04/10/09 -- Rhythm Heaven is the sequel to the popular game Rhythm Tengoku, which was released in Japan only on the GBA. After Rhythm Tengoku came Rhythm Tengoku Gold for the Nintendo DS, also released in Japan only. Like Osu Tatake Ouendan, which due to high import sales received a localization long after the fact with Elite Beat Agents, the Rhythm Tengoku series was also a very popular import choice. Rhythm Tengoku Gold had some menus translated, some new singers for the songs and was shipped to North America in the form of Rhythm Heaven.

Unlike Elite Beat Agents, which was an entire new game in itself, Rhythm Heaven is, as mentioned above, the exact same thing as Rhythm Tengoku Gold only translated into English. Now the number one concern when a game centered around music is localized in North America is do they keep the J-Pop singers, or do they hire terrible American singers to butcher the songs? In Rhythm Heaven, they sort of meet you half way. But first let me explain what goes on in the game to give a better picture.

All of the games in Rhythm Heaven are centered in some way around music or keeping a beat. The only controls are poking the touch screen or rubbing the touch screen with literally no button presses at all. The game is also played while holding the DS like a book, reminiscent of the Brain Age style of play. Fear not fellow lefties, the first thing they ask is whether you would like the game flipped so that we can play too. There are 25 games to be had in Rhythm Heaven each lasting around two minutes each. Once you master these, a harder version of some of the games will be unlocked, along with compilation levels where you play a little of a few games, bringing the total to about 50. In each game, you are given a specific task. It might be something as simple as filling up a robot with oil or keeping a volley going in a game of ping-pong, or as fanciful as pecking your beak in time with an evil ostrich general or keeping in time with a troupe of backup dancing frogs. If the repetitiveness of that sentence did not tip you off, many of the games require you to keep in time as a member of a group in various different scenarios.

Because the only controls are tap the screen or flick the screen, the sheer amount of situations and reasons that the game developers came up with to justify the two actions are simply amazing. If one was to play a First Person Shooter in which all you could do was shoot your weapon (did I just describe a rail shooter?), the game would probably feel repetitive pretty quickly. However, never once during Rhythm Heaven did I feel as though I had “done it before” or that the minigames were beginning to blend into themselves, and I attribute this fact mostly to the imaginative games that were a joy to play.

You play each game one at a time and the game will give you a score of OK, try again, or superb. Each time you get an OK, the next game unlocks itself and each time you get a superb, you are awarded a medal. By collecting enough medals, you can unlock the game's bonus features. Half of the bonus features are little toys reminiscent of some of the Wario Ware unlockables; not so much games as little gadgets to fool around with like a DJ scratch table or a monster whose eyes are slot machine spaces (you pull his tail), while the other half are endless versions of some of the main games, with a few original ones thrown in. While these extras are not much, they are each enjoyable in their own way and are a nice compliment to the main package.

And how is the localization? Well according to Japanese speaking people the songs were translated very accurately and I found the in-game text to be quite clever. Oh, you wanted to know if the songs were butchered? The interesting thing about that is, unlike Osu and Elite Beat Agents, the vast majority of the songs in this game have no lyrics, so for most of the games, it was simply a matter of copy pasting the song from one game to the next. The songs where there are lyrics are hit and miss. The good ones sound fine, the bad ones sound pretty bad, but there are so few of these bad ones (maybe only 2-3 in the entire game) that it really comes nowhere close to being a deal-breaker.

The main flaw of this game is the scoring system, or lack thereof. Again, the only possible grades you can get are try again, OK and superb, but how to get to these grades remains ambiguous throughout the entire game. While playing any given game, there is always a clear indication if you screw up or miss a beat, which allows you to know that you have made a mistake and can iron out that problem for the future. The trouble is, the game gives no indication whatsoever as to how many mistakes you get before you move down a grade. In some games, I would do rather poorly and still come out with a superb, while in others, I would make literally no mistakes and only get OK. Sometimes I would make one mistake and get superb, other times they would tell me to try again. The lack of uniformity in the scoring makes the game extremely frustrating, especially from the onset. It can be quite unsettling to feel while playing the game that nothing you do is ever good enough, only to get a superb a little bit later, though you did nothing markedly different.

Most games with this frustrating a learning curve would put me off immediately. I was frustrated at all times while learning to play this game, but in this instance, I never stopped playing. This is a testament to just how addicting and enjoyable Rhythm Heaven is. Even when the scoring system was being straight up unfair, I kept on going regardless because it was that much fun. Odd as it may sound, you will eventually get good enough that this kind of thing won't matter because you will eventually mastered each level, but it really stinks during the learning process.

One other nitpicky thing that is worth mentioning is the lack of a restart key. If you just made a major mistake and know that finishing off the level will still result in a try again, you have to quit out and go back into the minigame. This is ok the first few times, but this will happen a lot and it will get annoying.

Those problems aside, Rhythm Heaven is a really solid game. The localization was done well enough that you would have to be crazy to import it and the games themselves are all creative and well designed. If you have ever played and enjoyed a WarioWare game in your life, this should be an instant purchase.