"Hi-Fi Rush" is a rhythmic adventure that combines platforming sessions and fast battles inside a gorgeous cartoonish world. It is a piece of art with stunning visuals, amazing music, compelling story, fantastic sense of humor and some of the most lovable and unforgettable characters. But its biggest achievement is the flawless gameplay. The way it combines the beat of music with precise controls, smooth animations, comic style visual cues and an alive environment is something unique. Battles are breathtaking, platforming sessions are great and boss battles are epic. A big variety of enemies, moves, abilities and combos give extra depth to the gameplay while there are tons of things to enjoy even after finishing the main story. Simply the best rhythmic game out there.


Manometer: 9/10


The good
- Gorgeous aesthetics. Fantastic art style. It's simply the most good looking game with cartoonish graphics. It's not just a shader or an effect on top of everything that usually produces artifacts and weird lines. It's clean and perfectly implemented with gorgeous color palette too.
- Beautiful, well designed world with verticality and rich environments. Everything inside the worl follows the beat so It feels alive. There are many different areas to explore, a lot of hidden spots to discover and tons of scattered collectables that give it great exploration value.
- Amazing gameplay. Controls/navigation are snappy and smooth. Battles are fast following the beat of the song flawlessly. Visual cues are fantastically designed to help you without ruining the immersion. There are a lot of moves and combos to learn and mix. As you unlock them the game evolves and battles gain new interest so you never get bored. It's great that some moves need a pause, or to hit the button after two or three beats so it gets more complex and challenging. Rhythmic parry is simply one of the most satisfying things in gaming. Adding companions with more moves makes battles even deeper. One of the most enjoyable games to play.
- Unbelievably smooth cartoonish animations. And it's not only bodies' movements that have great flow. The whole world is full of animated comic effects, floating letters, bubbles and more.
- A good rhythmic game always needs good music and it doesn't disappoints. Music is amazing with mostly rock tracks that offer clean beat to follow, enhance the overall vibes and fit perfectly to Chai's rockstar personality.
- Great audio design. Each of your actions and hits give a very satisfying sound and it gets even better as long as you stay on beat.
- It's one of the most well written, inspiring and hilarious games out there. Its sense of humor is out of this planet. Dialogues and logs that you find are always entertaining. You never get bored.
- There are a lot of nice platforming sequences that you have to navigate obstacles in rhythm combining jump, dash, magnetic grab and companions' abilities. Also, it's great when the camera moves to transform it into a side scroller.
- Awesome characters that are unique visually, have vivid personalities and enjoyable dialogues. Chai, the protagonist and his companions are absolutely unforgettable and you'll love them all.
- Very clever concept and nice story. Turning the protagonist into an alive jukebox with an embedded mp3 player into his body is so imaginative.
- Great direction and cinematography with fantastic cut scenes and smooth cameras' transitions. Some action sequences like the final part are stunning with so many things going on simultaneously.
- Voice acting performances are very convincing and entertaining. All voices seem to fit perfectly to their characters.
- Big variety of well designed enemies. They have unique design, various move sets and pacing so you have to adjust your attacking approach according to your opponents. Boss battles are also great with some clever ideas and interesting mechanics.
- There are various cosmetic things that you can buy and change your characters' outfit.
- Well built tutorials. The game unlocks gradually its mechanics so it gives you time to master some of them before it teaches you more. You'll never feel overwhelmed by the number of available abilities.
- It's well balanced. Normal difficulty is relatively easy but offers some challenging moments. If you want more challenge though there are three harder difficulty levels.
- It has plenty of goals to fulfill, extra modes and some, previously locked, areas to play even after finishing the game.

The bad
- Too much looting. Chasing every single gear around the world ends up a little bit boring and at some point it ruins the flow of the level and story. And you cannot avoid it because collectables are really necessary to unlock things.
- Fast pace, loud music playing at the background continuously, all those moving objects at the environment make it a really tensive experience. For some people it may get stressful. Including a few relaxing small parts would be helpful to allow you take a breath.
- When you repay the main levels after finishing the game (let's say you want to unlock those doors) you have to go though every tutorial, cut scene and dialogue again. This makes it almost unplayable.