2018-09-09

So, for Rayark's 7th anniversary, some of the additional stories to Cytus II were on sale, so I had to nab them. ConneR was a part of them. I had to.

Anyway, I hadn't played Cytus II in quite a while. And I have no idea why!! The game is so phenomenal. I played the hell out of the first Cytus and then when Cytus II came out, I played it for like... a couple days non-stop and then kinda moved on to other stuff and never came back. And now coming back, I wish I hadn't stopped hahaha.

So let's talk about the awesomeness that is Cytus II and the DLC I just got. Actually, I don't know too much about the DLC yet because after leveling up ConneR a few times, I realized I wanted to go back and finish the base story before playing the DLC stories, because I don't want to learn something about A.R.C. or cyTus or something that would be more fun to learn through the main story.

So, Cytus is a rhythm game series (I guess you can call it that, since there's two now XD) with a sci-fi/cyberpunk story. The first game basically just had chapters and you could play through in any order, and each chapter had a "story" stage where the stuff that happened in the background told a story while you played the music stage. Becuse you were concentrating on the music stage, it was hard to really watch the story, and there was very little text so you were basically trying to figure out the story by watching a slideshow of (really awesome) artwork, and to be honest, even after clearing all the chapters many times and trying hard to understand the stories, I still don't really understand the story of Cytus.

Cytus II, however, is a lot easier to understand. Kind of. The games are originally in Chinese and the translation is not amazing, as Rayark is a pretty small company still. But there's a lot more narrative, so even though I still don't understand everything, there's a lot that I'm following. Some of it is not meant to be understood, as part of the story is learning about the world in which the story takes place, so you'll hear about concepts that you're not supposed to fully understand at first. So I don't know how much of it is me not getting it and how much of it is me just not being far enough into the story yet.

BUT let's talk about how cool the story and atmosphere is, along with how the story unfolds. The game takes place in a future where people... live inside the internet or something? It's kind of hard to explain, because everyone seems to have a corporeal life and connect to the internet separately to do things like talk on BBS and stuff, but at the same time, they seem to live inside some kind of computer world called cyTus where things are divided into "Nodes" and real life has simulated elements...? Definitely there's more to this that we're supposed to understand as the story goes, so that's part of why it's so hard to explain, but I think the best analogy would be that it seems to be something like the Digital World from the Digimon series, but with a darker setting. And not a bunch of cute creatures that evolve into furry sex fantasies running around.

At first it just seems like a cool virtual world that would be any tech nerd's paradise. But as you go on, you start to learn about the inner workings of the world and its government, which seems to have recently had a major shift in power, and it seems to be very questionable. I don't want to give too much away, but you'll easily get captivated by the world and find yourself eager to find out more. Even though it's a rhythm game at its core and you can even completely ignore the story if you want, you'll find yourself dire to get as much EXP as possible to move the story along instead of just playing music stages for the music aspect.

The main story unfolds through reading various message board posts. There are three main characters' stories you can play, and each one functions like a 'song pack,' with their own set of music to play. You choose a character and play music stages in their pack, and based on your score and whether or not you've cleared that song before, you'll get some experience points for that character at the end of the stage toward leveling up that character. While it's called "leveling up," it's more just a story progression bar.

When you get a level up, you'll see some new messages appear on the BBS, when you can read to figure out how the story is going. Not only do you see messages from the characters you're leveling up, but you'll see other characters' messages, and even just randos' topics and stuff, too. Each topic has a bunch of comments on it (there's even like spam comments and stuff haha) and through these posts, you learn about the events happening in the world of the game. You'll see the events unfold more through the perspective of each character and their fans and friends (the main characters are all musicians/performers) as you level up each character.

Eventually you hit a "level lock" where you have to have the other two characters leveled up to a similar level before you that character will start gaining EXP again. The main point of this is just so the story will make sense, so you won't start seeing BBS threads vaguely referencing stuff that you don't even know happened yet, or get other characters' major events spoiled early, stuff like that.

The characters themselves have so much unique personality, and you even learn about their fanbase, which has their own cultures, too.

First, we have PAFF, who seems at first to be your standard "pop princess" type, but as you go on, you find that maybe that image was created for her and she's not really that type of person. She's my favorite character, and probably the real "main" character of the overall narrative. Her songs are mostly vocal songs with powerful, emotional vocals.

It's hard to comment on PAFF's personality because she's very reserved, and her staff seems to post on her behalf online more than she herself. She has a loyal following of fans who call themselves "Puffs," and she seems to be one of the most popular music performers in cyTus. Threads related to her story tend to be pretty calm and similar to something you'd see on a friendly Facebook forum.

