God of Rock by developer Modus Studios Brazil and publisher Modus Games— Sony PlayStation 4 Review written by Jim with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
I really enjoy rhythm games and have played everything from rock band and guitar hero to the Hatsune Miku games and even Taiko no Tatsujin. I enjoy most of them that I play, but God of Rock is the first game I have ever heard of being part Rhythm game and part fighting game. Considering I like rock music I had to try the game out.
After going through the game's tutorial I was ready to play the game's main mode called Arcade Mode which acts as the game's story mode. There are twelve characters to pick from and for my first playthrough, I went with Hilde because it was the character you play as in the tutorial and I felt it would be best to start with one that I knew how to use. Each character has their own story and you get a little cutscene showing you their story. Hilde, for example, is an Abbess who lives in an abbey and the food there isn't very good. So the God of Rock invites her to his music fighting competition and if she wins she will get good food at the abbey. The stories are silly but I was surprised to hear them all voiced over. It was decent voice acting at that even though there isn't a ton of talking in the game. Each story on the easy mode will take about 30 minutes to beat so the game isn't very long.
The gameplay is like other rhythm games, there's a grid that shows you what button to press and when at the bottom of the screen. Hitting it right and better than your opponent will damage them and they will do the same to you. To help you out in battle you can use special, EX, and ultra moves. Every character but one has three levels of specials that can be used when a special bar is full for each level. You can use all three, one after the other, but then you will have to wait for it to refill over time. You use special moves by using the analog stick and tilting it in a certain pattern. Hilde's level 3 special is left, down, right, left, R2. Trying to pull off these specials is hard while also trying to hit buttons to the beat. I ended up more often than not just mashing buttons and randomly moving the stick and hitting R2 in hopes that a special would go off. Luckily EX moves are used with one button press, it being R1, but this is needed to raise the ultra bar in some fighters.
Lastly, the ultra attacks you can do once you have a full bar of ultra that you get from correctly hitting a button at the right time or with some characters. So by charging, hitting, and holding down R1 or in one case where one character is using your specials is the only way to charge your ultra. Ultras are even harder to pull off as they require a longer combination. Hilde's is up, right, down, left, up, R2. Trying to remember this is not fun and I had to constantly pause the game to look at what I was supposed to hit to pull off an ultra. You can also pull off reversals to reverse an opponent's special by reacting quickly. In the middle of the screen on the bottom beside your grid, there is a circle that will light up a certain color telling you what special they are using and you must use the next highest level special of your own to reverse it. Meaning if your opponent uses a level two special you will have to use a level three to reverse it. In all the time I played I only pulled this off once as it is hard to watch everything all at once and it was on accident when I did it.
One of the cool things the game does is as the song goes on it will keep getting harder but I had no problem beating the game on easy. There are plenty of difficulty settings to pick from so if easy is too easy turn it up to a higher difficulty. The music in the game is pretty good and I am glad. A rhythm game that has bad music wouldn't be a lot of fun. There are also a lot of tracks. I didn't count them but it did say there are over 40 tracks!
There are other modes in the game like verses that lets you play against an AI opponent or a friend sitting next to you. There is of course online play too but I was really bad at it. There are also training modes and lastly, there is a track editor. This lets you take any one of the eight stages and pick any one of the music tracks in the game and change how you play the song with your inputting when to have to press the buttons on the grid. It's pretty cool and didn't seem very hard to do either so if you are into editing and making your own levels this is for you.
Summary
Overall God of Rock is a decent game with an interesting mix of genres but I'm not so sure if fighting was the right pick. The game is fun in short bursts but once you beat every character's story and if you are not into online modes then there is no real reason to go back to this game. So even though I do enjoy it for a little fun, it just didn't last for me.
Score: 7 / 10
