Orgarhythm is game that ultimately leaves me feeling more confused than anything else. That is because I am not really sure who this title was meant to be aimed at and I cannot shake the sneaking suspicion that neither did the people developing it. Orgarhythm is a game that is trying to meld two seemingly disparate genres–real-time strategy and music/rhythm–into one cohesive whole, but the ultimate results are far from satisfying.

To begin with, Orgarhythm completely squanders any potential its concept of a war between the God of Light and the God of Darkness might have, as that premise results in zero story sequences of any kind in the game proper. Outside of a couple paragraphs in the game’s manual and a very oblique CGI sequence that plays before the title screen, Orgarhythm has no story, with missions simply playing out minus any context or justification to accompany them. It is not like Orgarhythm’s setup would not lend itself to a decent story or that the game’s developers ACQUIRE Corp. have no experience with telling at least decent tales. Indeed, the story for their previous Vita game, Suminoni: Demon Arts, was easily one of the best parts of that otherwise flawed game. So, the complete lack of any in-game story is inexplicable and, in my opinion at least, inexcusable for a game that is both only around five hours long and priced at thirty dollars.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Welcome to a huge portion of this game’s running time.

Moving on from story, Orgarhythm has equally serious (if not quite as obviously dire) problems on its gameplay side as well. The best way to describe the gameplay in Orgarhythm is if Pikmin was on rails and forced players tap the screen for no good reason. Players take on the role of the God of Light who leads his army of elemental warriors automatically along a pre-determined path from one end of a stage to another where a boss battle inevitably always awaits. Said warriors (along with the enemies and bosses in the game as well) come in three flavors (red, blue, & yellow) and the game has a standard rock-paper-scissors approach to go along with this setup. Furthermore, warriors can eventually perform one of four types of attacks: Strike (melee), Archer (long range), Catapult (midrange but with high damage), and Sacrifice (bombers). Players direct their troops by drawing lines on the screen at locations they want them to travel to, with longer lines assigning more troops to a given action. Finally, players can also select from a number of buffs and/or healing spells that are all linked to the same cool-down bar.

It is a setup that could have worked if not for a number of serious problems marring the experience. Chief among these is the AI and path-finding of the God of Light’s soldiers. Not only is getting these troops to just the right area at the right time tricky in and of itself, but then whether or not they actually engage the enemy correctly so as to help the GoL avoid taking critical damage tends to be far more of a crapshoot at times than it otherwise should be. Also, the means of selecting the number of troops to go often feels clumsy and awkward, which the last thing needed for a game of this nature. So the touch-only controls that should have worked so well for a game like Orgarhythm instead end up coming across as a cumbersome source of impediment instead. Further stripping the game of strategic possibilities is its on-rails approach to stage traversal, which feels odd in a strategy game that otherwise is more or less following the basic outline of the Pikmin model. I suspect this on-rails approach was employed so as to better accommodate the game’s unnecessary rhythm elements and it is just one more reasons this aspect of the game is a poor fit in the overall scheme of things. Even something as simple as letting players lay out their own routes before a mission began would have gone a long way to alleviating this problem.

Boss fights are easily the best part of this game.

Speaking of Orgarhythm’s rhythm gameplay, this portion of the title’s gameplay ultimately ends feeling pointless, completely tacked on, and forced. That is because said rhythm-based gameplay in Orgarhythm consists solely of players having to tap three times in a row to the rhythm of a stage’s music when they want to select a group of soldiers and/or cast a spell or buff. That is it. There is nothing more to the rhythm side of Orgarhythm than what is ultimately the most basic gameplay element that such games generally employ. Not only does this lead to a sense of monotony quickly setting in on the rhythm side of things, it also does little to justify the marriage of the different gameplay elements in the first place. You could completely remove this aspect of the title’s gameplay and the rest of the game would barely be affected. Actually, it would be improved since the only way to level up one’s soldiers and gain more troops is to get three perfect taps in a row during an action. A single mistake sends the troops current level to plummet downward which in turn also mean that strategy fans with only middling rhythm skills face some potentially unfair challenges later in the game once trickier beats and tunes start to become the norm. For a game purportedly designed from the ground up as a melding of two genres, it is startling just how poor of a job Orgarhythm does with this aspect of its gameplay.

