Can I just start by saying I really wanted to DISLIKE this game. I am a pretentious DDR player who played for 4 years and beat almost all content DDR, ITG, and Stepmania had to offer. So this game strolls along and is all like "look at me, I'm a dancy game" and I thought it was just stupid, I mean look at that guy with the afro, is he a wizard, is he a disco dancer? wtf is this game?!

Then I played The Metronomicon at pax and ho-ly-crap I was instantly addicted. Everything just made sense, the step charts were smooth, the rpg element was smart, the team building was in depth, it just felt right. So the devs spotted me a copy and I streamed it for awhile hoping to find some aspect of the game I hated, but it just kept getting better. This game isn't 90% dance, 10% rpg, it's 50/50. Building your party is JUST as important as hitting the notes right. I've kept in communication with the devs for awhile now (I stalk them on twitter) and they are seriously the most legit game devs out there, I mean their next tournament is called W.E.I.N.E.R and let's face it, any game devs that put weiner in their game deserves you to buy their game.

9/10 point deduction because F&*% you guys, your game can't be perfect.

The single best game in the rhythm RPG genre. I'm aware that's a hyper-specific niche but I don't care. If that combination sounds even slightly fun, play this game.

No jokes. Serious review. Deadpan serious.

This is literally DDR with an RPG laid overtop of it. Down to the song menu and difficulties. If DDR doesn't appeal, tread carefully and watch your time played in case you want a refund. I only have a bit clocked as of this review but I can tell you it's DDR with an RPG.

If you're into rhythm games like DDR, FFR, and Stepmania then you'll find yourself at home rather quickly as the game gently insists there's totally room for an RPG in Stepmania. (And there is, apparently.) Like DDR, you get to select a song which you preview in the menu (it even looks like DDR's menu). Once you choose a song, that begins the battle.

Once in battle, you switch between one of four characters' step charts, and follow the arrows like in DDR; you can stop after activating an attack at a first, second, or third power level. Switching is smooth, and the game will only start tracking your steps once you start input on one character. It's highly designed for fluidity. Thankfully, the step charts are most of what you have to pay attention to.

But legitimately, DDR with an RPG inside of it.

To think I grew up beliving Mario Paint was the wildest combination of games-- a coloring book, a music maker and a minigame all in one...

...now look where we ended up.

I love rhythm games. I've played everything from Gitaroo Man to Rock Band to Project Diva.
I'm not amazing at rhythm games. There aren't many that I'm able to consistently do well on the highest difficulties of, but I can make it through all of them without much issue.
I love RPGs, from Final Fantasy to Baldur's Gate.
I like to think I'm pretty good at those.

Before I go on, I should probably speak towards my short time playing this game on Steam:
The controller support was finicky and so I purchased the game a second time on PS4. I should note that it's become more and more apparent as I've played higher difficulty songs that the note tracks are designed with PC in mind and are much, much harder to handle on a dpad controller. In an ironic turn of fate, Metronomicon has the same issue many Japanese rhythm games have; higher difficulties are nigh-impossible without using the intended hardware, be it arcade stick or keyboard, as the porting to use of a controller was an afterthought. Regardless, I've since played through the game on PS4 with a Dualshock 4 controller and, while I enjoyed my time with it, I find it unlikely many other people will unless they share my patience bordering on masochistic tenacity.

Metronomicon tries to be both an RPG and a Rhythm game. Marrying these genres proves to be a shaky union and because of that, it's very hard for me to recommend this game to anyone else. What's exactly at odds here?

On the RPG side, there's a general non-specificity when it comes to just about everything in the game. How big of a difference is minor damage from major and major from crazy? How long should I expect these buffs to last? How significant of a difference does it make to overcharge abilities by inputting more notes before executing them? While you're constantly asking yourself questions like this, you're treated to randomly gathered items and it's unclear if loot is tied to specific stages or enemies or bosses and, some times, it's even unclear exactly what that loot does. The combination lifepools into a team health pool works well until you start questioning exactly how healing, percent health triggers, and other effects relate to it all. Ultimately, Metronomicon makes the mistake of giving the player too little information, which, in turn, makes it hard to feel as though you're properly interacting with the systems that are in place. The systems to progress and upgrade your team feel largely outside your agency as a player and 'grinding' songs for experience is a process that doesn't feel all that great and it's unclear how hard difficulty scales to your party levels and what they even do beyond netting you new moves.

At the end of the day, though, the rhythm stuff holds it back--did you want to execute that move of yours? Hope you can hit those notes right. Were you hoping for more direct control of your party? Good luck, you're bound to the frets. Did you want to pause to take in more information and inform your next decision? Too bad; that resets the song track entirely, making you waste precious seconds of the song run time. You'll constantly find yourself unable to make decisions that feel informed because the game is forever ticking down the amount of time left on the song you've got, notes forever whizzing by as a reminder you should, optimally, always be slapping in inputs. Remember--your goal is not to actually beat any bosses; it's just to survive to the end of the song. Metronomicon constantly reminds you that it's a rhythm game first and foremost.

