Most rhythm action games have a lot of familiarity about them alongside a unique gameplay mechanic that will keep you on your toes. Rote² does this by providing a 6 lane rhythm chart for you to attack with your keyboard (using SDF | JKL) using both your hands. The trick here is that not all notes stick to just one lane. Practice makes perfect in this tricky but enjoyable rhythm game.
Rote² has a free version to entice you in, but I went straight in for the paid version as its so cheap and offers almost 30 songs and a level editor to make your own. Each song has two or three difficulties and whilst the graphics are minimalistic, they focus your mind on the task at hand – hit the notes as they come down the track. Notes can straddle across 1,2, 3 or all 6 lanes though and when that happens you can use any one of the keys related to that lane to hit that note. The trick comes as you start tackling the normal and hard difficulties as notes are layered on top of each other. You have to make split second decisions on how your fingers will approach what’s coming and making the wrong decisions leaves your hands out of position to keep your combo meter and life intact. It takes a while to get used to Rote²’s finger gymnastics but it works exceptionally well as you gel with the game mechanics. The rhythm charts match the main melodies or the beats well too and the soundtrack is split between Deemo inspired classical piano electronica and hyper dance tracks in the same vein as instrumental Dance Dance Revolution tracks.
All the songs are available from the get go but Rote² has a slightly odd life mechanic that declares if you pass or fail a level. You’ll be able to finish a level regardless but if you miss a few notes consecutively your life meter drops incredibly fast. Anything other than a perfect will impede your health recovery and potentially will damage your health too. Its harsh and rewards you more for dropping 20 single notes spread across the track rather than missing 6 or 7 notes together but getting a perfect elsewhere. You’ll survive the widespread single drops and get a lower overall grade but that big drop at once will kill you, declare you’ve failed the song but then give you an S rank. It doesn’t quite add up for me but very rarely did it affect my personal enjoyment.
Alongside the in game soundtrack (which is being added to periodically too), Rote² has Steam Workshop access too. This is where the excellent and easy to understand level editor comes in. You pick a song, choose the BPM of it and then using your mouse, you click on where the note scroll where you’d like the notes to drop. Its very simple to pick up and understand, and you can play what you’ve built so far at ease to see if you’ve programmed it correctly. There are a few quality of life features that would have made replaying parts of a song perhaps a bit easier but for barely £3, its a powerful editor. It is a shame that the Steam Workshop only has a handful of songs on it but it adds another 25% of content to the game before you even touch building your own levels.
For less than the price of a meal deal, Rote² brings an excellent sturdy rhythm action game. All the expected audio/visual syncing is here, and you’ll have plenty of great songs and tricky charts to master. This is definitely an underrated and overlooked addition to the rhythm genre that gets all the basics right and has a simple and actionable editor to boot.
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