Symphonia

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Symphonia is a challenging Platformer released in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and ported in 2025 to Nintendo Switch. Set in a steampunk-esque music-themed world, players take the role of a masked violinist who seeks to “get the band back together”, so to speak, joining with other musical talents to bring the broken world back to its former glory.

The world of Symphonia is gorgeously-detailed, with a mix of 2D and 3D elements depicting a fantastical clockwork world fallen to ruin, with some good animation and plenty of interesting things to see in the background of the game’s levels as you play through them. I will note that on Nintendo Switch, this is marred slightly by occasional moments of slight slowdown, but overall this game looks absolutely gorgeous.

These visuals are joined by a superb classical-style orchestral soundtrack that perfectly fits the game’s musical themes, with some good examples including Vestiges, Renewal, Break of Dawn, Zenith, Concerto for Cello and Violin, Whispers Among the Leaves, The Heart (Piano Variation), and Night in the Fields, and you even have pieces that seem to be a nod to well-known classical pieces, such as how the opening to Enchanted Glasshouse seems directly inspired by Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Faries. In addition, Symphonia’s sound design also makes use of the game’s musical theme, with many of the sound effects derived from musical instruments. In short, if you name a game Symphonia, it had better sound great, and this game absolutely does.

Despite the music theme permeating the game, Symphonia doesn’t have any sort of major Music-Rhythm element to its gameplay. Instead, the world you’re navigating through is often made from musical instruments, your character interacts with some objects in the world by playing their violin, and you use their violin’s bow both as a Scrooge McDuck-style pogo stick and as a lever to stick into soft “cushions” found in the game’s levels, using that to catapult yourself around the level.

It might be tempting to see Symphonia as a Metroidvania, since it features a contiguous world and your abilities expand as you play through the game. However, that world isn’t interconnected in the way you look for in a Metroidvania, and you’re not given much reason to retread your steps to explore previous areas. There are collectables to retrieve for players who choose to undertake more challenging platforming antics to get to them, but this ends up feeling more like the collectables in a game like Celeste.

In fact, I would argue that overall this game’s focus on creative but highly-challenging Platforming tasks makes this feel pretty close in its gameplay to Celeste. However, much like Celeste, I do think the high challenge level here might be off-putting to more novice players, and even more experienced players will likely be frustrated with this game’s occasional “Leaps of faith” that will inevitably lead to you dying repeatedly as you catapult yourself into an area you can’t see at high speed, only to die because you saw too late the dangers that you were speeding into.

Still, despite its high challenge level and occasional frustrations, Symphonia is a beautiful, well-crafted Platformer that’s absolutely worth playing for fans of the genre who crave a challenge. And while this might not be for everyone, I think as long as you don’t mind tough platforming, you’ll be delighted by this game.

tl;dr – Symphonia is a challenging Platformer that has players exploring a music-themed clockwork world as a masked violinist. The presentation in this game is gorgeous, and the platforming is fun and inventive. And while the challenge level is a bit on the high side, and there are occasional “leaps of faith”, overall this is a superb entry in the genre.

Grade: B+

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