A Musical Story

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1

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Review:

A Musical Story is a Music-Rhythm game released in 2022 on PC, mobile devices, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. And while this is definitely a Music-Rhythm game, the “Story” part of this game’s title is very apt too, as this is a very story-driven experience, making this pretty unlike typical Music-Rhythm games.

This game’s story, told without text, dialogue, or narration, follows a guitarist named Gabriel who joins his band on a cross-country trip in hopes of finding success and stardom, with this journey taking some unexpected turns. The game’s story is told in flashback from a hospital bed, and there are strong themes of drug use, as well as implied nudity and other mature themes, so this isn’t a game that’s going to be appropriate for youngsters.

The presentation here is really striking, and this is a good thing because the game’s entire story is told through its images with light animation and its music, all staying thematically within a theme set in the 1970s. The game’s 2D visuals are rendered in a colorful and visually-unique style that seems like it’s been painted with sponges and gel pens, with dirty, squidgy, blotchy lines and shapes with a lot of personality to them. This is joined by minimal environmental sound and a soundtrack that flows from one passage to the next.

This brings me to the gameplay. A Musical Story’s Music-Rhythm gameplay takes place on a nearly-complete circle, where players hit notes using the L and R buttons. Each circle is one or two bars of a song that repeats infinitely until you complete it, allowing you to move on to the next section and see the next part of the game’s story. The way the music repeats and then progresses when you’ve completed it flows really nicely, making it all sound natural, like that was always the way the song was meant to be played, regardless of whether you botched it and needed to repeat a section five times in a row or got it immediately and moved on right away.

Because of the way this gameplay works, there isn’t really a score or a fail state here – that’s not what this game is going for, and this isn’t the sort of Music-Rhythm game where you’re meant to aim for a flawless performance of the notes to rank on a leaderboard. Having said that, players do need to flawlessly perform each little section before moving on, and this is where this game finds its biggest gameplay issues.

By default, A Musical Story doesn’t give any visual indication when you’re supposed to be hitting notes until it’s too late – you’re meant to listen to the notes the first time they’re played, and then replicate this on a subsequent play-through of those same notes. This is all well and good when you’re playing a section with a good beat, but when you have a silent section with notes played at irregular intervals this can feel like it involves a lot of guesswork as you try to judge whether it’s been enough time between one note and the next to have gotten to the end of a long pause.

There’s no penalty for missing a note other than having to do the same bar again, but this can get frustrating when you’re trying to do the same bar a half-dozen times not because it requires great dexterity, but because you’re expected to be able to judge the time in a long pause without any audiovisual indication. And to the game’s credit, it does have a dynamic difficulty that will eventually fade in a visual indicator, but this indicator is fickle and fades into and out of view seemingly on a whim, and seeing the text notification appear on-screen when this starts feels like the game telling you that you suck and need training wheels at a time when it’s essentially blindfolded you without any other indicator.

The other issue of note here is that this is a game that can be completed within a few hours, which feels a bit short for the game’s $15 price tag. I suppose some people will likely feel differently, depending on how much they enjoy the story and audiovisual presentation, but regardless you should be prepared for a minimalist experience that won’t last more than a few play-throughs.

In the end, I really appreciate that A Musical Story is trying something different within the genre, and I do think its presentation is phenomenal and its gameplay is unique. However, I do feel like a lower price tag would be more fitting due to the game’s length, and I really think that the game should default to giving more visual cues or audio cues. However, despite its flaws this is a game I think Music-Rhythm fans should give a look, as there’s not much else like it out there.

tl;dr – A Musical Story is a Music-Rhythm game that uses the genre in a non-traditional way to tell a story about a guitarist aiming for stardom. The audiovisual presentation here is outstanding, but the game’s price seems a bit much given its length, and the lack of visual indicators makes the gameplay really frustrating on song sections that don’t have a good beat. Still, even with these issues, this is a game that fans of the genre will likely want to check out due to how unique it is.

Grade: B-

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