UNBEATABLE

“The charting for both fight and song portions of the story mode literally feels like it was done entirely based on how to annoy you the most; some songs are charted extremely weirdly and the beat of the song is all over the place, making it particularly frustrating especially with the inability to restart songs.”

“Many of the rhythm game sections are plagued by poor synchronization between the music and the notes, with beatmaps often not matching the music, notes appearing late, and the camera obscuring notes, leading to frequent missed beats and making gameplay frustrating rather than enjoyable.”

“Failing a song in story mode progresses the story regardless, with no option to retry the song, causing players to miss important dialogue and story content, which severely diminishes the rhythm gameplay experience and rewards only blind repetition rather than mastery.”

“The rhythm aspect feels like an afterthought, which is sad considering it's the core of the gameplay.”

“With so little gameplay in those segments, it really makes me wonder why exactly more care wasn't put into ensuring those sections were polished before release, especially considering I'm writing this review months after the initial release of the game.”

“I've encountered more glitches and bugs and mechanical issues than actual rhythm based gameplay at this point and that genuinely upsets me enough to request a refund.”

“I like the game, the songs are excellent but I don't care about the story. I want to play the rhythm game and not be forced to play the boring story to have access to all the songs.”

“Boring gameplay coupled with a boring story.”

“The OST seems great from what I've heard so far, but I just can't get past the boring story elements.”

“Also huge graphical issues and frame-drops (in a rhythm game) sour the experience.”

“Everything from the art style to the story to the gameplay, all of it is exactly my thing, but the gameplay visuals go in the complete opposite direction.”

“Even with that, there are still sections where the visuals make it very difficult to figure out what you are actually timing for; the game still doesn't always run great in my experience.”

“The story mode is a buggy mess, there are several songs with unreactable notes as the screen swaps sides, both in story and arcade... the story is an esoteric nightmare that doesn't make any sense for a good half of it, and the number of times the game talks over itself unintentionally (it does it a lot intentionally too) can make it hard to grasp what exactly is going on.”

“Was super excited for the game way back when it was first announced and got to play the demo but the story mode is super buggy with missing assets, jump cuts to different scenes mid gameplay with assets just popping in and super delayed dialogue long after the corresponding text has left the screen; sadly I can't play it as much as I was hyped—these problems killed my experience.”

“The most glaring issue of this game by far is how buggy and unfinished it feels.”

“Unfortunately, the story is one of the worst ever seen in a video game, with characters who only speak in annoyingly unfunny quips or exhaustingly melodramatic statements made with lots of pauses for effect, godawful nonsensical pacing, and setups for story beats that produce absolutely zero payoff in the end.”

“The game loves to pause the story to have really unfunny conversations with the same level of quality as that.”

“What's here is 6 hours of unfunny jokes and hollow, sanitized political quips followed by a beautifully crafted ending chapter that still unfortunately just feels undeserved.”

“It's very easy for voice lines to talk over each other (which is supposed to somewhat happen for some of them, but they can happen way sooner than it feels like they should, which is jarring), some areas (mainly the ocean-side town police building and DC's headspace realm thingy) have really bad optimization that can have your computer chugging, and sometimes there are things like sprites clipping through objects or weird companion path-finding.”

“I played the whole thing on the Steam Deck: unoptimized as hell, terrible experience. Play on a decent PC for the love of God.”

“The game has some serious performance and optimization issues, and the story has some weird pacing, but I think those issues do not outweigh just how impactful that story is.”

“It's flawed in its story pacing/side character development, it's got its fair share of indie jank, but my gosh it has some heart.”

“Getting glitched on invisible walls all the time, scenes not loading properly, text staying on screen when it's not supposed to, characters talking over one another unintentionally, main story beats not being voice lined, action sequences not loading in time so you miss notes you can't see, levels that are impossible to fail with no game over screen (looking at you 'rest' boss fight!), the suspension of disbelief being broken (100 concrete floors?), time skips that are jarring, and no character development are not good things.”

“The characters in the story don't go through any real character development, characters talk to each other through a lot of banter and get mad very easily so don't expect any grounded dialogue that reflects how people talk in real life.”

“The first episode took a bit to get to the action and the second episode almost turned me off from playing due to map navigation and overall repetitive and tedious activities (which serve the plot/world building).”

“I'm referring to the god awful rail grinding sections, which are a visual spectacle, and paired with the music, the gameplay should be exhilarating and amazing, but because of the aforementioned issues these sections just suck.”

“The pacing is all over the place as well, with extremely action-packed sequences being followed by long and tedious sections (here's looking at you, prison and sewer bits).”

“It really takes away from the high-stakes atmosphere of the experience.”

“This definitely can hinder the mood and atmosphere dcell is going for unfortunately.”

“These won't break the game, but they entirely ruin the atmosphere, the immersion, they break the story... it feels sloppy and I really really hate using this word for this game, cause I want to love it... but I can't!”

“Doesn't take too much exploring and is only a bit replayable.”

“Despite lack of some details and unreplayable mini-games, it is a game with a great trial on combination between a great story and rhythm elements.”

“It would dramatically improve the replayability of the game in the long run as I don't think I can play Square Up by Jamie P forever (I can).”