Voez, the first handheld only game, making use only of the touch screen.
Let me start off with a disclaimer, I suck at rhythm games where you need to use a controller, like really suck and then I got my hands on this game…
Voez is the first handheld only game, making use only of the touch screen. When I heard they were making a handheld only game, I thought to myself: “yeah, pretty much to be expected… No way this wouldn’t happen, let us see what it is about.”
So I went onto YouTube, saw an amazing intro clip, anime-style, totally grabbed me off guard and now, here I am, with the game installed and having played several hours already.
As the game goes, it is a rhythm game, where you need to either tap, swipe, hold or slide. You get this gorgeous layout with lines of notes, you do what the note on the line does, and that is it! Thanks for reading my review, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Just kidding, the game has much more than just that little tidbit of information. So let us start with the review itself!
Let us start off with the bad things…
There is no real story to the game, sure, you have the diary where you get a storyline presented to you, every time you hit a certain threshold, you get 1 more page in a diary, which represents the main story. I must say this part about the game disappointed me a little, after watching the promo on YouTube, you just expect more than this and despite them being really gorgeous drawn entries, I just wanted more…
This story line does have requirements to free up the next entry, but I found that to be something I mostly disregarded…
One more thing I would like to remark, in between good and bad, unlike the mobile version, all the tracks are immediately unlocked. Even though I did not play it on mobile, I am unsure if this is a pro or a con?
Now, the good stuff, which is a lot more than I originally expected, being bad at rhythm games, I was expecting a very hard time, but on the contrary, the game has 3 basic difficulty settings and even for me, the easy-setting was one that even I could handle easily, no pun intended. When you start tinkering with the speed of the notes, then it becomes a completely different thing, having the need to build up the speed gradually and not like me, testing the max speed and not even noticing the first note had dropped already! This part does offer great extra depth to the game!
The tutorial was about half a minute and explained things pretty clearly, I never had the feeling that more needed to be included.
The graphics in this game were amazing, the designers really went all out, beautiful colors and intuitive even for beginners. Gameplay and graphics mixed perfectly and let me tell you one thing, the second one of the lines suddenly change places, you know you are hitting a new part in your experience.
And now, the most important part, the music itself.
If I could rate the music alone, it would be unfair to just give it a 10 out of 10. It actually deserves more than that. I must admit, I am crazy when it comes down to Asian electronic music, I own quite the extensive music collection from Japan and this soundtrack does not disappoint at all!
You can get the gist of it when watching the promo up on YouTube, there is just a certain kind of attraction when it starts, that song also happened to be the (suggested) starting song in the game.
I have played around 20 tracks now, often replaying them just to try and get better scores.
I also remarked I started a track without playing, just chilling to the music, a feat I would never have guessed possible.
As a side note, my wife, who is totally not into any type of gaming really, she got mad at me over this game. At one point, I was totally immersed in it and she had some questions about our upcoming travel. I excused myself mid-song and said I was sorry but that I was busy. She didn’t seem to understand that I was giving priority to a game over our travel to Hong Kong, so I just decided to let her play Voez herself. After watching the tutorial, she ended up playing almost half an hour herself, giving up when she tried a harder level and didn’t manage to score a high enough combo. The entire time bopping her head to the rhythm of the music. It was at that specific time that I knew how to rate this game and that it could reach even those not into gaming.
My conclusion is that this is an enjoyable rhythm game, but with its flaws.
On mobile, you need to play (and pay) in order to get more tracks, on the Nintendo Switch, you just get all of them at once, while this is nice for some, myself included, but I can see that this might not be liked by everyone.
I wouldn’t mind having to try the latter part myself, but then again, now I can just enjoy all the amazing music this game offers from all over Asia.
My suggestion is to first try the free demo on your mobile prior to forking out 20,99 euros. It will allow you to get a perfect feeling of the game, before making the switch to this version, pun intended.
As someone who sucks at these kinds of games, I am rating it a high 4,5 out of 5.
