Everybody Wins When The Rhythm Is Right!

Last summer I imported Rhythm Tengoku, a music game from the creators of WarioWare. I rather enjoyed it, but if there was one thing I thought about the game, it was this: It would never make it to North America. The time may have passed on the original, but the DS sequel has made it around the world under the name Rhythm Heaven. Not only did it make it across the globe, it’s also a far superior game than the GBA original, offering deeper rhythm mechanics, better songs, and tons of unlockables and extra challenges to keep the game alive. It can be pretty tough at times, but if you’ve got a decent sense of rhythm, it would be crazy not to give this game a place in your collection.

Rhythm Heaven is a set of fifty songs that have you doing different tasks set to their rhythm. You may have to juice up robots coming off an assembly line, for example, or follow along to play guitar at a rock concert. Everything in the game uses three control methods. You are either tapping the touch screen, tapping and holding down, or flicking upward. You will have to hold down the stylus to fill the robots for a certain number of beats, but you will be flicking to strum your guitar.

Getting through four levels will open up a “remix” level that combines all four songs and actions into one song, so it is really a matter of adapting to the changing rhythms of the songs as best you can and remembering the different nuances of the games for the remix levels. It can be easier said than done to do so, however, as the games can get pretty devious at times. This isn’t really due to the rhythms being hard to stick to so much as the very low margin of error Rhythm Heaven affords you. It won’t take more than a handful of mistakes to fail the song. Luckily, the game has primers for each song to teach you the ropes before tossing you in headfirst, and its genuinely fun to replay the songs and test your rhythmic skills.

It won’t take more than a couple hours to get through the songs if you’ve got a good sense of rhythm, but there are lots of extras to dive into as well. Gold medals can be earned for each song by performing extremely well, and its addictive to try and get them all. Rhythm trinkets like a DJ scratch table unlock by collecting medals, and guitars lessons, a Battle of the Bands mode, and still more come after that. There’s a lot of extra material here to keep you entertained. There were similar features in the previous game, but the songs are simply much better here, and the touch screen input far more involved. These fundamental improvements, along with some great visuals and amazing personality, make Rhythm Heaven an amazing game, one of the best on DS.

And with 37 of 50 gold medals and some lingering guitar lessons to tackle, I’ve got lots more to dig into.