Rhythm of the Gods Review

Rhythm of the Gods tells the story of Lyrik, the strongest mortal warrior, on their quest to master the melody as they hack and slash their way through the beat. You’ll go up against a variety of mythological creatures in order to impress each god and earn your right to challenge them in a battle of rhythm. Do you have what it takes to keep the beat?

Rhythm of the Gods is a 2D auto-scrolling platformer/rhythm-based game where you need to press one of four buttons in time with the beat when the prompt appears. You can either press up to jump, down to slide, A to use your shield, and B to attack. As with any rhythm-based game, you can either press too early, perform with good or perfect timing or completely miss.

The protagonist does have a health bar so you are given a bit of leeway to miss some action prompts. When you see a pot, you need to break it with your shield, when you see an enemy, attack it. Some enemies are airborne, you’ll need to do a quick jump attack combo. While other enemies require multiple hits, so you have to be quick with the button presses. You’ll also be required to slide under doors and jump over obstacles. Performing combos will refill your health one heart at a time.

While rhythm-based games are a challenging bunch, Rhythm of the Gods is no different, but it takes it to another level. The first level is fair and reasonable enough to learn from your mistakes and the enemy/obstacle patterns. However, things will go awry quickly just with the second level. While I understand there aren’t *that* many levels, a progressing difficulty curve would’ve done wonders here.

The game does look great, albeit quite simplistic. Each level has a different color palette and the night level is minimal, but great looking with a bit of a synthwave-inspired tone. The main character and enemies are, again, minimalistic so nothing special here. I’ve seen enemies from NES games with more details. And the soundtrack, which is vital to any rhythm-based game, is hit or miss. Some tracks will get your foot tapping while others sound like someone fell asleep face-first on a keyboard and rolled around in their sleep.

Rhythm of the Gods is a fun and unique take on the rhythm-based genre, but obviously don’t expect the same level of polish as Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master!. It’s a nice little game that can be enjoyed in short bursts with questionable difficulty balancing. There’s nothing really inherently wrong here, but it doesn’t quite hit that perfect note. This could a nice distraction to fans of the genre or a game for newcomers to take the dive.