Cytus α

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1-3 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Cytus α (not sure how this appears on your browser, but that’s the Greek letter Alpha) is a Music-Rhythm game from Rayark, the makers of Voez and Deemo that is much in the same vein as Elite Beat Agents and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, where players are tapping on on-screen notes, drag notes, and hold notes in time with the music.

Surprisingly, while this style of gameplay was built around the touchscreen, it actually works surprisingly well in docked mode using a regular controller, largely thanks to the excellent placement of notes to correspond with the music, making for rhythms that are genuinely fun to play. With a controller, players tap a face button for regular notes, hold for hold notes, and use an L or R trigger for drag notes, with players using both sides of the controller as the game requires players to multitask.

The music here is all pretty top-notch, although I have to use the word “all” with one huge caveat – this game only allows players access to ten songs at a time (ranging in genre with songs in the J-Pop, electronica, trance, and orchestral genres), with each further “chapter” of songs unlocked as you progress (with a total catalog of songs numbering in the range of 200). It’s frustrating for multiple reasons – not only does it mean you’ll likely feel compelled to play songs you don’t care for so you can unlock progress, but even after you’ve unlocked them, it’s a pain to remember where all the songs you like are, and you can’t create a playlist or anything like that.

As with Deemo, this game has beautiful hand-drawn art in the menus, but in the gameplay itself, it’s all business, with nothing to look at except a blank background and the actual note indicators. During gameplay, a bar rises and lowers to indicate timing much like a metronome, and players tap black circles highlighted in blue/purple (for notes that correspond with the bar rising) and orange/green (for notes intended to be hit as the bar is falling) when the bar crosses them in the indicated direction. It’s a simple system that works pretty well, and to be honest you don’t really notice the lack of artwork during gameplay because that gameplay is usually so intense that you have little room for distractions.

This game supports up to three players competing online, although sadly you’ll find the online servers to be pretty dead these days. Also, while we’re talking about problems this game has, the menus are confusing to try to get through, and I would say that overall the challenge level of this game is too high.

However, despite all of my complaints about the progression system, the difficulty, and the confusing menus… I love this game. Cytus α is just an absolute blast to play, and a thoughtful evolution of the Ouendan formula that works surprisingly well. This was a game I found myself delaying reviewing because I found myself constantly going back for just one more song. And while it’s frustrating that I have to fill this review with those very real complaints, I want to be clear – despite all of that, this is quite possibly the best music-rhythm game on the Switch, competing for that title with Rayark’s other music-rhythm games, Voez and Deemo. And while I enjoyed the playful presentation of Voez and the excellent touchscreen gameplay of Deemo, Cytus α is probably the most well-rounded of the three thanks to its well-designed controls both on the touchscreen and on the controller. In short, if you are a fan of music-rhythm games with a Nintendo Switch, you need to own this game.

tl;dr – Cytus α is a Music-Rhythm game in the vein of Elite Beat Agents and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, where players are touching notes on the touchscreen in time with a scrolling metronome-like bar. However, while this game was clearly meant for touchscreen, the controls on a traditional controller are surprisingly good as well. This game has issues with an overly-high challenge level, deserted online servers, confusing menus, and frustrating progression that makes you play to unlock the game’s 200 varied songs, but that hardly matters since the game is so very fun to play. This is a must-have for Music-Rhythm fans on the Switch.

Grade: A

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