But what about the rhythm game? Honestly, the RPG stuff holds it back. In any other rhythm game, the note sequences would feel absolutely tailored to the songs, but here they're variable based on the character you're using (arbitrarily so, it seems?). Do you like feeling like you're 'in the zone' when playing a rhythm game? Enjoy constantly having to pull out to play this left-brain right-brain exercise of swapping between characters to heal, buff, cleanse debuffs, and deal damage. Were you a fan of being able to focus on the notes in a rhythm game? Metronomicon makes sure all the relevant information you need is at your periphery no matter what--enemy health and type is on the far right while your team health is far left while buffs active are in tiny icons beneath characters while individual character health is something apparently only I care about. This gets to some of the worst offenders, though--debuffs and boss effects. Some debuffs are laughably minimal, such as your icons losing color, whereas others, like the one that waves them around such that it's very difficult to tell if a note is a double note or two notes close together, is a much more frustrating beast. Bosses will mess with your notes as well in ways that aren't always properly telegraphed as even being boss moves; it took me several attempts to realize that the second boss was actually using a move that caused these boulders to fall down, obscure my notes, and hurt my characters and that I had to switch characters to avoid that damage, throwing a huge wrench in the whole 'playing a rhythm game' aspect of things. Sometimes, a boss will use a move that forces you to hit notes or take damage for several seconds, which, in turn, wastes your own time that you need to use to deal damage, which can cost you the fight. It'd be fine if the boss fights were designed around this, but it feels wholly up to RNG when these moves get used. Regardless, you'll constantly find yourself interrupting the flow of rhythm-based play to consider some element of the RPG based play and it's not a great time. Speaking of, missing notes doesn't just interrupt or stop your momentum towards taking an action--it also hurts your party. Fumbling a set of notes can be far more damaging than enemy attacks. If that's not enough, the characters groan and pout every time it happens and there's no option, as far as I can find, that turns this off. Speaking of distractions, various characters will appear and start dancing on screen at random times and this can obscure your characters in a way that's so distracting on top of everything else that it's hard to keep focus on the rhythm game at hand. It's a mess. Left and right note differentiation is fine, but up and down still give me issue even at the end of the game--which wouldn't be as much a problem if hitting the wrong note didn't interrupt my attack or cause me to use the entirely wrong one. Several combo notes require you to suddenly rely on a second set of inputs (wasd if you're using a keyboard, face buttons on a controller) and this strikes me as a strange design decision and something that works far better on the dualshock than it does a keyboard or XBOX controller. Song difficulty varies so wildly that some songs within the same chapter are harder to beat than their boss counterparts. The song list varies from forgettable to a few real bangers and it's a shame more time wasn't spent polishing this end of the game.

While I could gripe on about elements of the art, aesthetic, animation, and plot, those are all minor points to what I've outlined so far. Metronomicon is a flawed game. There's nothing else quite like it, and if you're like me, you'll play and enjoy it despite the flaws, shortcomings, and frustrations, but for the general person looking to pick up a game? Maybe the adventure you're looking for is at a different dance hall.

I want to live in this universe. I love everything about this game. I want to impress gay raving squirrels while striking flawless disco moves to summon lightning bolts to smite the most stylish and colorful succubi.

Really though, the mood and atmosphere click so hard with me it's unreal. Everything involved - creatures, locations, fashion, combat maneuvers, attitudes, dance-combat, juxtaposition of the mundane and the exotic - is so wild and outlandish and curiously it all works together in a strangely grounded sense. The soundtrack is GLORIOUS, the creatures interesting and bizarre, the party and combat mechanics are fun, the reviews are gushing, and the colors blind me to whatever nitpicks I'll find later.

Of course, I know that this sorta style is not for everyone, but I'm glad the game is ultra-proud of what it is. It was made with pure, niche love and that much is obvious. I've had this game on my radar since release and I'm kinda sorry I never played it sooner.

Metronomicon's gameplay is similar to Darkest Dungeon — were it a rhythm game and your ability to succeed was based on how quickly and accurately you could press the right buttons to complete a succession of notes.

Mechanics:
The buttons use the four arrow system. Seen in many rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution, Intralism or “OSU!”. So you'll need to utilize both hands to perform. You can either use WASD and the arrow keys or a gamepad — using the both the d-pad and face buttons in conjunction to get more complicated beats down.

You could probably even say there were some influences from older Harmonix games from the now ancient times of the year 2001 in “Frequency" and 2003 in “Amplitude” — you have to hop between tracks and set up different beats to complete the song. Metronomicon is similar in this regard but augmented by the fact you've got to get combos that do damage to an enemy while mitigating incoming damage as opposed to making a bass line for example. Similarly in its further distinction, the only thing it shares in common with Crypt of the NecroDancer is that they're both rhythm games.

