UNBEATABLE

At the end of the day, Unbeatable is a solid rhythm title with great audio-visual presentation and and a heartwarming narrative, though some lackluster pacing and inconsistent voice application make it a trickier recommendation than I would have expected.

The developers postponed the game's release by a month at the last minute, and we can't help feeling that the game would have benefited from a little more delay. Unbeatable is unpolished and unfinished. It's rebellious and punk, sure, but at times it's also frustrating. With the addition of story mode and the integration of numerous mini-games, Unbeatable tries to be too many things at once, and as a result, the game doesn't always hit the right note. But for the modest price of 28 euros, you can't possibly feel cheated.

There’s no denying that Unbeatable is a very special game. Yet as hard as I tried to love it, I constantly found myself being thrust out of the experience whenever the story took a weird left turn or suddenly decided it was time to do yet another mundane task that had no bearing on anything. When it was finally time for the last song, I was more than happy to let it play out and enjoy it for what it is. At the same time, I knew I wouldn’t be clamoring for an encore.

UNBEATABLE absolutely offers tons of style and an exceptional soundtrack, but sometimes I felt a bit let down by the execution of the story and its rhythm game elements. The idea behind the narrative is amazing and I love the plot, but I hated the sharp transitions that sometimes made it feel choppy. The traditional rhythm game moments are fantastic, especially in the arcade mode when you can savor all the tracks and take on challenges, but sometimes the rhythm minigames missed the mark for me. It very much feels like a title where, while it’s quite enjoyable now, I think it will be even better in a few weeks after some patches.

UNBEATABLE is a good rhythm action adventure game, with it highlights being its visual style and the arcade mode. The story is fine, but can feel all over the place at times with a script that isn’t the best, but the music through the game is good and there are a couple of standout tracks. It has been a while since a decent rhythm game came out, so it is worth giving UNBEATABLE a shot.

Even when it digresses, the game always finds its way back to a compelling central rhythm.

These ideas are best conveyed when it hands things over to its music, which booms during fights between protesters and rotten law enforcement, or thrums with melancholy as we see superimposed images of two family members who will never see each other again. Some of the plot specifics here are vague and only partially explained, but the soundtrack smooths over the edges by getting across the emotions that matter, like the cataclysmic grief and loss that beautifully undergirds the entire story. To put it simply, when its music does the talking, Unbeatable lives up to its name.

Unbeatable is an extraordinary game to see and to hear: the animations, the style that looks like it came straight out of a ’90s anime, the colorful imagery of a world where music has no right to exist. And yet it does exist: loud, punk, rock, rebellious, coming from deep within, and at other times it embraces you, gently and warmly. However, the sum of its parts is far below what one would expect. It is too imprecise to be a good rhythm game: the note charts are confusing, input windows are off, and the feedback from the notes leaves much to be desired. On top of that, even after such a long wait and last month’s delay, the bug and glitch situation is still far from ideal. With a heavy heart over this missed opportunity, we hope that Unbeatable can at least serve as a foundation for something greater, through continuous updates, additional tracks, and new options.

UNBEATABLE is an ambitious and conceptually interesting rhythm game, but it fails to successfully realize its creative vision. The execution is clumsy and leaves much to be desired, indicating that the team needed more development time—especially to polish its Story Mode.

Unbeatable suffers from an identity crisis, pairing a decent arcade mode with an uneven story mode that buries its rhythm gameplay beneath a bit too much padding.