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In 2023, Beat Saber is one of those weird games where I'd give it what I call a "conditional" recommendation - definitely if you mod it, definitely not if you don't. Read on for more info.
Let's talk about the "don't" first - the base offering of the game. One of THE coolest playstyles for a rhythm game involving swinging sabers like you're out of Star Wars, moving your body around to avoid walls and swinging your wrists to avoid bombs, being engrossed in a simplistic but easy on the eye and aesthetically intriguing world. Functionally, the game plays very well and you're going to be burning some calories if you play on Hard+. You get a decent amount (I think around 35?) of songs to play around with, multiplayer functionality, an in-game level editor, a campaign mode and more. The songs are alright at best, annoying at worst. Everyone's taste is different. There's a lot of electronica, some hip-hop-esque music, some rock, and a couple others. Only Angel Voices and Escape stuck with me.
More importantly though, how's the mapping with respect to the music? It's okay if you're playing on Hard or less, but my overall experience in Expert and higher is they don't feel like there's good flow. Like some note placement feels like you have to make an unnatural movement or they trick you to lose your combo. Not all songs are like this, and the more recent free OSTs show they have gotten a bit better with the mapping. The campaign mode seemed neat, and I started on that to get introduced to the game. It starts off easy, challenging you with restrictions or getting a minimum combo/score progressively, but then they have some weird counterintuitive tasks like "swing your arms for 900m" where I was using any free gap between notes to swing my arms ridiculously hoping to hit the 900m goal, or weird stuff like "don't get beyond a 25 combo" in a way to manage your energy levels I guess? I did 100% the campaign, but beyond the first few levels, I can't recommend it unless you really want the achievements.
Lastly, let's talk about how the game stands now in 2023. Plenty more rhythm games have come out since, and pretty much all of them are cheaper than this. BS NEVER goes on sale. They patch the game every so often to add a few DLC songs, which are also not cheap unless you get one of their rotating dlc bundles. At $2 a song, if you buy 15 non-discounted songs, you're basically paying for the game again but for significantly less content. I get it. Licensing isn't cheap, but from what I've read the DLCs are very hit-or-miss with their mapping, and some songs are censored without any way to change that? Ridiculous. If you want to do that to make it age-accessible, fine, but at least give us adults a damn toggle. And yes, I get this pricing practice is kind of standard for a lot of rhythm games (including one I strongly recommend, Synth Riders), but come on. In 2023, there are so many other games that offer a better or unique package. Synth Riders. OhShape. Audio Trip (which got overhauled recently). BoomBox. PowerBeatsVR. All of these games are cheaper, go on sale/have discounts, don't muck up your game with patches that add paid songs no one wants, and to those that care, aren't affiliated with Facebook/"Meta". Do I recommend them all? Personally, no, but your experience may be better than mine. Give em a look, especially Synth Riders. That one is probably the best, unless...
Let's talk about Modded Beat Saber. You know how whenever a VR game topic comes up, Beat Saber is almost always mentioned and regarded as a highlight? The modding community is why. It's a grad-school thesis level of INSANE what driven individuals can do. Custom sabers. Global scoreboard functionality. Making and modding a little avatar character to represent yourself. Adding a clock (no joke, I genuinely believe every VR game should have some kind of toggleable clock). Huge customization to pretty much everything, and of course the CUSTOM SONGS. There are THOUSANDS of custom songs, and thanks to the beatmap voting system you can do with custom music and people caring to refine their work, the custom maps are overall superior to anything the base game has. Caramelldansen is genuinely one of the best maps I've ever played in any rhythm game, and it isn't too hard so with a little practice everyone can experience it! Again, thousands of songs and a plethora of customization options to give yourself the definitive experience, and the modding setup is so easy even I can do it and I'm pretty clumsy with some modding stuff. The additions mods make are what base Beat Saber SHOULD HAVE BECOME, in my opinion, and even though I wrote mostly negative things about the base game, I can't say anything but positive stuff once you get mods setup. Right now I think like 85-90% of my playtime comes from modded BS, and since I 100%d the achievements and don't find myself touching anything from base, this % will just keep rising. Absolute gold standard in VR rhythm gaming.
TL:DR - Mod Beat Saber, and/or get Synth Riders.