Review: Musynx roughly rounds up radical rhythms

Between PM Studios and acttil, quite a few rhythm games have received releases in new regions. I mean, Superbeat: Xonic, Deemo: The Last Recital, DJ Max entries and a physical copy of Voez are all available as a result of their influence. It is no surprise they are also behind the appearance of Musynx, another title where people tap in time with icons as they fall towards an indicator line. A pleasant enough port of a mobile game, it literally tosses over 90 titles at you and hopes you have a good time listening to them.

This is literally how Musynx works. When you begin the game for the first time, you are presented with all 92 songs in a row. You can choose between Easy and Hard difficulties. There is an option to shift between 4K and 6K mode, which determines whether you use four or six buttons to play and not resolution. If you head into the menu, you can consult a five-page manual or adjust the controller inputs. It is very much a sink or swim experience, which is fine for the sort of game this is. Icons fall from the top of the screen to the either four or six indicators at the bottom. You tap or hold the appropriate buttons when an icon appears there. It is not rocket science.

I applaud Musynx for its succinct presentation.

I applaud Musynx for its succinct presentation. Objectives are clearly laid out. The 92 songs are immediately available with no unlocking necessary. In the Controller Setting menu, any button on the Nintendo Switch is fair game. Or, if you prefer and are playing in Handheld Mode, you can use the touch screen. Under Easy and Hard, levels are shown to offer indications of difficulty for each track. Not to mention when you start a song, you can adjust the Sound Enhancer to determine if music plays automatically or there are key sounds and set the speed of dropping notes. Every control option can be customized to suit your needs, as well as some gameplay elements.

Which makes it all the more shocking that there is no sense of organization whatsoever in Musynx. There are 92 songs in the game at launch. There is a store that promises more content. Considering the mobile version of the game has passed 130 tracks, a lot more awaits us. Yet, there is no way to sort through any of this. Songs seem to be grouped together based on whether they share a UI or genre. For example, “RPG Theatre,” “8BITO” and “Magic Girl Cool” are all chiptunes that have similar frames for their information and appear one after another in the list. But then, songs from games, like Koi’s “Koi” and Icey’s “Icey” are not immediately next to one another. Some way to sort based on difficulty, genre, artist or even title name would have been very much appreciated.

Especially since Musynx also does not consider personal preferences in other ways. There is also no way to indicate if a song is a favorite of yours. Since only a few are familiar enough to know by name, like the aforementioned “Icey” or “Koi,” it is almost like you need to keep a list elsewhere to remember what you like. And, since things are not organized alphabetically and there is no search function, you need to sift through the entire lot to come back to one you actually want.

And trust me, you are going to have favorites. Musynx has a huge starting library that is not only large, but diverse. There are chiptunes. We have vocaloid songs. Do you like EDM? That’s there too! Not to mention the general classical, pop, rap, rock and traditional Chinese tracks. There are also “General Disco” and “I Will Be Failed,” two songs with UI that looks like unrolling toilet paper that I sometimes feel like defy any possible genre. There is a lot going on here. Even if you only like two or three of the categories I mentioned above, that will still end up being 20 or 30 songs for you to enjoy.

Musynx has a huge starting library that is not only large, but diverse.

It also has some rather fun themes for its songs. Each genre has its own kind of UI. The two “weird” songs I mentioned above take place on a roll of toilet player with characters that appear to be drawn by a kindergartener drawn next to it. The techno songs feature neon blue framework against a black background. Pop songs are played on a rainbow running over an ocean as time passes and day turns to night. My favorite layout is for the chiptunes, as they take place in a pixelated restaurant, with two little waitresses running around below the indicators in time with your button presses. There are not a lot of different backgrounds and it is not possible to choose which one appears for each song, but what is there looks nice and tends to suit each song.

Musynx is a game that offers more pluses than minuses. There are so many songs here, all varying degrees of good. It functions well. That it allows people to customize inputs, sound levels, number of buttons used, difficulty and note speed is also all great. It just often feels a bit sloppy. When there are over 90 songs to choose from, you really do have to offer options to sort and set aside certain tracks. As long as someone is okay with sifting through a long list every time they play, they will be okay with Musynx.