Beats Warrior: Nian

Nice looking game and fun concept. however #1 Timing for some reason the "beat" they expect you to hit is not really "locked" for lack of a better term. It kind of stays on beat, but it also seems to kind of slightly drift off of it sometimes, I don't know its weird and not super consistent. (I play piano and drums, I'm not stupid in regards to music and timing) This isn't a major issue because the game is very forgiving in terms of timing and has lots of on screen indicators of when you should input. But it doesn't feel super satisfying. #2 Very slow and repetitive. The screen transitions are a good 10 seconds of just fading in and out of black. Dying before the boss forces you to replay through all of the previous screens again. Replaying stages is purely a grind because the gameplay is primarily puzzle based and not mechanically challenging at all. So once you have solved a screen, there is no real joy in replaying it. ------------------------- The game looks great, and I feel bad for not recommending it because obviously a lot of work went into it. But the game is just a slow boring grind to play most of the time.

Beats Warrior is a good combination of platformer and rhythm mechanics. The character can move on any beat which means the levels can get tricky. Then when the star meter is full you can attack, dodge, or slide. But be careful, the game is not casual. Even if it looks casual. The three heart system makes it difficult to finish the first stage. Once all your hearts are gone you have to restart the level. I know there are people out there that need this type of challenge. Full video review: https://youtu.be/Tdaub2tbcFc [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26701155-The-Pepp-Selection] Checkout my curator for more reviews! [/url]

A lot about this game is rough around the edges, but in excusable ways. It feels like there's sounds and music missing in places, there's a few bugs, and some of the visuals look unusually simplistic compared to others. The translation is very rough and the first two (out of six) stages share the same song, so the variety isn't great, though I can't speak to further into the game. There's some promise though, and I like the idea, so I normally would have tried to get through all of the above. The deal-breaker is that I had desynchronization issues. I'm not sure exactly what causes it because sometimes it'll stay in line, while other times it will become so desynchronized that the window the game wants me to input actions is not even close to the music's beat. This is a critical issue for a rhythm game. I looked at the few Youtube videos that exist and, while the rhythm felt a bit questionable in all of them, I only saw it get significantly bad in one of the three. So it might be quite specific for my setup (perhaps for monitors set to higher refresh rates?), but to be brutally honest what I saw wasn't promising enough to make me want to go hunting for a solution, especially since …

Admittedly, this is the first time I review a game without ever planning on finishing it; I quit on the 4th stage (ice biome) because of how frustrating it is that stages keep becoming longer and longer without ever providing a checkpoint, and the slow animations and transitions don't help either. Without any achievement-wise obligation - the completionist I am - the game just isn't fun enough to keep playing. The stages are tiring to repeat if you accidentally die, the bosses aren't all that inspiring, and the rhythm combat and dodging mechanics are slow and out of beat. Don't get me wrong, I love the artstyle and I really tried to keep going, but it's just so exhausting not knowing how far into the stage you are and not being able to quickly reach that point if you ever dare to mess up. The music isn't that good either.

I really want to like this game because I really enjoy rhythm games. I see the uniqueness of the game but there are wayyyyy too many controls to understand/learn/adapt to even if it's just one beat. I think just simplifying the controls to focus on 3 patterns at a time in a one/each specific world would be best.. but to memorize from 3 to 9 controls for patterns in the FIRST world is a bit much.

A unique take on a rhythm game. Yeah, it was quite challenging to the point of being frustrating, but it all felt very possible so I kept coming back. Figuring out the pattern and finishing a section or boss I was struggling with was very satisfying. Yeah, the beat is the same through the game, but that was ok, and kept things with timing and distance consistent. There was also enough variety that each area didn't feel like a reskin of a previous one. If I were better at the game, I could see it taking a few hours less than what I put in to beat it, but it is still worth picking up.