Unbeatable Review – An Ambitious, Flawed Indie Rhythm Game

Unbeatable Review

Unbeatable is a story-driven rhythm game with colorful visuals inspired by Jet Grind Radio. Its gameplay is a unique blend of adventure game and rhythm game, in a balance the video game world has never seen before. Its music and visuals are sure to draw in curious players, so read-on to find out if the gameplay matches the aesthetics, and if this unique indie title is gonna be for you.

Right off the bat, Unbeatable lets players choose between Story Mode and Arcade Mode. Arcade Mode is laid out the same way classic rhythm games like Guitar Hero are. There’s a list of songs, each with difficulty options, grades, scores, and leaderboards. Each song has an individual difficulty, which changes depending on which of the six difficulty levels the player selects.

Rhythm Game Combat

Each song is disguised as combat, even though the gameplay is clearly rhythm game. Objects move towards the player character, Beat. L1 kicks low, and R1 jump punches high. Sometimes obstacles have to be hit, and other times they have to be dodged. Some targets have to be hit at the same time, sustained, and/ or rapid hit. There are targets that can be knocked from one track onto the other. There are some visual changes, like sequences where cops attack Beat, but the controls remain the same, even if the visuals change.

I loved the core rhythm gameplay. It was simple to grasp, but very challenging to master. But I found the tutorial sections frustrating, because it was too easy to click through the instructions. I decided to play Story Mode before trying Arcade Mode, which was a huge mistake I’m sure many players will make. I will elaborate more on this later, but playing the Arcade Mode tutorial before it comes up in Story Mode would have done a lot to ease my frustration.

Frustrating Camera

Another major frustration for me was the camera during rhythm sections. Sometimes the camera shifts from objects moving towards Beat on the right, to objects moving towards Beat on the left. Sometimes the camera zooms out, and objects move towards beat from both sides, with less time to react on either side. While this looks visually striking, it was annoying and unfair a lot of the time. The camera can shift and immediately blast an object at Beat without enough time for the player to react. This makes it so players will just have to memorize levels to catch these moments, which is the shame, because they could easily be finessed out of the game entirely.

Story Mode is about 10 hours long, and is mostly a walking adventure game. it’s 95% just walking around chatting with folks. There’s a shockingly small amount of rhythm gameplay. Each chapter has an action-heavy set piece that mixes Arcade Mode gameplay with flashy QuickTime events. But it took me at least 30 minutes to get to the first one of these. There was even a shift in characters before there was a tutorial. I love that there’s an extensive Story Mode, but Unbeatable really needs to figure out its pacing. I highly recommend starting with a bit of Arcade Mode before ever touching Story Mode. This was an awkward way to begin my Unbeatable experience.

Awful Dialogue

The story is about a girl named Beat, who lives in a dystopia where music has been outlawed. It’s policed by an organization called HARM. Beat and her friends form a band to rebel against the status quo. There are some genuinely heart-warming moments in the story. But it’s heavily brought down by its awful dialogue, which comes across as sarcastic and mean-spirited.

In performance there’s a concept called “Yes and”. What that means is when someone says something to you in a performance, you positively carry forward what they say, despite any inner voices telling you to contradict it. The dialogue in Unbeatable is the opposite of that. Everything everyone says is met with a sarcastic contradictory response. It made it so none of the dialogue flowed for me, and I disliked every character. The dialogue and humor might work for some, but it was a huge turnoff for me.

Bumpin’ Tunes

Thankfully the music is excellent. The base version of Unbeatable has over 70 songs to unlock. Beat’s band (Unbeatable) is female-fronted pop rock in the same vein as Metric or Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But there are lots of different genres. Even the score is often interesting, with strong synth melodies, and jazz sections. The voice acting was hit and miss. A lot of it was very good, but every now and then a character would pop in with “friend of the devs” energy.

Unbeatable’s visual presentation is phenomenal. It’s obviously an indie title, but a lot of the game’s lower budget is hidden behind layers of style. Story sections have 3D environments to explore with 2D sprites that change size as they move from the foreground into the background. The character sprites have a hand drawn North American anime/ Scott Pilgrim-like indie aesthetic. The menus and UI have a colorful Persona-like style, with bold lines.

Animated Cutscenes

Unbeatable has lots of animated cutscenes that often blend seamlessly with gameplay. The animation has a low framerate, which normally wouldn’t be a problem, but it often doesn’t match up with the music. This took me out of a few important moments. These cutscenes are well-directed, but a lot of them lack connective tissue. There are lots of cool set pieces, but it’s hard to tell what’s happening sometimes because the moments in between the action aren’t animated.

Unbeatable is an ambitious rhythm game that has a few major flaws. The main one is the camera during rhythm gameplay sometimes ruins what is otherwise a flawless system. The second problem is that the story mode struggles with pacing and features very little rhythm gameplay. And the third major problem is that a lot of the dialogue is going to be a major turn-off for many. Playing Arcade Mode a bit before starting Story Mode will fix some of these issues. And I love that Unbeatable has an extensive Story Mode. But I can’t recommend the game to everyone as it is. Still, Unbeatable’s probably a must-play for most rhythm game fans. I’m really rooting for it.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher***