GUNVOLT RECORDS Cychronicle

Before reading this review, please consider my lack of experience in this genre of games, as I will not dive deep into the controls, most of what I will express here concerns aspects that made me recommend against this product. Allow me to start with the negatives here: - First of all, more than half of the game's content is locked behind DLCs. If you so wish to ignore this, ( and I may be biased but) I believe the way it was distributed could use a rework here, as the proposed songs come as bundled instead of being sold as individual units, this enables scenarios where you end up buying a bundle just for a particular song. I however do appreciate the inclusion of almost every existing Gunvolt song, I say almost because a number of which could not be added due to the original RoRo singer being absent in the making. I wish they included RoRo's version of Stratosphere however since it was sung by the new singer. - The game has a section where you can view pre-recorded videos of the music video clips to watch and listen to. These are, sadly, locked to 720p for some unknown reason. As much as I appreciate the feature, I can hardly overlook this. - Only a chosen subset of songs have their full versions available here, those were the songs that had their Diva clips recorded, which bars more than 60% of the roster, since the idea of recording the Divas perform as they sing was not so ancient. This makes me question: Why not just let us play the full songs without the clips included? Since most of my attention is reserved for the rhythmic part of the gameplay. - Editing the joystick controls is impossible, only the keyboard controls can be edited. - The song lyrics can be viewed when choosing to listen to their pieces. My only complaint here concerns the fact that they can only be viewed in the UI's chosen Language. I wish if they could let me swap between Japanese, Romaji or the language I choose. I did however like the fact that they let me read the lyrics translated. - The Diva navigators can be swapped in the main menu. Spawning them makes them express some nice things, the canonicity of which remains a question. It's nice that the quotes are voiced at least. Swapping these alters only the main menu UI for some reason, as the colors revert back to blue (default) right when I access the concert menu. -From a score attacking perspective. the game does not have an online leaderboard, something that was present in the older titles; heck even PuzzleMix has these features. - The game itself stutters and lags when alt tabbing. Using the music player in the background together with the stutters is honestly icky. This has occured on different systems, mind you. Of course there are things that I liked and enjoyed: -I enjoyed looking at the album/singles covers. The option to view the lyrics and freely play the songs was nice to have. -I can't say much about the gameplay here, I don't have much experience when it comes down to rhythm games, I struggled mostly with the circling motions as they demanded more accuracy from my end. The Anthem easter egg is there in case you want to enjoy playing through the song without caring about the score, the Anthem divas are sadly not influenced by the Diva navigator in the main menu, meaning that if you choose RoRo and play a Morpho song, Morpho will resurrect you, not RoRo. There is also the ability to adjust the input delays that comes with a preview of how the parameters might affect the gameplay, which is a huge plus honestly. - Even though I bashed the score attacking of the game for its lack of leaderboards, locally though, I liked how doing a run with 0 misses rewards you with a gold symbol on top of the S rank. Having a 100% perfect run though rewards you with a symbol of the next level with an S+ rank. Beyond that there isn't honestly much, as you unlock nothing for doing that, but it's still nice that they are there, encouraging the dedicated to best their personal scores. I bought this only because I am a big fan honestly. Given the high amount of Diva songs available throughout the series, I felt that it was inevitable that a rhythm game that utilizes this material would be considered in a future, the timeline of which I am currently living, thankfully. Considering that more than half of the content is DLC makes me dislike this product. As a rythm game however I think it does the job but I would not want to pay the full price for it. I see lots of potential for score attackers here so there is that. Maybe if the songs came with clean MP3 files, I would maybe recommend this since none of the songs are on spotify for god knows what reason.

This is fun, though maybe too expensive for what it is. Probably something good to get on sale.

Oh goodness what do I say about this game? Personally, I never played a rhythm game. My hand-eye coordination is very bad compared to others, but because I've at least memorized most of this series collection of songs, I decided to at least give it a shot. People who kept saying that Gunvolt needed a rhythm game because of the various vocal tracks the series had, it feels like you wished upon it with a monkey's paw. Many reviews have already pointed out the disappointing song count for the base game, and honestly I agree. If the series should of had DLC, it should be at least songs released after this game (like Sparking Elation and Afsan for example) or songs that were released as bonuses for the CDs in JP (Tabula Rasa, Paradox Stage). The DLC added up costs twice the amount for the base game, which is kind of criminal since the series doesn't have a high song count from let's say Hatsuna Miku, even if I'm comparing a small harvest that's just bore its fruit to a vocaloid whose harvest has been generous for the past decade or so. If someone was watching, they would assume that the controls were around 4 buttons and the joy sticks, but that's wrong. For some reason, despite the left and right having lanes, one input from the respective bumpers triggers both. So it makes me beg the question to why split the lanes three way on both sides if they are all tied to one button. So knowing that there are lanes for now nonapplicable reason other than making the gameplay UI look nice, it makes songs such as Beyond Probably a pain to actually get off the ground in higher difficulties because the lanes affect my vision on what button to press. The analog is fine? I did have a moment where it didn't register my inputs from time to time. Along with that, the misinput for holding a button longer when it was just a press seems nonexistent in terms of penalty. For reasons unknown the 3DCGI concert songs have a half length version and a full length version that unlocks upon completing the half length (and yes this applies to the DLC songs such as Glass Paradise and Struggling to Dream). I have no idea why a decision like this was made other than to provide filler. They are decent to learn the first half of the songs, but they're kind of...there? I don't really have a reason to revisit them unless I feel confident enough to S rank them. Also don't know why they exclude the live action music videos for some of the songs (such as Memoria of He). I found them charming, but my best guess is that it would ruin the immersion for the game using the VAs instead of the character models. As for the GV2 songs, where some have Lola and Lumen versions, only the Lumen versions are available in this game (including the DLC versions), which is kind of disappointing. I understand that Lola's VA changed between GV2 (Yurika Endo) and iX1 (Mayu Mineda), but I have seen the latter have covers of some of the GV2 songs such as Stratosphere. I don't know why those are lacking in this game. They would have been nice to see, along with (hopeful thinking) versions that use both Lumen and Lola renditions in one, since Indigo Destiny doesn't sound as hype or impactful when you hear only Lumen's side. I think it would have given the game more life if there were collab songs among Lumen, Lola, and Luxia, since all the songs can be categorized as: Lumen Song, Lola Song, Luxia Song. Pet peeve of mine, because I don't speak a lick of Japanese, I wish there was an option to have English Subtitles to these songs. Is it useless for the player? Yes it is during gameplay, but I think having something like that would benefit if you decide to listen to the songs in the album collection. Having an option to at least read the lyrics in some capacity, whether in the original Japanese version and translated versions can give wider appeal to the songs. Most of these songs are a bop afterall. Overall, I'd say not to buy it if you are a rhythm game fanatic. Wait for a sale if you just want to have this game for the sake of listening to the songs offline. Unfortunately my hours in this game will keep growing because I like doing the latter.