izigame.me

Crypt of the Necrodancer was always going to be a massively difficult game to follow up on, but I'll say that BYG has knocked it out of the park.
A point first: I completely suck at Crypt of the Necrodancer, but have kept it in my rotation of games for years due to its stellar music and tight roguelike gameply loop.
Gameplay:
95% of the gameplay is a guitar-hero style, "falling notes" rhythm game. While there are only three "notes" is it were, it doesn't really need more, and in fact, I'd argue that more would be a detriment. Instead of manual dexterity or physical complexity (as is tested in similar games like rockband and guitar hero) Rift of the Necrodancer goes all in on pattern recognition. The "notes" all take the form of individual monster and like the first game, each monster has its own pattern that you need to hit it in. The monsters are each visually distinct and easy to recognise at a glance, and with each song being designed, rather than randomly generated like the first game, they satisfyingly explode on your action bar to the beat of the bumpin music.
I see great potential for more monsters to be added in future updates /DLC, which would be a wonderful addition. While I wouldn't want the roster to get too full as that would distract from the pattern recognition, I feel like theres room for 5-8 more monsters to round out what we can see.
The difficulty has a great range from very easy to finger-twistingly difficult, and you have every ability to pick your own lane and stay there. There are built in practice modes and no-fail which comes together to make everything I could want from rhythm gameplay.
The last 5% of gameplay is in the form of a handful of minigames that appear in the Story that are all absolutely adorable. Quite similar to Rhythm Heaven games except utilising the entire directional input. My favourite part is that each minigame also scales with the difficulty that you choose.
I beat the story on Medium while occasionally dipping my toes into Hard for an extra challenge (and once into easy. See Nitpicks bellow)
Visuals:
The visuals are phenomenal! I really dig the refined artstyle as compared to Crypt. Each character has an updated look that really works well in the Isekai Modern style. Everything is easy to discern at a glance and while at high BPM it looks more like the character portraits are having seizures rather than bumping to the music, everything follows the beat in a snappy manner.
I need to stress how absolutely adorable everything is. <3
Story:
The story is rather simple, but for a rhythm game, it still manages to bring more to the table than I was expecting. Each character is a little one-dimensional, but when you're working with still portraits and speech bubbles, I think the result is amazing.
Music:
This is what it's all about! Danny Baranowsky is back along with a smattering of additional artists. As a long-time fan of Danny's since Binding of Isaac, he brings what he always has, which is to say, earworm-level tunes that seriously rock. I was really surprised to find, however, that when I was looking back through the soundtrack at my favourite songs, they were almost all made by newcomers!
Morning Dove, Amalgamaniac, Hang Ten Heph, Overthinker, Nocturning, Matriarch, Rift Within... All straight banger! All credited to one of the clearly phenomenal composers working with Danny. I've made note of their names to try and find more of their stuff, bc holy crap this is good.
Some small nitpicks:
1) The second last boss of the game is weirdly hard. I won't spoil it for the fans who haven't played yet, but I felt like I had hit a wall in difficulty when I reached this boss. I had been clearing every level in the Story on Medium difficulty with minimal effort, and while I'm not above believing it's just bc I'm bad (see my above comment about sucking at Crypt), this felt like it was beyond that. I had to drop the difficulty to Easy in order to clear it and STILL, it took me a couple tries. I was speating bullets heading into the next level on Medium once I cleared that boss, but no, everything else in the story was fine. Including the final Boss, which was at a difficulty I'd expect from a final boss on Medium. My confusion only grew when I went back in regular Play mode to clear the Boss' song as a regular falling note song instead of a quick-time-event and found that even THAT was weirdly hard. Who knows maybe the sound of flute just knocks me off my game.
2) The differentiation in sprite siloette for the harpies when they are "neutral" vs "about to lunge" is too similar. Most monsters advance down the board at one square per beat. Harpies jump two square and skip a beat. When they are about to lunge the kind of lean back a little, and it's very similar to their normal position. I find it a little hard to see when notes are coming at you a mile a minute.
Overall an amazing game that should have years of life with the built-in workshop support and DLC. I've still got my fingers crossed for a Crypt 2, but I will always be happy to return to the world that BYG has made.