I love rhythm games. As a drummer from middle school to the present, I incorporated rhythm games in my game rotation in some shape or form to help me understand rhythmic patterns and concepts. My main game is Rock Band on Expert (of which I own the longest videogame marathon on Rock Band Guinness World Record – 27 hrs, 45 min, 20 sec), and yes I love to play the drums. No this is not a humble brag but rather a baseline for my understanding of rhythm games. That’s why I was excited to play Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master!
Gameplay
Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! is the latest entry in a long line of traditional Japanese-styled drumming games. It more or less challenged the drumming concept in my head pretty well, especially since it was my first Taiko-style game. Unfortunately with this entry, there was no physical drum released for the Xbox One (which is what this review was done on). This means that it is a game charted for a drum but expected to be played on a controller. For those of us who are interested in learning and perfecting the upper difficulties, it becomes very difficult to progress past the Hard difficulty to Extreme difficulty. I played through every song on Hard and was surprised by the amount of challenge it provided me.
After finishing the final song on Hard, I switched to Extreme and it was an absolute mess on my behalf. What feels natural as a rhythm on a drum/rim suddenly feels clunkier than it should be and (for me) nearly impossible to keep up with fast notes in succession on a controller. It took multiple songs to get used to the control scheme since there are multiple buttons that correspond with the drum head or the rim. (I finally found that using the A button & D-Pad Down for the drum and the B button & D-Pad left felt the most natural and less straining on the wrist.)
Lower difficulties felt true to the rhythm of each song while allowing those who are newcomers to understand the formula and controls. While I have my complaints about the controller on harder difficulties, I found on lower difficulties the slower movement needed felt perfectly natural on the controller.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, this entry lacks any story mode but thrives on the Free Play model of songs. Upon completion of a song, you are given coins that can be taken to the store that rotates through a selection of items that you can purchase. These items range from outfits for Don (your drum bodied avatar for the game), Online Mode Greetings, Instrument Sounds (more on these later), as well as bonus songs.
While I played through the songs in order of difficulty, it was clear and apparent that as I progressed I started understanding rhythms that would appear in multiple songs. I thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack which has nearly 80 songs ranging from Japanese songs, to anime themes, to songs from games, to pop music. While there are some songs that are better than others, I highly recommend playing through each song while you’re learning since the difficulty seems to be a great learning curve.
One final note on the game overall is I felt I struggled with calibrating quite a bit. No matter how many times I would do the auto-calibration, it just never felt like I found “the pocket.” I spent a great amount of time tweaking both of the options back and forth to try and get a solid area. I will say I am absolutely a calibration snob and always will be thanks to Rock Band.
Graphics
With the graphics of this game, I had no issues whatsoever. Each character design was unique and charming in its own way. The drum track is clean, with an easy-to-read area around the track to see where the song progress was, what your combo is, as well as your score. The standard Taiko formula is in play here: Red is a drum, Blue is the rim, Yellow is a drum roll. The game keeps it clean and safe, which for a rhythm game is perfectly fine.
VA/Audio/SFX
So this is where I had some issues, but they were easily resolved once I realized it was a feature. Allow me to explain: With this game, you can hear a drum and rim sound when you hit. It makes everything feel more “real” like a real drum, especially since a lot of songs don’t just use drum rhythms, but bass lines as well as vocals. The drum sound effect is fine, but on faster songs, I found turning it off completely made the game feel better to me. I would imagine if a drum controller was used, it would add to the actual movements and impacts you’re making. Unfortunately with just a controller, it becomes very distracting.
However, if you’re not going for the upper difficulties, the game does a great job of adding additional drum sounds, including drum set, electronic drum, whistle, bells, etc. They really made it so you can truly make the game however you like it. Unfortunately for me, it is without these additional effects.
Replay Value
I found myself playing through a lot of songs that I recognized trying to squeeze out every last point that I could. I have played Megalovania more times than I wish to admit. Your mileage will absolutely vary depending on your love of rhythm games and the music that is offered. Personally, I know I will keep coming back to this game over and over to get a simple rhythm fix without hauling out my plastic instruments.
Verdict
Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master is a complicated beast in my head. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, but it felt incomplete with just a controller. While I understand that that is how they designed it to be played on consoles with no drum peripheral, the main issue lies with the upper difficulties playing as if you have the freedom to have a slight bounceback from your stick. Buttons unfortunately don’t have that springiness. It is cute and it is charming. It has a soundtrack that had quite a few songs that I fell in love with over time and others where I was happy to beat it so I never had to play it again. Even with these complaints, the cuteness overload that was on every single song screen, menu, etc. never failed to put a smile on my face through each session. If you like rhythm games, be sure to give Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! a try!
