Sixtar Gate: Startrail

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

Sixtar Gate is a Music-Rhythm game released on PC in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game features a colorful, upbeat presentation, a massive track list, and Guitar Hero-esque “notes on lanes” system where the number of lanes expands and contracts throughout the song.

The presentation in this game is bright, loud, and brimming with excitement and positivity. I suspect that players will find themselves either turned off by just how over-the-top it is, or absolutely charmed with its boundless enthusiasm. The game’s visuals use a cutesey anime style with a lot of bright colors (particularly pinks and blues), though players wanting something different have multiple alternate visualizations to choose from, such as a piano-themed skin and a steampunk-themed skin.

Depending on the song you’re playing, you could either have a static image as a background, or a video playing, and I soon found I strongly preferred the former. Not only is a static background less distracting during the intense gameplay, but the Nintendo Switch version of the game seems to have compressed these videos far too much, resulting in ugly blurriness and artifacing. Even worse, each song starts with a brief video intro, meaning you’ll have to look at these graphical issues for a short moment no matter which song you select.

As for the songs themselves, the selection is massive – I count 111 songs including unlockable songs, and there are also paid DLC packs you can get as well. The songs range in style, but generally sit within the realm of J-Pop, K-Pop, techno/electronica, and piano themes. There are technically some licensed songs here, but nothing I recognized. I would venture to say that if you enjoy modern Asian music and don’t mind a soundtrack full of songs you likely won’t recognize, there’s a wealth of music to immerse yourself in here.

The game is split into three primary modes: Travel, Outer Space, and Adventure, though I would argue that only Travel mode is going to be of interest to most players – that’s where you can select the song you want and just play. Outer Space is a little like that, instead having you play a trio of songs. Meanwhile, Adventure is a campaign mode of sorts that mixes in a Visual Novel-style story that puts you in the role of a spaceship captain traveling on a space adventure with the two young anime girls that are this game’s mascots. Given the poor localization and inane story, trust me when I say you’re much better off sticking with the pure Music-Rhythm gameplay.

When it comes to that gameplay, Sixtar Gate is all about dexterity. Much as in games like Guitar Hero, the gameplay has four vertical lanes that notes fall down, needing to be hit as they pass a bar at the bottom, with more accurate timing making for higher points. These notes correspond to left and up on the D-Pad for the left-most columns, and the X and A buttons on the right-most columns. However, before long you’ll also have left and right wide notes requiring players to press ZL and ZR, left and right slide-notes requiring you to tilt the corresponding direction on the analog stick, and every now and then the lanes will split apart to reveal a fifth center lane, with notes needing to be hit with either right on the D-Pad or Y.

For those keeping track, that’s 7-8 different buttons the game uses plus analog input. In early gameplay this can make for a fun challenge, but even on a modest difficulty this can turn into a multitasking nightmare. That’s not to say it’s bad – I don’t doubt that skilled Music-Rhythm players will absolutely eat this up. But even moderate-skilled players may well find themselves delegated to sitting at the kids’ table and playing songs on their easiest difficulty.

It’s not that the game doesn’t try to give players every benefit of the doubt, though – Sixtar Gate’s settings menu has an absolute wealth of options, allowing you to completely re-arrange the display, re-assign button commands, automate the playing of some note types for players wanting something like training wheels, and even adding harsher penalties for missing notes, for truly masochistic players.

Beyond the high difficulty and lack of recognizable music, I do have a few other complaints here. First, the lack of multiplayer is disappointing, although this didn’t really hinder two of my favorite Music-Rhythm games on the Nintendo Switch, Voez and Deemo, both games that Sixtar Gate shares a lot in common with. However, Voez and Deemo also made outstanding use of the Nintendo Switch touchscreen, something that this game doesn’t use at all, even though it seems like it would absolutely benefit from doing so.

Still, while its high difficulty and highly enthusiastic presentation may not appeal to everyone, Sixtar Gate is nevertheless a phenomenal Music-Rhythm game, one with an absolute ton of content, cleverly-designed gameplay, and plenty of options. If you’re a fan of modern Asian music who enjoys Music-Rhythm games, and especially if you’re looking for a challenge, this is definitely a game you’ll want to play.

tl;dr – Sixtar Gate is a Music-Rhythm game that has players tapping buttons in time with notes falling down on lanes, with the number of lanes growing and shrinking as you play. It’s a challenging entry in the genre, and this along with its energetic presentation and its Asian-centric soundtrack might not appeal to everyone. However, there’s a huge wealth of content and options here, and the gameplay is clever and enjoyable for those who seek a challenge. If that sounds like you, this is definitely a game you’ll want to try.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Music-Rhythm Game, Most Overlooked (No Metacritic score for any platform, no OpenCritic score)

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