Main modes are the story campaign and freeplay alongside the arena for extra challenge. The campaign also has some of its own challenges. Challenge songs require the focus of doing a certain amount damage or simply surviving, among other things like curing a certain amount of damage — a few are less strict in how to accomplish the task — in that, the objective is to kill a certain numbers of enemies, so it's up to you how to go about that — some are about performing a certain number of spells, so you'd need consciously leave bars early such that the one bar spells would occur more often. You might for instance leave unhealed damage to complete a second bar of the warrior to keep the inspired buff on.

Characters can swap abilities into different bars once earned, but this is what I used:


Leaving a bar early will activate whatever previous completed bar's ability. As long as you switch tracks in between notes, it won't count as missed. And only active tracks can give misses.

There are other characters beyond these, 8 in total but I'll leave them to be discovered them on your own. Not to mention all characters level up and earn new abilities that can be swapped out. [Level cap is 50] Three bar abilities/spells can be difficult to perform at times, so to mitigate this, I tend to equip items that buff abilities/elements that I've placed in the first or second bar such that they can be performed more easily or more often to increase damage.

They'll all behave differently. Example: one of them has more spells that could be cast on bar one, giving you an additional party member that can quickly cast spells making certain challenges more doable.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2461209765

Items can be equipped to enhance stats. Such as Hulk hands on Wade to increase damage output or a “dazzle wand” on Clark to increase healed amount while increasing its cooldown.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2461209725

The campaign is relatively strait forward. You play songs, you beat them eventually unlocking a boss stage where upon completing that you'll go to the next area. Boss battles can single out certain characters by forcing you to complete their part of track that might be difficult. Other stat debuffs might be introduced as well such as blacking out the arrows or having them wobble just outside of their given track.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2461209689

Earning “street cred” in either the arena or challenge songs earns you the ability to purchase bonus features like unlocking the DJ room so you can play certain songs in the menu for instance. They'll sometimes reward with more gear.

Every song can be performed on easy, medium or hard — score will be represented accordingly. The game does feature global and friend leaderboards. The songs are all very catchy and feature numerous genres — Live It up!

It's certainly not as difficult as Darkest Dungeon nor as difficult as some of the harder songs in OSU! or Intralism. However, it does get pretty difficult if you want it to. I find medium is pretty fairly balanced. The aesthetics aren't really my cup of tea but I do enjoy the songs, gameplay and the premise overall.

There are some song packs available as DLC but I find the base selection to be quite robust.

I would also probably wait for a sale as only a very esoteric and niche audience would really get a lot out of this game. I think most would play it rather casually, quickly unlocking the songs. Replaying them to earn more gear or increase score.

Though there is a fun endless mode unlocked after completion of the campaign complete with its own progression system.

Make sure to calibrate your screen as well. There tends to be a lot of input lag on LCD monitors.

If you've read this far, consider following my curation — Station Argus

i just want to preface this review by saying that at the time of writing this, i have played very little of the main game. what made me want to buy this game more than anything however is the amazing developer of the game that i had met at momocon 2017 and the demo that he had set up there that i just couldn't help but return to every chance that i got.

as he had explained to me, this game is a rhythm-based rpg with all of your typical rpg tropes (leveling, gear, skills, etc.) but it is all controlled by the power of dance. in a very ddr/stepmania fashion, you hit falling arrows in time with the music in order to cast abilities and while an ability is being perfomed, they will have a recovery period so you need to keep switching between the heroes in your party to make the most use of the time you have in the song.

the game has a sense of style that shows the care that went into the game and stays consistantly bright and high energy as you progress. the track list is just as high energy and even features work from jimmy of mindless self indulgence (seriously, look up "fighting with the melody", it's fantastic).

the demo was a blast to play and i can't wait to dump multiple hours into the full game.

Really enjoying this game. Great music selection and it can get incredibly challenging. If you have a controller, use it. Keyboard isn't as responsive. It also has an option to sync your monitor/audio response time.
The only downside to the game is that I can't apprecate the really cool creatures because my eyes are glued to the note-bars. Well worth the low price!

So far I'm having tons of fun, but I see things in the core gameplay that could still be enhanced.

* When you hit a note there's no immediate ping to tell you you got it, so sometimes it feels you're just pressing buttons and stuff is happening. Adding some kind of minimalist sound to when you hit a note properly would enhance the experience plenty.

* While it touts the game as a blend of a rythm game and an rpg, what really bugs me is that you get damaged from enemy attacks but ALSO when you miss a note in your string. So sometimes I'm having to deal with a tough enemy, get distracted and before I know it I'm dead. This so far is the biggest sticking point to me. It makes the game feel less like an rpg/rythm game hybrid and more like a normal rythm game where on top of everything someone punches me every couple of seconds.


Despite those complaints, I'm actually enjoying the game a lot. The soundtrack is varied and enjoyable and the battles can be super challenging (if a bit cheap sometimes, but that's RPGs for you). Give it a try.

The only complaint I have about this game is the lack of exposure.
I have been searching for rhythm games and this never popped up! I'm glad I finally found it.
It's tricky, because you have to jump around your squad, keeping in mind what sequence their abilities are located, executing combos with no misses, etc. I like that part. Keeps my mind on my toes and my toes on my mind.