Venturing myself through the Japanese eShop once more, I ended up getting a game I couldn’t even read the title, but given the fact that, by the look of some screenshots, it looked like some sort of retro-styled combat game (and also the fact it was cheap), I ended up buying it. One day later, said game came out on the American eShop and I found out its proper name, Dark Witch Music Episode: Rudymical, and that it wasn’t a fighting game, but a rhythm-based musical game, a spin-off to a couple of 3DS platformers from the Legend of the Dark Witch series. Suffice to say, I was still clueless about it so I went on this game having no idea of what to expect.

Rudymical is very easy to summarize: it’s a rhythm game in which 90% of the time you’re slashing balls (called Boing-Boings here) and 10% of time jumping over some fireballs, all to the sound of an okay-ish at best 16-bit tune. Doing so will, for some reason I can’t explain, defeat an enemy you’re fighting against, and if you’re good enough you’ll get a crystal which can unlock a new character and some story mode-related extras.

You use three buttons to destroy three different types of balls (green, red, blue), and a button to jump. Destroying said balls in the right compass with help create some sort of beat alongside the current song being played. The gameplay falls into that typical “easy to learn but hard to master” schtick, and your skills will mostly depend on how quick on reflexes you are, and how well you can notice some balls that sometimes blend in with the scenery.

Sadly, I have just basically described you the entire game.

Rudymical is a very short game. You can beat the entire story mode in less than half an hour. To add insult to the already frustrating injury, the songs in the game, while okay at best, are completely ruined by the incredibly obnoxious sound effects your characters make every time you slash a ball (mostly being very high pitched yells), making you think twice before replaying any of the levels.

You might have a little bit of fun in the first couple of rounds, but you’ll quickly get bored with Rudymical. It has nearly nothing to offer besides some story mode videos (all in Japanese with English subtitles), all related to a story that, frankly, is pretty uninteresting.

Even though the game cost me only around 800 yen, it did feel way overpriced, given the lack of content.

I can’t say that Rudymical is a completely awful game because, technically speaking, it does everything pretty passably, but it’s so barebones in content and so simplistic, I really cannot recommend it to anyone. Given the fact every level is around 2 minutes long and you can beat the uninteresting entire story in less than half an hour, it constantly felt like I was playing a rushed port of a mobile game.

Oh crap, it is a port of a mobile game.

Also available on: iOS, Android
Reviewed on Switch.