938.1 hours played
Written 14 days ago
for those who wonder why there were so many negative reviews for a while: there was a certain song out there that caused a major uproar in the country this game was made in, and the producers planned to include the track in the V Liberty 3 pack, without knowing the potential consequenses, 2 days after the trailer, they decided to ban it and replace it with a completely different track, a remix of 1 of the Base game songs to be precise. there's still nothing that can be done about the fact they made a mistake, so for now the June 2025 ratings will still stay very low until they decided to change their responses again like i did. negativity over, here's the actual review:
i think it goes without saying that this is 1 of the best rhythm games on steam, and it was 1 of my main interests when starting on that platform. you can play about 200 different songs in the base game alone, and with all packs released so far, the total hits at around 700, which will soon be 720. i've owned the game since August 2020, and i've improved my rhythm skills by a lot during these 5 years. more about that later.
the game has massive sales which occur quite often. these sales make almost all packs 4/5 times as cheap, resulting in the Deluxe Edition costing almost less then the base-game without sale! the sales are weaker with the newer packs, which only get 15% for the newest pack, 35% for the 2nd newest, 50% for the third and 65% for 4th. but that's still more than most recent games, so they're good deals nontheless. with the full sales, you can buy every pack for around 150 euros, which is a much better deal than most other rhythm games!
if you want to know which packs to buy: Trilogy gives the highest Tracks to Cash ratio and is rather cheap, but most tracks miss a few charts. Clazziquai is ideal for if you want to start out on 8B mode having very easy charts. the Technika packs each feature great music and special charts in mission mode. the Black Square pack isn't as reccomended from the Legacy packs but can still be very enjoyable. Portable 3 features the exclusive Remix charts which are very fun to play, even if they are tough. Emotional Sense let's you practice the songs normally exclusive to the mission mode, but is actually unnecesary for 100%! just about every pack in the deluxe edition gives brandnew tracks which are of high quality. save the collabs for last as they aren't that important; but if a pack gives songs you love to play, feel free to buy them!
there are lots of gameplay videos of this game out there, and there's a guide / checklist for all the achievements, but in order to 100% the game you must own every pack minus the Gear packs, and perform some nigh-impossible feats, including clearing some missions that seem quite unreasonable, but for 60% the achievements aren't too hard to get.
as for my skill level... when i started out i had trouble clearing charts of level 8, and i was very proud of myself when i finally managed to pass an SC pattern or a level 12 chart. in 2021 my skill increased a bit, with me being able to clear a few level 14 charts & clearing multiple Technika exclusive charts. 2022 the scale got redesigned, and with the help of tier lists, i could pass a few normal scale level 15 charts. 2023 my ability in this game generally improved a lot, being able to pass charts of SC9 (at the time, comparable to new SC6) and eventually SC10 as well. 2024, before the 2.0 update which completely rehauled the level system, i've been clearing normalscale level 13 charts left and right, and was able to clear a few SC12 charts on 4B mode, as well as SC9 on 5B and 6B, and SC6/7 on 8B.
with the scaleback the 2.0 update caused, i'm still able to clear almost every SC9 chart (and half of SC10) on 4B, 60% of SC8 on 5B, a few SC9 charts on 6B, and most ~SC5 charts on 8B. so i'm ironically better with SC then Normalscale on 8B! my DJpower generally stays at around 7.8K for 4B, 7K for 5B, 7.2K for 6B, 6K for 8B. since i'm still getting better at the game, my power remains at fairly equal value, but i'm afraid that after a few more packs, i can't hit Pro DJ anymore on 5B mode & High Class on 4B... oh well, i don't have to be the master in this game!
the main issue this game has is that it's massive like you might realize. if you plan to buy it, make sure to spend about an hour doing other fun activities, so that the game can download at it's own pace.
and for those who are wondering why there's potential unsafe content, don't worry too much about it. it's primarily the 13th season that caused the issue, which focused on swimsuits; and Lena had... some "issues" during that season. no wardrobe malfunction, but she had quite a revealing swimsuit, which apparently triggered the unsafe alarm.
all in all an excellent rhythm game that i highly suggest to most people that played rhythm games in the past! it you can save at least 100GB of room on your console, that is.