Rhythm Doctor

I'll be an elderly man laying on my deathbed telling my grandchildren about how I once saw a videogame dance. Then I'll die from trying to smack my life support machine to the beat of whatever random song I first hear.

Rhythm Doctor starts with a very simple concept of hitting a single button on the beat, but somehow manages to do so much with it. The story it tells, of doctors struggling to keep up with the workload in the hospital, of the patients who each have their lives and meet new people in the hospital, is heightened by the gameplay and the presentation. The gameplay evolves with many different types of beats to handle, along with visuals and music which both support the story wonderfully. And, of course, what the game does when it goes to windowed mode and uses the full range of possibilities that being able to control it opens, makes this even more amazing ! I did struggle a bit with some levels, and the simplicity of pressing one button, as well as having to retry the levels from the start when failing, made it so that I got slightly annoyed or frustrated at some points. I change the difficulty to easy at the end, in order to enjoy the experience rather than have a hard time and get frustrated, which I think was the right call. Getting perfect S ranks isn't for me either, and that's ok. That last level was really worth reaching that point. It's amazing how the gameplay, visuals, music, and windowed mode wizardry all come together for an insane send-off. All in all, it was a really nice and completely unique experience, which I strongly recommend.

This is probably one of the most creative and beautiful rhythm games I've played. The music is excellent, it tells a really compelling story that had me fully invested, and it has lots of neat challenges, not to mention going way above and beyond with visuals on some tracks. You'll know when you see it. It's a unique artistic twist that heightens the emotional elements of the tracks they're used in. While I've played a ton of rhythm games, I don't know much actual music theory. I understood most of the concepts, but I found the later chapters having some really stressful and frustrating moments, with so much going on at once that I just couldn't follow anymore. I had to trail-and-error my way into memorizing the patterns just enough to not fail, without really *getting it*. It was... unsatisfying from that perspective. I'm sure if I keep playing more it'll eventually click, but I'll just say this is *NOT* a game to unwind to once you're in later stages, unless you've already got it locked down. Still a strong recommend though. Any frustrations are worth pushing through. And also props to the devs for adding difficulty settings. While I stuck with the default, I'd probably recommend lowering it once you reach a point of frustration, and dialing it back up after you feel you've got it down.

Good and hard music game.