Rhythm Heaven Mobile – PARADE! - The Rhythm Battle Review

Wow. I really wasn’t expecting this to be THAT good. Essentially, you bop along down the street while a variety of different animals do a little dance in front of you. Your job is to mimic the dance via three inputs: swipe up, swipe down, swipe left/right. Flowers will grow out of the ground with an arrow to show you which input you need. Firstly, the animation is spectacular. Even though I’m sick of the whole cube/voxel look, the simplistic character designs that come to life through lively animations make them a joy to watch. Even the environment and the buildings dance along. There is also a great attention to detail What really blew my mind was how it pivots around its central mechanic. Once you understand “watch animal, copy animal” the game will continually turn that on its head. The animal will speed up and barely give you anytime to process the arrows. Instead, what you have to do is watch its movements and memorize them before the arrows even tell you what direction you need. And then the camera will swing around, pan around, zoom in and out, cleverly take dynamic angles behind objects so you can barely see the arrows- or can only see them at a distance- requiring you to memorize a whole sequence at the drop of the hat. There’s a lot of other clever mechanics I won’t spoil There’s 3 levels. Stage 3, The Park, has decent music. Stage 2, the Kitchen, is better. But the stage you begin on is a freaking banger. Almost an alt-dance beat (think The Go Team!) with a subtle rap track by a female rapped laid on top of it. It took me surprise because I was so focused on the best and not the melody. I only wish they would accentuate either the beat or the pop-ish melody just so the player can “feel” the beat more In App Purchases are very low key, very non intrusive. I believe it might force an add on you every few attempts, but each attempt can last a while. Usually an ad between attempts is a dealbreaker for be for how intrusive it is, but I really didn’t feel that here. And the In App Purchases don’t draw attention to themselves either. It’s a very sleek, minimalist interface There’s also 4 difficulty levels that feel very different and challenging This is honestly one of the best rhythm games I’ve played in some time. And it feels crazy to say it, but for a mobile game this has become one of my favorite games released this year period.
Review by Tyfoon555@MjJ on PARADE! - The Rhythm Battle.