I have already mentioned how short Orgarhythm’s single player campaign is and the inclusion of co-op and competitive multiplayer might have gone some ways to amending this problem… if not for the fact that said modes feature local ad-hoc play only. A good amount of content is indeed available for both of these modes, but the lack of online functionality makes this inclusion little more than a cruel tease for most people. Even if Orgarhythm was the most brilliantly designed game in the world, its appeal was always going to be fairly niche at best and finding other people online to play with, to say nothing of in one’s local area, was always going to be equally tricky as well. Including multiplayer without online functionality then leads me to wonder why AQUIRE even bothered with such content in the first place for all the use most players (myself included) will be able to get out of it.

Aside from swapping the colors of the ground, Orgarhythm has little in the way of variety as far as visual design for its levels are concerned.

Rounding out the overall Orgarhythm experience are production values that include graphics which would have look poor on a DS game of eight years ago, much less a full Vita release of today. Levels are bland, repetitive, and ugly, while enemy troops feature only a minimum of jerky animations combined with fairly unappealing designs. Bosses at least tend to feature stronger work in these areas for the most part, but even they rarely present anything truly visually startling or impressive. Aurally, the game does at least fare better and for the most part the music in the game ranges from pretty good to great… at least when taken separate from the game itself. For tunes meant to serve as the basis for the rhythm of a war between gods, Orgarhythm features a surprising number of laid back new-age style pieces. Again, they are not bad in and of themselves but they are at least an awkward fit for gameplay that, by its very nature, should be getting the blood of players pumping as opposed to threatening to send them into a blissful state of rest. It is just one more odd choice in a game littered with the results of such odd decision making.

All of the previously described failures of Orgarhythm are only made all the more frustrating by the simple fact that others have successfully done what this title is attempting to do. Indeed, the mix of rhythm and real-time strategy has in the past produced one of the most satisfying original/exclusive series to ever grace the Vita’s predecessor, the PSP. I am of course referring to that other RTS/music game hybrid Patapon and when compared to those games, Orgarhythm’s failing become especially apparent. The Patapon games always managed to expertly link their two disparate sides in a way that they fed into one another and were equally indispensable to the overall experience of those games. Orgarhythm by comparison never comes even close to achieving such parity with its dual natures and as a result the overall game suffers.

This situation is far more enjoyable to look at than actually play.

Even when judged solely on its own merits however, Orgarhythm still falls flat, especially at a price tag of thirty dollars for a four to five hour campaign. Neither the game’s strategy side nor its rhythm side taken individually will likely feature much to appeal to fans of either genre, to say nothing of how awkwardly these sides work together as a greater whole. Strategy fans (particularly those looking for something akin to Pikmin) will be much better off getting their fix on the Vita from Konami’s New Little King’s Story. Meanwhile rhythm enthusiasts will find far more enjoyment awaiting them in a different, and far superior, hybrid title, namely SCEA’s Sound Shapes. And of course there is always the aforementioned Patapon series for those who have yet to experience that series particular brand of sublime joy; the first two games in the series are currently available directly from the Vita’s dedicated PlayStation store and are even each priced less than ten dollars to boot. Put simply, Orgarhythm is a game of big ideas ultimately let down by poor design choices and implementation in a way that lead these ideas to fail to ever meaningfully congeal into an appealing game.

A review code for this game was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review. The reviewer spent approximately seven hours playing the game.

Also, feel free to follow the reviewer on Twitter @bigred_13 please if you feel so inclined.

Orgarhythm Review

By Shaun K.

Those hoping to find the Vita's answer to Patapon should keep on looking.