Rhythm Heaven Groove

RHYTHM HEAVEN GROOVE THOUGHTS

Only played solo mode, just got all perfects.

TL;DR - if you like rhythm heaven, GET THIS GAME!!!! Buuuuuuuuuuuuuut.... play in handheld as much as possible, if you can.

General Brief Spoiler-free Impressions:

- Most (if not all) of the individual minigame songs are great. Fantastic music, fun minigames overall that match really well.
- My initial impression of the remixes were pretty "eh". Like, they were fine and fun, but IMO most of the early remixes didn't come close to how awesome the ds/wii remixes are. However, the game DOES amp up really hard in the latter half (both difficulty-wise and quality-wise), so in the end, the game ended on a pretty high note.
- This game overall plays like the GBA rhythm heaven - 80% of your inputs will be the A button, with an occasional game making use of the d-pad here and there. And it does a pretty intuitive job of that - better than the GBA game. Any control scheme works too - pro controller, joycon, etc, so this is very accessible.

Some nitpicky / negative thoughts - Spoiler-Free but I do talk about mechanics:

- This game seems to have forgotten that megamix existed? Like, no challenge mode, and nothing like the 3ds game's second screen where it shows you if you're early or late. No scoring system either (though I don't think that's strictly a bad thing tbf).
- Speaking of the 3ds's second screen, this game is AWFUL at giving feedback. Groove plays perfectly well in handheld, but calibration is a must if you play docked. That means depending on how your game is calibrated, it may play a successfully timed cue even if you fail it (the game actually warns you about this while calibrating to be fair!), and that counts as a failed input - this sorta can't be avoided due to just how calibration works, but on the other hand, it's completely awful because if your input is a bit off, you just can't tell if it's early or late, because you'll hear the successful timing of your input with the failed notification. This could've been heavily mitigated if there was SOME feature like the 3ds game's second screen, to show if your input is early or late, but there isn't - which is incredibly irritating, so you just... often can't tell if you're early or late.
- This also means this game goes back to rhythm heaven ds's annoying bias, with heavily punishing you for being early in general. So yeah, don't be early.
- I mentioned that this game uses the dpad + A button scheme that the GBA game does. And it works well! But compared to the DS and Wii rhythm heavens, where they use a more unique control scheme (touch screen or A+B on wiimote) and build minigames around that... It's a little uncreative? This felt like a hugely missed opportunity - the joycons are underutilized, and this game could've made so much cool use of it. Yeah, I know, motion controls wouldn't be fantastic for a rhythm game, but that could've been adjusted and/or more lenient - rhythm heaven is a haven for creative ideas like this. Look at Rhythm Heaven DS, where the entire game is entirely stylus controlled, and frankly speaking, it works really well! It just feels like a completely missed opportunity to not have like, a separate section of minigames that use the joycons.
- Remixes in the ds/wii/3ds games always had some theme to them - that isn't really the case here. Some do but I think over half of them just use generic aesthetics for the incorporated minigames. This is partially why my initial impression of the remixes was also "eh".


More spoilery thoughts

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- Holy shit 20 remixes
- I was not expecting this game to break the norm and have more than 10 remixes, let alone 20.
- I also was not expecting this game to have... 30 new minigames, and a literal version 2 for ALL of them. This is unprecedented - and it's a great thing! So yeah, 80 games total including 30 minigames, all of their version 2s, and 20 remixes.