Fantasia: Music Evolved

The Disney magic shines brightly in Fantasia: Music Evolved, and Harmonix has delivered another great reason to own a Kinect.

Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved is a solid, entertaining game that's not too challenging for kids and whose main story I completed in about six-and-a-half hours.

If there's a "must-have" game for the Kinect, this is it.

Harmonix succeeds on a variety of levels. Fantasia works well as a rhythm game. It works well as a movie game that builds on the films’ premise and history. And not to forget it shows that Kinect can be a welcome addition to the gaming experience.

While it won’t have the party appeal that comes with instruments, it’s a more intuitive, beautiful, and creative experience.

Fantasia: Music Evolved provides a surprising amount of control and personalization options over each song, which is paired with fun gameplay to bring a fresh new style to the music game genre.

Music Evolved may be a rhythm game at its core, but it's an inventive one and is recommendable to anyone who spent a lot of time with Guitar Hero, Rock Band, or similar games.

Fantasia: Music Evolved is a surprisingly fun game that works incredibly well with Kinect. The game play is fun and offers up a fresh new style to the rhythm game genre.

Fantasia is a passionate and fully enjoyable tribute to music, it's a pity that it could have been so much better from a visual standpoint.

I for one found Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved to be a very enjoyable experience and one that I will certainly pick up from time to time even after the magic has worn off.

Harmonix proves they know how to make a great music game, different from all the dancing-based competitions.

If Harmonix’s latest project at times fails to find footing as a traditional game, it makes up for it by invoking a novel experience of discovery, creation, and involvement with music.

Fantasia’s gameplay is fresh and unbelievably addictive. More songs would be welcome, but I suppose Disney’s going to flood us with gazillion DLCs. [01/2015, p.63]

By the end of my time with Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved, my arms were aching, and my shoulders were stiff, but I had had a great time.

It’s not going to surpass Rock Band as the de facto music party game, neither is it going to save Kinect. But, as a potential swansong to Microsoft’s neglected camera, Fantasia: Music Evolved is more than worthy.

A unique and very revealing game, something capable of totally immersing us in the songs we'll be playing.

Fantasia Music Evolved is a great music game for the XBox One that works very well on the Kinect 2.

It’s fun to get up and wiggle my hands to music, what can I say?

Fantasia brings something completely new to the music/rhythm game genre. It's fun - if somewhat tiring - to play, and packs a broad and interesting array of tunes that you can remix on the fly. Very clever stuff - but will it be the last of its kind? Only time will tell.

The title does a phenominal job of tracking the player's movements, bridges the gap between a video game and its player through the use of a highly-interactive medium, and can make the player really feel like they're in control of the music better than any other music game ever.

Most impressively, perhaps, Harmonix have implemented Kinect with confidence and skill, so that it never feels like a chore or a gimmick, instead it is the perfect control method for conducting and crafting magical melodies.

Interesting and, somehow, refreshing experience for musical devotees. Top music selection and atmosphere.

If you have an Xbox One and a Kinect, you should have Fantasia: Music Evolved in your library, not only because it's the thing that shows off how well your Kinect can work, but also because it's an immediately accessible and fun party game.

With great rhythm gameplay and creative composition, Fantasia: Music Evolved is a colorful title that earns its Fantasia name.

a pleasant surprise and one that I’ll happily rope family and friends into playing. There are a few niggles, but the gameplay is immensely satisfying and the tracking spot on.

I'm just glad that the gameplay is so solid and feels so new that the sound of a less-than-desirable song is still something worth playing.

Makes me feel like a graceful performance artist, a skillful sorcerer, and a master musician all at once.

The magical combination of two creative powerhouses in Disney and Harmonix has produced one of the best Kinect rhythm games to date. Like no other to come before it, Fantasia: Music Evolved combines the required accuracy of the best of the genre with wholly enjoyable remixing tools that allow players to create new compositions on the fly merely with their hands.

It’s wonderfully accessible. The music library here has something for everyone, and the interface is so intuitive that players of all skill and experience levels can play without much worry of failure. It ought to prove a hit at family game nights and small social gatherings alike.

Like everything Disney inspires, it’s the colorful and playful energy that will keep you coming back. It’s just tough to stay excited about waving your arms around for very long.

Kinect, Disney and dancing: do not get thrown off by what Fantasia: Music Evolved represents. This is an original rhythm game in which you can feel the love from the makers. Kinect works perfectly and it is a pity the story mode is so brief. Thankfully there is lots more to explore after the credits.

The core gameplay is great fun; it’s just that getting to it can be somewhat of a huge drag. Having the songs locked in a boring campaign and the inclusion of long loading screens really took a lot of the fun away.

Waving your arms in front of your TV like you’re conducting some kind of cosmic orchestra is a surprising amount of fun, but the lack of content leaves the experience feeling a bit bare.

With Fantasia: Music Evolved Harmonix delivers a great mix of music and dancing games. To fill the screen with fireworks and music by waving your arms is incredibly fun and addicting. Unfortunately Kinect is not always reliable and you will regularly miss notes for no reason. Luckily that does not prevent Fantasia from being one of the best Kinect games so far.

Joyous and colourful, it's a shame that the motion tracking can be off at times. [Xmas 2014, p.79]

Harmonix once again proves that it's the best at what it does. [Issue#118, p.85]

This is arguably two games: One is a tiresome, frustrating battle just to get to the good parts, and the other one, which you can only get to by accident or with knowledge ahead of time, is a thrilling addition to the rhythm game genre.

The gameplay really is to be commended, even though in aiming for the mass market, musically, Fantasia loses a bit of its soul.

Harmonix managed to make a good rhythm game and a good Kinect game in Fantasia : Music Evolved. Even if it's not perfect and mainly lacking of classic Disney songs that could make it a perfect experience for it audience, kids, this production can entertain a few hours thanks to its mechanics and varied track list.

The kids will have fun with Fantasia: Music Evolved, another example of the Harmonix prowess. Kinect recognizes the movements well and the playlist is long.

A game of highs and lows. The highs are extreme, and while the lows are less so, they are still indeed lows. You’ll see the credits roll in single player mode within a few short hours and while there are still plenty of mixes to unlock once that happens, for a few reasons it’s tough to see where the replay value will come from outside of the odd multiplayer battle.

The original Fantasia was a thing of remarkable wonder and playful experimentation, and the fact that Fantasia: Music Evolved could capture even a small portion of that is an achievement. But, much like Apprentice Mickey, you're going to have to carry water for Music Evolved's strung-out structure before it lets you have any fun.

Fantasia: Music Evolved is an unusual concept. It brings some new air to the musical games' family as it allows you to become a conductor. Unfortunately, Kinect suffers from an unwelcome latency and the tracklist is quite irrelevant.

Don't rush out and purchase the camera if you don't already have one in your cupboard. [Issue#155, p.127]

Fantasia is a novel twist on the music name, then, but one lacking the sprinkling of Disney magic its title promises. [Christmas 2014, p.122]

It's a game capable of delivering real moments of magic, but is too often marred by inconsistent Kinect controls that can turn those feelings of joy into frustration.