I had recently gotten back into this game a few days before the news broke out, having finished and enjoyed the hell out of the game when it first released.

Hi-Fi Rush is, to put it simply, one of the best games to have come out in recent years, and should be the gold standard for games going forward. The game is primarily an action game, along the lines of Metal Gear Rising, Devil May Cry, or Bayonetta, but with the twist that everything moves to the beat. And I do mean everything; stage elements, your attack, enemy attacks, even cutscenes are synchronized to the beat of the background music. You aren't required to stick to the beat, but your attacks will still land on-beat, and you're rewarded with extra damage for landing on-beat.

This leads to the game having a very interesting feel, as it leads to beats in the music feeling almost like frames in a fighting game. All your light attacks take one beat to execute, and your heavy attacks take two beats, and most enemies have a tell a few beats before they actually execute their attack, allowing you to perform a combo that ends right before their attack, and then bust out a parry on the next beat, before continuing your combo.

The story is also extremely good, and all the characters have unique and memorable personalities that feel just over-the-top enough to not be obnoxious. Chai may feel like a protagonist you'd get tired of after a bit of time, but his personality and development lead to him being the perfect character for a game like this.

Along with these, the game has incredible replay value. There's a short postgame storyline involving 16 "Challenge Rooms" that demand you to fight a wave or two of enemies with a special condition, such as not manually moving, only dealing damage with parry counters, not taking damage, or getting above a certain percentage of perfectly on-beat attacks, ending in a humorous final encounter with the game's antagonist. Afterwards, you're offered the ability to replay the game at higher difficulties, to go for higher performance ranks, or the three side modes, Rhythm Tower, BPM Rush, and Power-Up! Tower-Up!

Rhythm Tower serves as a 60-floor gauntlet of the game's areas, challenging you with a short timer that you can increase by performing well in the fights, and every 10 floors, you're challenged with one of the game's corporate bosses, before facing the final boss at Floor 60 and getting your final ranking and payout based on how much time you had left.

BPM Rush and Power-Up! Tower-Up! were added as part of the "Arcade Update", and are both accessed from an arcade machine in your squad's hideout. While they aren't integrated with the game's 'Achievement Mural', a large mural on the wall that fills with characters and details as you complete challenges and accept your rewards, there's a separate Arcade Reward Tracker for them, holding a bunch of exclusive rewards, such as outfits for characters, new super moves, and photo mode poses.

BPM Rush has you fight an endless wave of enemies, with a bar at the bottom that fills based on your performance. Once this bar is filled, you get a "BPM Rush", where you must defeat a buffed mini-boss enemy, after which the BPM of the background music will go up and you have to repeat the process, up until you're hammering buttons at 200 BPM.

Power-Up! Tower-Up! is essentially a Roguelike mode. At the start of a run, Chai is zapped, and his stats brought down to abysmal levels, but between waves of enemies, you are given the option to accept buffs that'll bring him back up to and even above form, with more powerful upgrades including a temporary "bug" that will affect the next wave of enemies, such as causing enemies to explode when they die, damaging you, or "Setting the video feed to 480p", which serves as a humorous visual impairment.

Overall, Hi-Fi Rush is an AMAZING game if you're looking for something with a ton of personality and replay value. I would say I hope for a sequel, but unfortunately recent news has not only revealed that Tango was in the process of pitching one, but that they were also shut down by their parent company, essentially shuttering any hope of a good followup.