Crypt of the NecroDancer Review

Crypt of the NecroDancer is an indie rhythm RPG, which was developed by Brace Yourself games. The premise is you play as Cadence, a woman who fell down a hole and hit her head hard enough that she should have died. But she did not, instead she has awoken to her heart beating like a drum, although her blood runs cold. She is trapped in a dungeon and enemies have her surrounded. The only way to escape? She must move to the beat of her heart.

I am just going to start this review off by saying I love this game. I love it! It is fun, it has a cool story, the music is awesome and it is challenging, but not to the point I want to throw my controller out the window. Like I said before, you have to move Cadence to the music, so both her walking and attacks must match the rhythm. If you consider yourself not musical enough to keep a beat, the game tries to help you by including a heart at the bottom of the screen with bars going in to it, so you have a visual representation of the beat you need to keep.

Whenever you walk in to a new room of the dungeon, you can come across a variety of enemies that all move in different ways. Some may just jump up and down, some may move in a square and some may just come after you, to name a few. You have to face your foes with the weapons you pick up and you essentially just attack them by bumping in to them on your travels. When there is a variety of enemies, you have to do a bit more planning than just strolling around the room if you want to keep your multiplier up and that is where the challenge begins. There were countless amount of times I did not plan accordingly and had to stop on the spot, losing the multiplier. But this game does not make you hate yourself for it, you have just got to start moving again and you already feel like you have made up for lost points.

The graphics are pretty old school, but with an updated feel. Think ‘The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons’ style, but made for next-gen. It is polished, and everything looks great, but it is still, inherently, old school. But it suits this game well, so I do not have any word to say against the graphics. The soundtrack is great, it is funky, it is techno, it is definitely one worth listening to as you play along. The soundtrack was orchestrated by Danny Baranowsky and he absolutely did the job well.

With a variety of options to make the game more interesting, including the opportunity to change your character to pose new challenges; a daily challenge and the option to use different weapons and armour, this game really has that replayable factor we look for nowadays. There are some games that earn their place in your library and this one is one of them. Crypt of the NecroDancer (which, with such an incredible name, deserves to be in your library anyway) has won many awards since its release date last year, with good reason. If you add this game to your console, you will not regret it one bit.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.