Lyrica

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

Lyrica is a music-rhythm game whose formula will look familiar to anyone who played the Nintendo DS game Elite Beat Agents, or the game it was based on, the Japanese-only Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. The gameplay here is much the same as those – concentric circles will appear on the screen, and players must use the touchscreen to hit each of them in time with the music as each of the concentric circles come into alignment.

As with those other games, there are different types of taps, holds and swipes, as well as times where you must hit two notes at once, something that couldn’t work on the DS’s pressure-based touchscreen but can be done on the Switch’s capacitive touchscreen.

It makes for a fun, unique way to interact with the game… but those playing in docked mode aren’t left out. The game has simplified button-tap controls for those using a pair of Joy-Cons (though oddly, the Pro controller isn’t supported, which seems odd). Using the Joy-Cons for the game works fine, I suppose, though it feels like much of the point is circumvented.

This game starts out faster and more difficult than Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents, and given that those games were already a bit on the difficult side, this game really feels like it’s throwing players into the deep end. There are adjustable difficulty levels, of course, but this still feels it deserves mention.

Making things more difficult, the game throws a bunch of different-colored circles on the screen, and not all of them are meant for you to hit… and you can’t always tell which ones you are based on their color, which is really disorienting.

As for the music, this game’s soundtrack consists of “poetry inspired” Chinese pop songs, which may or may not suit your tastes, and these are paired with a very Chinese story steeped in their culture and history. In short, if you are a fan of Chinese culture, this is the game for you. If not, it might strike you as kinda’ awkward.

For fans of music-rhythm games, this is a decent but flawed take on a great formula for the genre that will likely do a good job of satisfying your music-rhythm craving… so long as you thoroughly enjoy everything Chinese.

tl;dr – Lyrica is a music-rhythm game that copies the Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan formula, albeit not perfectly, and uses it to explore Chinese music, history, culture, and poetry. It’s not for everyone, but if the topic matter sounds of interest to you, this will definitely be worth a look

Grade: B-

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