Rift of the NecroDancer Review – The rhythm game for everyone

If the thought of trying to keep up with a blinding tsunami of circles flying across the screen to a J-pop beat, while neon explosions assault your eyeballs, and a hyperactive anime girl shrieks about friendship sounds like a nightmare to you…

Then don’t worry, Rift of the NecroDancer is the rhythm game for you!

Is this a rhythm game or a visual representation of my anxiety?

Rhythm games are usually fairly simple! Hit notes in time with the beat, rack up a high score, and fail miserably at it for hours until the beat is part of your DNA! Simple, right?

You’re probably already thinking, “Nope I don’t want the headache!”. And to be honest, I’m with you here. Not my thing…

Well, Rift of the NecroDancer takes these simple concepts, and throws them in the trash.

I don't know about you, but this looks way better to me.

The game isn’t just about hitting notes! It’s about predicting enemy patterns, and making split-second decisions. It’s part rhythm game, part action, part puzzle, and part ‘let’s see how fast my brain can blue screen.’

And you know what? I’m enjoying it!

At first, it seems familiar—notes scroll down the track, and you hit them in sync. Only here, monsters are coming at you! And they all have their own movement pattern and rules. Skeletons and slimes go straight down each beat, one space at a time. Bats? Once hit, they move to the lane they were looking at to be hit again on the next beat. Warriors will take their sword out and attack you on the next beat no matter their position.

Unlike most rhythm games, it’s not simply about timing a few keys. It’s a game that will ask you to learn its language, and boy it’s a fun one to learn!

But when you think you’ve figured it out, the game introduces a new twist: Colored monsters! Different colors? Different behaviors! Green slimes need to be hit it once. Blue slimes need to be hit it twice, and on-beat every time. Yellow slimes, you guessed, need to be hit three times on-beat.

And before you know it, you’re not learning a language anymore—you’re decoding an ancient prophecy…

What do you think the yellow skeletons do… You’re thinking, “Well, if a yellow slime needs to be hit three times on-beat, so does the yellow skeleton!”, right?

Turns out I need to hit a yellow skeleton once to get rid of its head. It then runs back up the track until it bumps with another monster and comes back down again. But if the skeleton is gray, I need to hit it twice on-beat to get his head off!

Monsters can also have odd shaped shadows. Circles mean you have to hit the monster on-beat, diamonds mean you have to do it offbeat, and Stars are just pure chaos.

This is small sneak-peak how much information you’ll need to store to be decent at the game. I would have loved more consistency with how monster act based on their color. But this does make sense, and it's in line with what the developer’s earliest title Crypt of the NecroDancer has. So if you’ve played that game, there’s a lot of knowledge you can transfer to this game.

It’s a lot! But somehow, it works!

There's a lot to the game, but it still feels approachable thanks to it's visual simplicity.

Now, if you’re new to rhythm games, or like me, pretty casual, you’re thinking that this is too much already. Thankfully, that’s not really the case.

It helps that the way Rift of the NecroDancer teaches you is, for the most part, really well-paced. New mechanics roll out gradually, giving you time to adjust before the next challenge.

The difficulty balancing is also pretty smart. There are four difficulties available, from Easy to Impossible. Once you’ve done the hardest tracks in one difficulty, going to the next difficulty is a pretty smooth bump. The practice mode also comes in handy to work a track without any stakes.

The game also introduces a health bar that let’s you make up to at least 10 mistakes during a track, and losing all your health points is the only way to lose. The game uses this system to alleviate a lot of difficulty for novice players. The way it does it is really smart: food appears as notes, and usually in easy to hit spots, healing you for a few health points. Lowering the difficulty also makes these foods available more often.

I'm close to losing here, but thankfully the game gives me some apples to get health back.

You can also charge your Vibe Power by hitting glowing monsters. Once charged up, you can use it to become invulnerable for a few seconds. It helps a ton while learning the hardest parts of a track! And for great players, it doubles up their score multiplier. That allows windows to maximize their score in a way that’s totally in their control.

So if you just want to finish all tracks, the game is forgiving enough to help you on the way! And if you’re a power gamer, all of these mechanics are great ways to set yourself apart!

Being invincible for a little while helps a ton with accessibility, and good players also benefit from it!

But there’s still one big concern in most of these rhythm games. How good do I need to be to hit monsters or foods on-beat? The answer is simple—this game has one of the most forgiving timing windows I’ve ever seen.

