I purchased two of the Anime Dance-Off games on PS4 over the holidays, as they were on sale and I was curious to see just how good or bad they were. There seem to be loads of them out all at once, making me think that they are low-effort, AI slop. That said, it’s rare that I fail to enjoy a rhythm action or music game. There’s a first time for everything, though…
I bought Party Total and Ghost Party, but honestly, aside from a few background environments, the games are nigh-on identical. Each has 35 levels, with 35 generic instrumental songs that are either royalty-free or generative AI tracks. They all have a four-chord power anthem yet a middle-of-the-road feel because there is no emotion in the sound. The music is actually the best bit of the game, because trying to get these games working is a battle in itself. The menus glitch out and sometimes fail to load. The menu UI sometimes doesn’t disappear and gets stuck on the screen when you enter a song. When the song starts, the ready/go text gets stuck and doesn’t vanish either. Sometimes the anime girl doesn’t load in. Sometimes the game gets stuck loading the rhythm chart. Then the game goes all out and loads nothing at all! You have to wrestle this game to the floor to get a few songs to work in succession. It’s one of the worst, buggiest gaming experiences on a console I’ve had in the last decade.
Once in the game, there are three bars that will contain four face buttons that move from right to left. The rhythm chart vaguely matches the kickbeat of the song, but will never match the melody, bass, or rhythm fills. Occasionally, you’ll get a bit of a cha-cha-cha in the button presses, but that’s as far as the rhythm charts will go. The game series at least gets the timing somewhat right. Yes, there is a bit of lag and fuzziness around exactly what is a perfect hit, a good hit, and a miss, but it is consistent on the whole. It is just so dull and uninspired because every rhythm chart feels the same. Each song has a normal and hard mode, with hard mode speeding the song up to 1.5x speed, but the rigid plod of BPM button presses doesn’t make it feel much harder.
To add insult to injury, when a song is completed, the results screen rarely loads correctly. It bugs out when the points meter fills up, leaving players to navigate blindly to the next song or the main menu. This is where I discovered by accident that each Anime Dance-Off game has the same next level bug. If you button mash the next level option, the game skips multiple levels. Want to skip from level 21 to level 25? Press the button four times. The game initially loads level 22, then bugs out to load level 23, then 24, and finally 25. At least it made getting the platinum and achievements quicker and less painful in the face of all the bugs and boredom.
I cannot recommend the Anime Dance-Off with any good faith. These are some of the buggiest and glitchiest games I’ve played in the last decade, and they lack any gameplay pleasure whatsoever. I adore music and rhythm games, and to see this series pumping out slop every few months makes me incredibly sad. If I can prevent someone from mistakenly buying games from this series, I’ve done my job. Avoid at all costs.
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