Afterbeat (Project Arrhythmia)

I played this game since 2020 [even thought I lost first account] - I always loved the community works, filled with passion, and now with story mode created, I can finally put my honest throughts WHAT AND LIKE: -Most of levels are masterpieces, both visuals and gameplay -Story really caught me, I thought i will skip dialogues but I actually enjoyed reading it -Editor update - Enabling better level creation is always welcome -packs, reminds me of geometry dash gountlets but thats positive + More highlighted content to dive in WHAT I WOULD LOVE IN UPDATE: -Ranks Visible in custom logs - As a someone who tries to P-rank all story levels... That would be excellent WHAT COULD BE BETTER IN LEVELS: -That black lines in stasis appeared too quickly, it's pretty hard to react without getting hit once -That giant Circle in "Ahead Of the Curve" - ​​the "!" appears pretty late, i was pretty sure i was supposed to be In the circle, Not, outside, warning could be better here -Spectra visuals were pretty bad... Well it was not but but comapred to the rest - pretty blank -Node level - i didn't realize it's actually a bossfight, it was awesome level but it could be little more clear it's fight Other thoughts: -I didn't enjoy "Ahead of the Curve" level - i cannot say it was bad level but but it didn't bring anything interesting and seemed like filler - for example "Node" and "Pure Functionality" is masterpiece in every aspect - I liked older Custom Log look more honestly It's Not perfect but nothing will ever be perfect, and this game nailed rhythm game experience I'm not disappointed - I got exactly what I expected. 9/10

So I loved Just Shapes & Beats and even consider it one of my top ten games. I have dozens of hours in it and platinumed it multiple times because I thought the premise and gameplay were just that good. So naturally, I was excited for Afterbeat (it was PA years ago when I bought it). Here's the thing... I... and many others were excited... YEARS AGO. So does it hold up? In many regards, YES! 100%. This feels like a faithful follow-up to JSAB. The levels seem to be able to do more with them, and the song list is good. Having your own "create a track" was desperately needed. In all ways, I loved a lot of this game. But unfortunately, there were a few things that I feel like were a step back. 1. The screen shaking and colors in the game add unnecessary difficulty at times. A few (not all) of the campaign levels like the starfall one, it can be hard to tell what is coming at you because the screen transitions, visual clutter, and screen shaking. This is unfortunate because VISUALLY, levels like these are beautiful. 2. This is mostly a me problem, but I think the visual novel and all the in between stuff (I'm looking at you really badly designed radio puzzle) get in the way of what makes these games fun. The story isn't bad, but it feels like a completely different game added onto a great rhythm game. One thing that made JSAB so amazing was that even the level transition screens were ALSO a rhythm game. The story was simple, sweet, and had amazing minigames that continued the idea of rhythm game in interesting ways (like the volcano.) All of this without a single person speaking a word. This game has you sitting through dialogue, text logs, some deeper lore, and just one minigame thrown in. And all I was thinking was, Get back to the game. 3. The difficulty of the final level (two songs) is a strange huge difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere. JSAB also had boss fights where you had to finish the whole song in one life, but generally the songs were shorter and you were given 5 lives, not three. This game has one song at the end that DEMANDS perfection. And don't you dare quit out on song two, or restart cause you took a stray bullet. You will be forced to redo the song. Overall, I do like afterbeat. I think the actual visual effects and level designs are creative. I like many of the songs in the track list. But here's the thing... I think everything surrounding it... gets in the way of what made JSAB amazing. At times, I wonder if this game tries to hard to be JSAB hard mode. Many of the levels in this game are harder than JSAB's base game and that is due to throwing so many projectiles at you. So I would almost recommend a person go play JSAB first because it is more friendly to new players. Here is the saddest thing... This game took so long to finally release, I'm sad to see most people moved away. Very VERY few people are playing the game right now, which sucks because JSAB has a ton of overwhelmingly positive reviews and had a loyal fanbase. I don't blame Afterbeat devs. Making a game takes time and they pulled off a DIRE NEEDED continuation of a game style nobody else has done right. But it may have been in the pan just a bit too long. If you like JSAB, please give this game a try and support the devs. I hope they listen to the SMALL amount of feedback and this isn't just a game they finally released after many years and then move on to other things, letting this game rot and become forgotten. There is a lot of potential here.