Spin Rhythm XD Review (PantDev)
This is the first rhythm game since Project Diva: Future Tone that I've thoroughly enjoyed with virtually nothing bad to say. If you're skeptical of the concept, definitely take advantage of Steam's 2 hour grace period, because that's more than enough time for you to know if this game works for your sensibilities. Not sure how to format the rest of my review, so here's a list of everything I appreciate about this, that other games in the genre seem to struggle with.
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- The game gives you instant audio and visual previews of the songs prior to playing them. In some rhythm games this is atrocious, having to load the audio once you hover over a song, meaning you spend way too much time in menus waiting for things to happen. Spin Rhythm XD excels at this by not only giving you immediate audio previews, but also having a miniature preview of the beatmap to go alongside the audio, showing you exactly what you're about to be dealing with.
- Many rhythm games have a pretty glaring issue in regards to easy beatmaps not accurately reflecting the rhythm of the song you're playing. Spin Rhythm XD cleverly sidesteps this issue by having a note type that only requires correct positioning, and doesn't require an input such as clicking or tapping spacebar. This means that even when a beatmap should have rapid fire notes to reflect what's happening in the song, easy difficulties can still have those rapid fire notes. This lets them avoid the disconnect that often happens when you're forced to play easy mode in a game you haven't yet learned.
- The track list is just really solid and varied. This is way more subjective than what I've already said, but the high intensity EDM focused soundtrack just matches the DJ angle they're going for. There's plenty of interesting variations on that type of music though. Definitely listen to the tracklist and form your own opinion of course, but so much of this genre is filled with stuff I don't care for, so this was a refreshing thing to see. Could definitely use more songs, but that's not dogging on the quality of what's there already, because not everything can match the 200+ tracks in Future Tone for obvious reasons.
- The game lets you fail out of a song during gameplay. This seems like a no-brainer, but I've purchased a game or 2 in the past that legitimately don't let you fail a song midway, and instead only determine whether you have failed or not at the end of the song, which means you can just cheese your way through difficult sections without understanding them. Spin Rhythm XD doesn't do anything new in this regard, but if I can hear the end of a song without playing it, then I won't play your rhythm game. Thank you Spin Rhythm devs for not doing something so dumb.
- Has a very detailed UI that encourages improvement. A simple addition of a line graph showing your individual attempts, and what percentage you got on the corresponding attempt, goes a long way. It's just a whole lot of fun replaying a song you tried early on, failing at 22%, and then seeing that line graph go from 22% to 68%, then a sudden 94% when you finally attempted at the skill level required for the beatmap. Even just finishing a song up and seeing the "NEW BEST" text scrolling behind the letter grade is extremely satisfying.
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I've barely scratched the surface in this game, but every single thing I normally take issue with in rhythm games seems addressed here. I love the genre so much, but it feels like every single big name like DJ Max Respect has one or two pitfalls that make me immediately refund and never purchase again. Spin Rhythm XD finally broke that trend for me, and I can't recommend it enough. 10/10 experience all around.