Muse Dash Short Review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Muse Dash
Developer: PeroPero Games
Publisher: XD Network
PC, Switch, Android
Note: This review is based on code for the base PC game, which does not contain the entire song library.
Muse Dash begins with a message declaring that it wants to be a rhythm game for everyone, even those who don’t feel they have a good sense of rhythm. And on that front it largely succeeds.
Like the Taiko no Tatsujin series, Muse Dash has relatively simple note charts, with only two lanes to deal with and a two button control scheme. The difficulty is welcoming too, with relaxed note charts on easy, and hard ramping up the challenge but never feeling overwhelming. It’s only once you hit the higher level songs and Master difficulty that it becomes the tornado of notes you see in other games.
The charts themselves do well to match the rhythm, and make it satisfying to hit each note and hear the character specific song accents that play along as you do. Each unlockable character also has a cute and welcoming design to match the friendly in game aesthetic, giving the whole game an upbeat aesthetic. The menu art for them is weirdly horny, however, with some designs feeling ripped right out of a porn game. Yikes.
Thankfully the game otherwise feels great, and remains charming and easy to play throughout. My one criticism is platform dependent, as I feel the base game on PC has a decent number of tracks, but makes playing them a chore due to the requirement to level up before unlocking later tracks. Progress is easy at first, but even earning a high rank on Hard difficulty on all the songs won’t earn enough XP to prevent you from repeating songs.
In honesty, this made me put down the game until I could pick up the DLC or Switch version, as the grind made it feel like a glorified demo. It’s a small damper on what was otherwise a cute and enjoyable addition to my rhythm library.