If you’re a Rhythm game fan like myself, you probably have at least heard of Rayark. They are best known for their mobile games Cytus & Deemo and of course VOEZ which came out around May last year. Like Deemo which eventually got ported over to the Playstation Vita, VOEZ has found a new home on the Nintendo Switch.
Nintendo’s whole marketing towards the Switch neglected to even mention the system has a touch screen as most games don’t even implement it. VOEZ is the first (and currently only) game to not allow any gameplay during docked TV play due to its touch only controls. While this may turn off some, the game is designed around touch screens and would be impossible to translate over to traditional control scheme.
The game is very simple and is a mix between Cytus & Deemo. Notes will flow down from the top of the screen in 4 varieties in columns that are dynamically generated by the song. The presentation of this game is stunning, notes almost ‘dance’ around the screen in time to the music and makes it feel natural to their placement. You have your standard notes which require a quick tap, Hold notes that require you to hold and occasionally slide represented by white lines, Blue slide notes require you to swipe either left or right based on the arrow, and finally white swipe notes that simply require you to hold your finger down and swipe over them.
There are 3 difficulty modes in the game, Easy, Hard & Special that are each assigned their own difficulty level. I found Hard to be good starting point with my prior experience on rhythm games as easy was a bit simplistic for my liking, however you can increase the speed in which the notes fall giving you more or less time to react that can spice up these more simple charts. The game will keep track with how many charts you complete with a total of 348 across the 116 songs.
Thankfully the Nintendo Switch version of VOEZ has no microtransactions unlike the mobile game. At $27.00 AUD on the eShop you unlock all 116 songs (with more promised in a free update later) and is a far far cheaper solution than purchasing unlock keys on mobile. While you can unlock keys for free by completing diary objectives (oh yeah it has a story mode or something) it’s far better to have a one time fee unlock. The Keys are still in the Switch version, still unlocked via the diary however only unlock player avatars.
The Song variety is very diverse, you have everything from instrumental songs, to pop songs with English or Japanese vocals, and even dubstep. While musical interest is a very subjective matter, with the amount of songs and variety i’m sure there’s something for everyone here. I personally haven’t recognised any of the songs thus far, but that hasn’t put me off the game in the slightest.
I have only one complaint with this game, and it is somewhat minor. Since this is a touchscreen only game Joy-Cons don’t really do much, only the Home & Capture buttons are enabled for the game. This lead me to play the Switch in a more ‘Tablet’ like mode with no Joy-Cons attached, but meant I couldn’t close the game without activating a controller. Sure I could set the system to sleep, but I could never get back to the Home Menu without a controller to close the game.
I can easily say that with a fantastic Switch version and no micro transactions apparent, this game is being uninstalled from my phone and will have a new home right next to Breath of the Wild on the Switch. It’s a fantastic rhythm game and hopefully a sign that many more amazing titles will follow.
Rating: 4/5
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