I’ve struggled with finding the right mobile rhythm game for quite some time. Ports of arcade franchises like Jubeat and titles with more experimentative control schemes only made me realize that what I want is a simple Guitar Hero/Betmania style “notes slide down the lanes and you must tap the corresponding button once they reach the bottom”. I didn’t find that many of those - I’ve missed out on Tap Tap series’ existence, and the clones I stumbled upon annoyed me with their freemiumness, song selection and being designed to play with more than two fingers. Rayark games' aesthetic never clicked with me, I’ve enjoyed Voez for a short time, but ultimately the quirky controls proved more frustrating than fun, and once again, it just didn’t offer the kind music I’m into.
BanG Dream! is a multimedia project about fictional high school girl bands. They have real life counterparts that not only give them voices in songs, tv shows and the game, but are also supposed to play concerts while staying in role the entire time. These also leads into a bunch of weird stuff, such as bizarre talk show appearances during which they stay in character and nudge hosts to play along, until they “transform” into the actors and only then introduce themselves with real names. Funnily enough only 2 out of 5 main bands can actually play the instruments, while the other 3 perform as singing quintets with a backup band (that was eventually turned into the 6th).
The first band and the one that has most representation in the game is Poppin Party, a slightly generic pop-rock outfit. Second comes Afterglow, another pop-rock band with perhaps a little more emphasis on the “rock” part. Then there are Pastel Palettes, which are actually supposed to be an idol band with the gimmick of playing their own music (ironic considering their actors can’t do that). Hello Happy World use a lot of toy instruments, glockenspiels, brass, samples and turntables to offer a genuinely unique sound - if you know anyone that sounds like them, please let me know. And finally Roselia, a really cool goth rock outfit, supposedly inspired by visual kei, but with a much more melodic sound. While it actually took me some time to find songs I liked in the game’s original repertoire, thankfully there’s a huge bank of covers - your favorite anime openings, songs from games and vocaloid compositions are just waiting to be unlocked.
I realize that so far this reads more like a report than an opinion, but ultimately I think whether you like a rhythm game or not will almost always come to 3 aspects:
1) Do you like the music?
2) Do you like the controls?
3) Are the charts half decent?
And that’s about it. I like the songs and I’ve got my staple notes sliding down, and charts are designed so that one can play with just the thumbs. And I don’t think I’ve actually ever played a game that would fail the third check, barring the open source titles with community-made maps. This is the actual reason why this game is on my top10 list, everything else is just fluff.
But perhaps there's something interesting about that fluff, especially in the nuances of game design. For instance, almost all songs in the game are about 2 minutes long. Even if originals are longer, the fact that it’s all made by in-house bands means you can make shorter arrangements when necessary, and I really love that they stick to this tighter format. Later Guitar Heros and Rock Bands have often suffered from selecting songs that were boring to play for 1 or more of the band members, and they insisted on using original album cuts, so no chance to edit an empty section out, or put some additional notes to spice it up for the bass player who has been playing exact same riff for 6 minutes. And other than making sure the songs aren't boring, this is also something more important for a mobile game, as remembering all the song lengths and figuring out how many of them I can play on the bus before I reach my stop would be a nightmare. Anyway, another small choice I quite enjoy is the fact you can tap the buttons all you want when there are no notes around and it doesn’t lose you life nor break your combo, which means you can add your own fills and accents, a feature I’ve always been fond of. I also like that there’s a visualisation of the band playing, even if it’s just a bunch of chibi cutouts bouncing in place.
There was always only one type of unlockable that interested me - the songs. Some of them actually required me to level up bands, go through their story modes and so on. I put in at least the minimum interest into how I can speed this process up, which prompted me to actually start editing my bands (your scores are almost completely dependent on your musician's stats, while how well you play barely makes a difference) and also to start playing online, since you usually earn more points there. I’m glad the game pushed me to that last one - there is something enjoyable about working towards a common score with 4 strangers, there’s an extra eagerness to put out your best performance and a little anxiety about selecting a song difficulty you sometimes fail on, since you will drag people down. It’s also a good method to get me to play songs I would never pick myself, as the game randomly selects one out of the pool of everyone’s choices.
The part of song unlocking process that I've enjoyed less were the band stories, writing in this game is the one thing I don’t enjoy one bit. I think it’s just geared towards a much younger reader, as the jokes feel over-explained, dilemmas very immature, and the subject matter includes plots like “3 out of 5 band members, all high schoolers, think that the 4th one is a living bear mascot and don't believe the girl who says it's her wearing it and playing the role, despite repeated attempts at explaining it”. And yet I’ve read every single one of them just because I was bothered by the “New” unread marker on the “Story” button in main menu. Video games are vile.
The good news is that the modern game-as-a-service model means there’s constantly new songs, events, challenges, characters and stories, with new batches every 2 weeks or so. I’m honestly not sure whether I would be done with the game or not without these updates, but the fact remains that I’ve been playing it almost every day for almost 2 years now and there’s no sign of stopping. I may not be the biggest fan of the franchise if the world, but I enjoy it enough to not hinder my love for this game. It genuinely brings smile to my face, something I can’t say about many games, even on this list. It turned my commutes into something I look forward to and brought me countless hours of joy. It’s my number 8 on the list of my favorite games of the 2010s.
Next entry
Regular GO10s hub
Spoiler-free hub
No comments:
Post a Comment