Hi Gamers! It's me Stanley. It's my first time posting a gaming-related post on Hive, so I'm excited to share about my love for gaming. And I'm here to talk about a rhythm game.
Do you want to play a game that has various of songs, amazing game style, and tapping to the beat? Do you want to play songs that are composed by various composers from Japan, Korea, and other countries with various genres? Or you want a story to read while also seeing illustrations by other artists?
Look no more! Just try a rhythm game! And one game I can recommend, is Arcaea.
Arcaea, a 3D Rhythm Game
Arcaea is a 3-dimensional rhythm game made by lowiro, and it offers content for those who loved rhythm games and those who wants to play their first rhythm game.
The game is available on Android Play Store and Apple App Store. The game's also available on Nintendo Switch for USD 39.99
Check out the links for requirements to play.
Features (from Arcaea App Store Description):
A high difficulty ceiling - experience personal growth as you develop skills in arcade-style progression
Over 160 songs from more than 100 artists famous across other games
An expanding music library through content updates
Full song jacket illustrations
Online friends and scoreboards
The game itself has great UI, you can easily navigate around the game. It has some features to improve your experience, stories to read, and a progression mode called "World Mode," allowing players to get more songs, currencies, "Partners", and more.
On the top area, you see the name of the game/mode you're on, currencies called fragments and memories, settings icon, and Partner Icon in which where you can change your partner to use. For now let's talk about the game's gameplay, specifically the Music Play and the Gameplay.
Music Play and Gameplay
This is where you can start trying their songs and different difficulties of the game.
At first you're introduced to how the game first, like always to let you know where to start. The game has 4 difficulties in total, but most have only 3.
- Past, the easy difficulty of the game. Best for beginners
- Present, the medium difficulty. Best for those who wants to try out advanced gameplay, and those who like to play high difficulty in the future.
- Future, the hard difficulty. This is recommended when you already know how Arcaea works and want to play much more better on the game.
- Beyond, the extra difficulty and only available to certain songs. Obtained via World Mode (after reaching Potential 9.00), or in different methods.
This difficulties has levels, ranging from 1-11 (a higher difficulty is available) and the higher the number, the harder the chart/sheet/level is.
Tapping the button located in the middle-top is the Pack Selection. Where you can choose different packs. These packs are categorised, and are called as follows: **Memory Archive (Singles), World Archive, Arcaea (Free-to-play songs), World Extend, Main Story packs, Side Story packs, and Collaboration packs.
Packs contains songs, but Memory Archive songs sold separately. Most of the content is paid content.
The gameplay. When playing, you'll be introduced to:
- The ground lane. Where ground notes appears.
- Sky Input. Where Sky Notes appears.
Within both of them is where the notes appears as well, yes the notes can appear in between the lines (only applicable to Future and Beyond.) There's also an addition to the game, the Arcs. They're hold notes, but they move horizontally and vertically.
I can't explain it much, but here's a screen gameplay of mine of what it looks like.
Never mind how I've played the chart, that time is where I'm still developing.
With that out of the way, here's some more main points of the game.
Currencies
The game has two currencies, Fragments and Memories.
Fragments are obtained when you finished playing a song, on World Mode maps, and Courses. They are common, and used to unlock songs that requires fragments.
Another currency on the game is "Memories". How to get them you asked? Well, they're only obtainable by buying them. You must be logged in to your Arcaea account to buy Memories. You can buy them via in-game or in their website, which offers much more Memories.
Memories are synced to all devices logged on to the same account, while fragments are stored locally.
They cost USD 0.99 per 100 Memories, USD 4.99 for 510 (in-game store) or 550 (Arcaea Online Store), USD 9.99 for 1020/1100. With Memories, you can unlock paid content (e.g. songs, packs), boost your world progression, and more.
Partners
Partners are the characters of the game that you can use to improve your gameplay. Partners have different "Skills" and "Stats", in which are also useful throughout the game. They're obtainable via packs and limited time events.
There are 3 types of partners.
- Support. Gives Easy Gauge, a green gauge when playing. Less recollection rate/gauge meter deduction when losing notes. Reach 70 to win.
- Balance. The normal ones, gives purple gauge, have balanced gain and deduction. Reach 70 to win.
- Challenge. The hard one, gives red gauge. Have higher deduction on gauge meter (reduced the lower the gauge meter currently on) but meter gain remains the same. They act like "health bar," so to win, just keep the gauge above zero.
For starters, they'll be given 2 base characters: Hikari and Tairitsu, the main characters of the game. You can use them to play. And when you want to spend, you can get more partners eventually.
There are a lot of things to look at, but they're all be explained in-game. By tapping the options (e.g. World Mode, Course Mode, Story Mode) or exploring around, you'll be given some info about the feature. If you want to explore the wiki and get more info about the game, I'll leave some links below, or look for YouTube videos about Arcaea Beginner's Guide.
Opinions and Thoughts About The Game
I haven't digged much on the main story because I was focused on getting the final main story pack. But I was told what was the story about, so basically I got spoiled... To give you an overview, it's about two girls wandering to a world of glass, filled with memories to be uncovered. One represents light, one represents conflict.
Honestly, the game is super great. I only read Hikari's story and the Black Fate story, and it was so good. The choice of words are so deep that there's alot of meaning, and the art is superb. Every event is exceptional.
The reason why I got into Arcaea, and other rhythm games, is because of my addiction to Piano Tiles. Both games look alike, but they don't, they differ. Yes, it's a 4-lanes rhythm game, but with the addition to Sky Notes, it really does differs from others.
Just one thing that I didn't like. The prices of Memories, are expensive. They only cost PHP 49 per 100 memories before, but because of Apple App Store changes on in-game purchases and how much would it cost to maintain the game to provide content in this time of inflation, they have to increase it to PHP 60, and this price change is affected and rolled out to other countries.
I can make my purchases cheap and worth the money by buying what packs I have to prioritise and buy packs and songs on their Anniversary sale every March, every year.
But like others may say, its expensive just to play the game. The game itself has a huge paywall. But there's always a reason why they put a paywall on most content. It's to maintain the high quality updates, commissioning artists to make artworks and songs, and of course, for maintaining the game up and running.
Here's the rounded up version of my thoughts on the game, pros and cons edition:
Pros:
- The gameplay is interesting, considering it's like Sound Voltex. Have originality on how the game works.
- Good choice of songs and genres, as well as artworks.
- Storyline is at the peak quality. Good for those who craves to stories.
- Has interesting features.
Cons: - Paywall, a reasonable paywall
- Considering some games aren't changing price, the game is now more expensive than before because of the price change.
- May confuse others while exploring the game
Conclusion
Overall, Arcaea is a good game. The artworks' really well made, songs are catchy and the gameplay is fun.
When you think about it, there's only 50 songs and counting that are free-to-play, but with some updates, there's limited time songs you can get for free. And every New Year, there's free 100 memories to spend, so some players can play their favourite single. Though it can't be accumulated since it will expire, but Memories that are paid won't expire.
And you will get to play it again to get more songs and other rewards with World Mode. And considering you can get the game on Nintendo Switch for USD 39.99, you can get most content, including the entire main story packs and new way to play, using the Joy-Cons.
So if you are looking for a game that gives you a challenge and always going to play it every day, this is the game you need to play. It's your choice to pay for extra content, it doesn't hurt when you know you want it.
Thanks for reading! Hope you liked my review for the game
