A nice adventure game with a nice story and aesthetics... but poorly executed with awful soccer gameplay that will make you regret it.
The game outside the "soccer mini game" is actually good, but you can't have one without the other in this game.
The game has great ideas and a half-baked implementation of it. I lost count of how many times I died in the game because one time I would land and take some damage and on the other I would die instantly. The "map" idea is also infuriating, some times I spent about 1 hour or more without finding the damn checkpoint, or 2 hours without finding the thing that reveals the map, it was a miserable experience at that. Is not like the game does not have good things, the combat is ok, there are markers to use on its map and there are some progressions that are also ok. It is "ok" at best, all because of the unnecessary frustration given by the map problems, the almost hidden checkpoints and the inconsistent gameplay experience. One time the ability slow motion works, and in others it just doesn't... I gave up.
It is one of the few games that I have ever heard of that made possible to match its game play with all of its music and sound effects. Everything goes with the beat, making everything in its world feel so much more alive. But it is even better, I would not believe that a game that plays a hack 'n slash that makes me remember of the Devil May Cry series would work so well with a completely rhythmic mechanic. But it does! And one of the reasons is because of something so simple: while many other games try to play with rhythmic games using negative reinforcement (most cases heavily penalizes for failure), Hi-Fi Rush works primarily with positive reinforcement (most cases rewards you for playing with the beat). As with anything else, one or two minor problem in an area or another, but would really be nitpicking on my part.
Few games really capture that feeling from Inside and Limbo, this is one of those. Nice storytelling and subtle narrative, have some strange bugs for PC on Game Pass, such as it only working with joystick (even if you change in the settings to use keyboard) and I had one bug that would not let me interact with an item mandatory to proceed (had to restart the game to be able to do it)
Such a comfy and sweet story hold back with an unnecessary and albeit meaningless grind, what start as a nice mechanic to restore the villages you find in the game, at the end turns out to be just one more "do that to achieve 100%". There is nothing wrong with the combat and the fetch quests per se, but on the second half of the game it becomes crystal clear that there is no more real purpose to do anything else for the villages, what end up leaving a really bad taste through the end of the game. I had to force myself to finish the game because I could not stand anymore of it, even though I really enjoyed the story and narrative.
The ambiguous approach for the marketing of this game is like if not even the developers knew exactly what they were trying to make, hopefully there is something great about this game. The narrative and environment is amazing, like something that you can rarely see in any game, however it is like they were not confident or sure of what they were trying to create, the puzzles fit really well with the game, but the combat is completely out of place, it could be removed and probably get to an even better product.
A great narrative adventure with a game-play built to improve the narrative experience. The story is nothing complex, but satisfying nonetheless, with clues and hints of what is really going on before everything is revealed giving that "ah ha!" moment when it finally happens.
