Sequence: The Unholy ($5) Offspring of DDR and TWEWY

[Kerensky287]

So, if you're a fan of rhythm games, let me start off by saying you should probably just go buy Sequence right now. The game is, at its core, a complex rhythm game with RPG elements, and the music tends to be pretty fantastic. I don't know what other criteria people tend to need for a rhythm game. It's just 5 bucks on Steam. Go buy it.

If you need more explanation than that:

Basically, the game revolves around a rhythm-ish battle system. You have 3 different "fields" running simultaneously, with arrows flowing down to the bottom for you to catch with the keyboard or controller, DDR-style. Most of the gameplay is focused on learning to switch between them in a timely manner.

The first is the defense field. If you miss an arrow here, you lose health. Simple. If you stay here forever, in theory, you'll never die. But if the song ends without you defeating your opponent, you lose. How do you beat the time limit?

By attacking, obviously, using the second field, the spell field. You cast spells using the number keys, and there are a wide variety of effects from straight-up damage to DoTs to healing to defensive buffs, and more. When you cast a spell, it triggers arrows to flow down the otherwise-empty spell field. If you miss an arrow in the spell sequence, the spell fails and you have to try again. This splits your attention between keeping yourself alive and actually hitting your enemy.

How do you get mana back? By going into the third field, the mana field. Pretty straightforward: it's chock full of arrows, and you don't suffer any penalty for missing them (meaning you can ignore it if you don't need it) but each arrow you catch increases your mana by 1.

Each battle ends up being a mad scramble, trying to skip back to the defense field between (or during) spells to kill off the more damaging attacks, before you head to the spell field to make sure your own attack goes through. There are also different modifiers - Guardian effects - that come into play each level intermittently, making things more difficult by making arrows fade out of sight or locking you into a given field for a few seconds.

The game itself is also fully voice-acted, and while the story certainly doesn't seem to be the main focus, the characters do seem to have a bit of life to them already. I can't imagine it's all that long, but again, 5 bucks. You could do far worse.