The timing needed to hit an OK or Good score is pretty wide. That means you won’t have to stress about hitting each note perfectly. It just works! It makes the game really enjoyable if you’re new to rhythm games, or just a filthy casual like me.

Now if you’re one of those people who won’t settle for anything less than perfect hits, you’re in for some pain! The timing window on the lower end is wide indeed. But the one to get perfect hits is incredibly tight! That’s not a bad thing though. It’s great for the upper end of the rankings, as it makes the ladder fight all the more enjoyable and makes the skill gap way more noticeable.

With all of this in mind, Rift of the NecroDancer had to make sure that latency settings are on point. Luckily, the game’s calibration system is excellent, and it ensures your timing isn’t thrown off by any weird video or audio latency. One last mention to the amazing number of accessibility options. The developers have done everything in their power to make a game for everyone, and it shows.

In this game, every success is your own, and any loss is on you!

But for every moment of triumph, there’s also a moment of overwhelming chaos. Sometimes, Rift of the NecroDancer throws so many different monsters and colors at you that it feels like your brain is buffering.

Keeping track of enemy types, colors, facing directions, shadows is hard. Thankfully, the game got you covered! A bestiary lets you practice any mix of these you can think of.

The Bestiary is honestly one of the best features this game has.

It helps a ton, but it’s still like trying to memorize an entire textbook the night before the test. This isn’t a game where you can just wing it.

This is probably one of the few criticism’s I have of the game: sometimes it’s just too much to process.

It feels the developers went as far as the design allowed, and for the better players, it makes it infinitely more enjoyable. For regular human beings though, the game could’ve done with fewer combinations.

The good news is that the game also has a Story Mode that makes learning the game way easier! It’s a great way to introduce the game’s mechanics slowly instead of just throwing stuff at your face. It also introduces some extras into the mix: Mini-Games and Boss Battles work completely differently from the main game, and they’re great!

Along with some narrative events, they are a great way to relax between tracks and have a few chuckles. These little breaks add a ton of personality, and they make sure the game never takes itself too seriously.

Unfortunately, what started off great kinda fizzled out midway into it. Now, I’ll admit… I wasn’t expecting much of a narrative in a rhythm game. But Rift of the NecroDancer actually kicks things off with a fun, quirky setup! The characters are charming, the humor lands, and there are some genuinely unexpected twists. The NecroDancer’s current predicament is pretty funny!

But it quickly started to wear thin. As you push further, the story isn’t just forgotten—it’s ghosted like a Tinder date who told you they had ‘such an amazing time,’ promised to text you later, then vanished into thin air, blocked you on everything, and left you questioning if they ever even existed or if it was all just some weird, cruel joke... *breath*

Not a deal-breaker, but definitely of a letdown…

Boss battles are pretty fun on their own, and I’d love to see even more complex ones in the future!

Now let’s say you’ve mastered tracks on your selected difficulty. What’s next for you? Doing everything again but in a harder difficulty? You can! But if you’re happy with the current level of difficulty, but want more variety, the game got you covered!

The Remix mode mixes up the enemies every time you play a track, while keeping the core rhythm intact. It’s infinite replay value right there! You can do every track again in easy mode, but just with different monster patterns, and that’s awesome! This mode proves again, that the most important skill in the game is the ability to recognize enemy behaviors.

Now the songs in the game are a matter of taste of course. But I didn’t find them all that compelling. Half of the tracks didn’t work for me, but the ones that did were awesome. Alex Moukala’s tracks were the most fun I’ve had in the game for example. Some others were good enough, but a few were outright boring.

But if you’re worried about the included songs, or running out of content, don’t be. Rift of the NecroDancer has Steam Workshop support. Want to play to Doom music? Go for it. Feel like punishing yourself with some insanely fast anime song? Knock yourself out.

With over 1,000+ custom tracks already out there, you’ll never run out of ways to test your skills. And of course you can also your own levels with your favorite songs thanks to the awesome Level Editor.

Verdict

So, when you step back and look at the full picture—Rift of the NecroDancer is an ambitious, wildly creative rhythm game that does something fresh with the genre, and works hard to be accessible for everyone.

It’s fun! It’s rewarding! It’s packed with variety! But it also demands a lot from its players. The learning curve can be quite steep, the mechanics are dense, and the story doesn’t quite stick the landing.

For more casual players like me, it’s definitely worth trying out the demo and see if it clicks. But if you love a challenge and don’t mind putting in the time to master the game, it’s absolutely worth your time!

The game feels enjoyable for all skill levels, and that’s an incredible achievement!