’t think about any of the implications. The visuals are nice! I don’t know how I feel about any of the DLC, personally I prefer not making a lot of separate purchases after my initial one, so I doubt I will get any more of the paid DLC unless it’s something special to me.

Too much of the library is DLC. Not personally that into the included music.

This game is mad fun and has a banging sound track. Also, I appreciate the way this game does calibration. Its very user friendly and was fast and easy. Trouble is, its hard. Really hard. But not so hard that it ruins the fun. I recommend this game!

Spent 2 years on the demo tracks, now I finally bought it and I am enjoying every second of it <3 will probably purchase the DLCs in the future, but for now I have enough content with the vanilla version and the mods I'm coming across, hope they don't crash :D

A very unique spin to a game that looks like a VSRG but is not. Your traditional rhythm game experience does not carry over, and it will take time to learn mechanics and pattern memorisation. The story, characters, and minigames are fun with some great original music that matches the scenarios well. It is short and sweet with adjustable difficulty. The mixed part is that because your traditional VSRG skills don't translate over, it’s harder to drop in a play when you feel like it, decreasing replay value due to the type of rhythm game and memorisation required rather than reactivity. You play rhythm games when you feel like it and can warm up fairly quickly to get back in, but with Rift, there are so many different enemy types, enemy patterns, and gimmicks that it’s a mess when returning. This idea is great and works well till medium difficulties, anything past that it becomes an unreadable mess with visual clarity being the worst offender. It turns into a memorisation game rather than a rhythm game at that point and breaks your immersion when really enjoying a song, only for an offbeat or gimmick enemy to break that flow, and then it’s hard to recover. Overall, it’s a mixed feeling towards this game, but the base game is worth it for the content and enjoyment at difficulties you are comfortable with, but you have to be willing to learn enemies more than anything. The free DLC song from each pack is a nice addition and something other rhythm games should be doing, seeing how the genre thrives on DLC song packs. The Steam workshop has custom songs, and you can create your own charts, but these are hit or miss with the usual issues arising from community-made charts. Try the demo before committing, and preview the DLCs before buying packs, as chart quality does differ.

[spoiler]they really pulled an evangelion reference at the end[/spoiler]