Beautiful art style, great performance, extremely deep combat system which allows for near infinite skill expression, funny and lovable characters, and and an overall varied,enjoyable gameplay.

Development studio shut down by corpo scum, because game was given no marketing, letting this gem be forgotten. If you are able,give it a chance,this game definitely deserves it.

YUH HUH

I went into Hi-Fi Rush with incredibly high expectations given how much everyone sung its praises. And for what it's worth, there is a solid amount of stuff that it does really well, but for me it fell well short of all of the things that I had heard about and hoped for.

To start with the positives, the music is fantastic. I had thought there would be more licensed music in the game, which was a bit of a letdown, but the original music made for the game is also very good so it balances out. The animation and style of the game is also great, the switches from 2D to 3D are always a nice extra touch to give some scenes of the game a little extra pop. Voice acting and characters are also well done. This is definitely the kind of story where I feel like the VA's could have phoned in the performance, but they did an outstanding job with just keeping up with the energy of the game. And I enjoyed the character work and dynamics between the main cast, they also helped push things along towards the end.

Combat is an area that felt pretty mixed. The loop itself was pretty solid, with enough new enemies to at least force you to learn a new mechanic or two as things went along. But for a game that only took me ten hours, the combat was still starting to feel a bit stale by the end of it. The bosses were also a mixed bag in this respect, with especially the ones towards the back half of the game feeling different in design and scope, but not different enough in gameplay feel for me. The story was also just ok as well. It's not that the message is one that I disagree with or anything, but I feel as if it could have been more fleshed out, or had something to say beyond just the surface level. The twists fell pretty flat and easy to spot from a ways off.

The biggest detriment for this game for me though is easily the other half of the gameplay, the platforming and navigation of the stages. It's been a while since I've played something where it just feels so clunky and awkward to move around. The gravity is so strict that it's hard to move in ways that feel satisfying with the rhythm, and the strict on-beat counting for stuff kind of messes with the flow for me when I'd love to mix up timing within the tracks with some syncopation or off beat hits as well. Genuinely the platforming was so bad that it's basically brought the entire experience down by a whole point just by itself.

Always happy to see a small game succeed, but Hi-Fi Rush just left me wanting more.