Rift of the Necrodancer feels like the perfect game for me to play since I’ve been on a rhythm game fever for the last few months. Going back to playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero, games that I mostly overlooked for the last couple of decades, has been riveting and also a mirror upon which I see myself as someone who is morbidly bad at them in general, thanks to me not being as coordinated as I’d want in order to play an actual instrument – and even then, I still enjoy playing these.
It’s no different with this new sequel than it was with Crypt of the Necrodancer, the one that started the series back in 2015. Rift looks wildly different from what came before it, but the basic gist remains the same: keep up with the rhythm and kill the baddies as you do it. But now, under the guise of a Rock Band/Guitar Hero, with a note line and everything, following the beat of the music, as you battle it out with your opponent.
This is one of the few games that doesn’t suggest you play with a controller, and for very good reason: even though it’s easy to hit one of the three directions once they come up in the line, things turn sour when it’s time to nail two or more simultaneously using a directional pad. Sure, you can hit diagonally and still manage to play, but if you want to do well and stay competitive in the learboards, which there are many, not only for single player, but also via the daily challenge, you should most definitely stick to your keyboard.
I didn’t play a whole lot of Crypt, so I can’t attest to how deep its enemy type variety got in terms of attack patterns and whatnot, but in Rift of the Necrodancer, those bastards are dastardly, let me tell you. Some take more than one hit and have you hit them repeatedly, while others like to jump all over the line, forcing you to keep tabs on not just them, but all the rest that don’t take any breaks as they attack you. These are only just scraping the very top layer of the cake, mind you, and that’s not even getting to the speedier difficulty modes that, as expected, tend to leave me breathless.
Story-wise, the new game is sort of a sequel to the first one. Cadence is happily living in town when all of a sudden she’s pulled into a rift and is forced to fight a mysterious cloaked figure. Soon after, she finally starts figuring out what the heck is going on – her pal Dove, through meditation, don’t ask me, SOMEHOW ends up stumbling into a side dimension that just happens to be rhythm-based, just like Cadence’s spelunking adventures from Crypt. Honestly, it’s all just a foil to serve you countless challenges involving this addictive gameplay gimmick that’s so well implemented in Rift of the Necrodancer.
There’s a lot of meat on this game’s bones out of the box, but there’s much more to it if you decide to either/or craft your own songs and download the ones that fellow rifters have created through Steam Workshop. It’s a great feature to have, one that’s welcome all the more considering how hard it was to do the same for the aforementioned Activision-made music games, only through hacks and alternative (read: less than legal) means. Here, it’s only a matter of looking through a list or letting your creative vibes flow. And if you are into minigames, oh, my friend, you’ll find plenty of them here, all in the realm of following a rhythm, but in a handful of ways that stray from the note line of the main game.
All in all, Rift of the Necrodancer is an absolute blast, even if I’m a tone deaf dud at it. It’s colorful, has some creatively funny writing, and the sheer creativity at play when it comes to its challenges is simply insane. It’s no surprise Brace Yourself Games ended up being called by Nintendo to develop a game based on Zelda. They are on another level of creativity that only grows greater with each new release. I at the same time am anxious and dread what they will come up with next. The only assurance is that I’ll probably suck at playing it but am likely to love it.
