When a large gaming series becomes well known for its excellent soundtrack, sometimes a rhythm action spin off is a worthy title to consider. Final Fantasy (and Dragon Quest) Theatrhythm and Persona Dancing All Night are some of the best known examples but other series have tried it too. Now is the turn of Gunvolt, a 2D action styled series on a hiatus for a while and looking to try something new.
The first thing I want to tackle with Gunvolt RECORDS Cychronicle is its pricing. The base game comes with 15 songs (although some have short and full versions which expands the selection) and is priced at £11.99. This is to get new players through the door at a reasonable price. However, this game has an extensive DLC selection firing out new songs every week to for the next couple of months to more than double that initial selection. There doesn’t seem to be a way to just buy a complete edition or season pass and the DLC tracks equate to around 89p per song. That’s fine but it does feel like the initial release is a bit light on purpose and missing many of Gunvolt’s bigger tracks. Make of this what you will but it did leave me a little empty when week 1 DLC came flying in.
The rhythm action here in a mixture of Superbeat Xonic, a non VR version of Airtone and a two lane rhythm game. Gunvolt RECORDS Cychronicle makes extensive use of your analogue sticks. Initially this will just be pointing both in various directions but arc moves become the standout staple of the game. You’ll start off pointing the stick one way and twist it around the outlined arc. If you are playing a song for the first time, you might need a bit of guess work to guess the speed of the arc but this comes to you over time. Where the difficulty ramps up is that you’ll be asked to do arcs slowly in one hand whilst pointing sticks and pressing buttons with either the other hand, or both hands – making this a pat your head and rub your tummy type of game. Whilst the analogue stick swipes are easy to recognise, the shoulder button lane presses are more complicated than they need to be. The game shows four lanes but in reality there are only two – its just the size of the buttons flying down the tracks change. This took a while to get used to and it adds needless visual clutter for not much gameplay gain.
Each track has three or four difficulty levels and whilst you can absolutely fail a song, easy mode really does break you in gently across most of the songs. The music is a varied selection of dramatic anime opening styled j-pop and j-rock with some symphonic electronica thrown in for good measure. The songs are quite memorable and stand out as a great fit for a rhythm game. The backgrounds are interesting too. Some of them are 3D concerts showcasing one of the three characters in the game and some contain video montage footage from the Gunvolt series. Oddly, as these are all pre-rendered videos, whilst a lot of fuss has been made about being able to choose from three characters, they literally just turn up in the menu and congratulate you after a song and that’s all they do. You can however watch all the video backgrounds in concert mode which is a nice addition.
Whilst I wouldn’t say there was anything particularly wrong with Gunvolt RECORDS Cychronicle, I have to admit I didn’t gel with it quite like I do with all my favourite rhythm action games. This is in part down to the 4 lanes making no sense (you can’t map specific keys/buttons to a lane) and the arc moves often being quite slow and drawn out. The arcs often hurt the pacing of a chart and the game feels like a Bop It toy because you are twisting, pressing and pushing various buttons and sticks at the same time – all at different speeds. This is really where the hard and extreme difficulties punish you and I’m sure it would be a fantastic challenge for top tier rhythm gamers but I couldn’t quite get into it. I think its because I preferred Superbeat Xonic and Airtone, which do a similar arc mechanic but integrates it better into the chart.
With a low entry price point, if you are curious about this rhythm action j-pop bop then you could do a lot worse. It has personality, an excellent song selection (although if you want all the songs the DLC will more than double the total price) and some interesting ideas. It is just a shame the game seems to have been simplified from a 4 lane to a 2 lane game somewhere along the road but no one really updated the game design to match. Perhaps some key binding and audio/visual sync settings would make me happier. Then I feel like I could tackle its Bop It nature better.
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