Imagine a world where music was outlawed, where anyone found making or listening to music is thrown in prison. That is the world of UNBEATABLE where a concert that summoned entities that were given the name The Silence led to a pretty sudden change in the law. Since that day, all musical expression, even singing in the shower or whistling while you work, is banned as it draws The Silence. Yet main character Beat is a musician who finds herself on a mission to fill the world with song once again.
UNBEATABLE has a great visual style, mixing anime stylised 2D characters in 3D locations. It is a striking visual which makes the characters standout in a pretty detailed world. Locations vary from a large house and its grounds to a few city streets that all have a distinct look, making it easy to get around. The art team have done a stellar job of meshing two distinct styles together that makes it seem natural for these 2D anime characters to be walking around normal looking 3D environments. UNBEATABLE has a colourful world, from characters to locations, and it adds to its distinctive style.
Beat is the main character that you control for much of the game, and she is joined by Quaver, Clef, and Treble on her adventure. Yes, every character is named after musical terminology. Personally, I disliked Beat’s personality, though the performance by the actors for all characters is decently done. UNBEATABLE’s story is one that has highs and lows to it, at some points it seemingly making big jumps accompanied by dialogue that wasn’t always good. I was also surprised at how long could pass between the rhythm battles with a lot of wandering and dialogue taking place between. The story mode lasts around eight hours, but it is not as fast paced as I thought it would be. UNBEATABLE’s story is probably the weakest offering in the whole package.
While the story is weak, the gameplay is where UNBEATABLE steps up. At its core, the game is a rhythm action game where things like combat and hitting balls at a batting cage are done to the beat of UNBEATABLE’s soundtrack. On normal difficulty, the combat scenarios only require a two button input which sounds simple but, as the action ramps up, so does the speed of the incoming prompts and does it test reaction skills. At no point did I find the timings off or unfair, with any failure down to my own misses or incorrect button presses.
What I also liked about the combat is that while you are pressing the buttons the characters are moving around the screen, which plays into which side the prompts are coming in from. In the story mode, outside of a few critical battles, you can lose fights and events will continue.
You can skip the story mode altogether if it is not for you, with UNBEATABLE also featuring an arcade mode. Think of this as a tracklist where you can unlock new songs to tackle with your rhythm matching skills. The combat is the same as in the story, but instead of spending a lot of time walking around between songs you just jump into the action. In arcade mode you can unlock and customise your scorecard with different titles, and challenge yourself to take on the songs at different difficulties.
The soundtrack is a big part of UNBEATABLE, and while there’s a couple of songs that became earworms, with the rest not quite having the hook to be as catchy. Of course, song preferences are personal so others may find more songs they like than I did from the soundtrack.