Then we have NEKO#ΦωΦ (I hope that displays properly; it's not displaying properly in vim for me but the encoding should stay in-tact I hope XD) who is like... an obnoxious gamer? I don't know XD Even though she's a public figure, she openly bashes PAFF and others and loves to stir up drama. She has a lot of easily-excitable and crude fans, as well as a lot of normal fans, too. Her threads tend to be full of much more heated comments; think something like the 'bad' parts of YouTube.

For our other main character, we have ROBO_Head, an online administrator who talks like a computer. I'm still not really sure if he is a person or a legit robot. I think he's a person who pretends to be a computer? Of course, his fans are the geekier type as well as some fans who just think he's a cool robot like Daft Punk or whatever hahaha. The threads tend to be a lot more mature with a few casual comments thrown in.

We also have other characters (who have their own stories you can buy as DLC; the core game is only $2 for a TON of content, and then additional stories are $10 each (or $5 when there's a sale), a pricing system I really like; you can pay a small amount to get a full game, and then if you like it enough to want to see a lot more, then you can pay the big $s) who interact along with all of this too: Xenon, a more adult-acting character who doesn't like to get into all the drama and posts short and truthful comments; ConneR, a historian with a fascination for 'classical' instruments like guitars; and Cherry and Joe, who I don't really know anything about. Xenon and NEKO seem to be friends, though Xenon likes to keep NEKO and her fans in check. ConneR doesn't interact with the others, but is sometimes referenced by them. He seems to be more connected to the overall world/setting than the other characters, seeming to know more about everything going on than anyone else. He also seems to have more insight into what life was like before all the major changes that seemed to have happened before the story starts, as he's a bit older than the other characters.

So in all, you can pay $2 to get the full main story and a complete game, and if you like it enough to want twice that with additional stories, you can pay $20-40 for the full HUGE experience. I like that a lot better than paying $40 for a game only to find out you don't like it and don't want to spend $2 on the DLC. There's also song packs you can buy for $5 each so if you're wanting to keep throwing money at the game, you can, and that's probably where they make a lot of the money. It's easy to get hooked into the game and want more, and with such a low entry price, it's not intimidating to drop a few bucks to try it. The original Cytus used a similar system, but the original game was completely free with a $2 fee to remove advertisements from the full game, and then there was a bunch of additional paid DLC for a lot more.

SO, that's how the story works. So what about these additional characters? Xenon and ConneR were on sale for the Rayark 7th anniversary and I had to pick them up. Xenon is a very fascinating character from his interactions with the other characters, and ConneR is a disgruntled old man who seems to know a lot of secrets. And he has a bit of a mustache.

I only played a little bit of ConneR's story, but instead of BBS (since he's not much into that), we get insight into some government files about him as we level him up! After reading a couple, I knew we'd probably find out WAY more about the world than I wanted to know before completing the other stories, so I went back and started working on those again. It seems really exciting, though, and I can't wait to get back to working on his story.

So what about the actual gameplay? I mean, I have talked this whole time about the story, and this is a rhythm game. The gameplay should be the core, right? Not story?

Well, don't worry. Rayark is a company passionate about rhythm games. The staff are not only musicians but rhythm game fans themselves. You get a variety of awesome music and the tap charts are phenomenal. Aside from another Rayark game I love called VOEZ, the Cytus games are the most musically-satisfying rhythm games I've ever played. (VOEZ is so amazing though I can't even begin to tell you how fantastic those charts are!) The timing is spot-on, the scoring system encourages you to keep trying harder and harder, the challenge ranges from beginner-friendly to fucking insanity, and there are tons and tons of songs each with three difficulty levels to play.

It's basically just a "tap on the buttons in time" type of game, with taps appearing all over the screen similar to something like Ouendan, but the placement on the screen determines their timing, with a timing bar bouncing back and forth. There are regular taps, held notes, notes you follow with swiping, and little flick notes. The tap chart designers really know what they are doing, and write charts that fit with the music perfectly, and they don't just follow the melody (like you'll find, sadly, in way too many rhythm games). You'll play along with the percussion, the counter-melodies, the wub wubs, unique taps that create their own percussive rhythms... if you like the composition of music and the variety that goes into the different voices that make up a music track, you will be very delighted by the attention to detail to all of these things.

I can't recommend Cytus enough. If you just want to try one of the two games, go with Cytus II if you're willing to shell the $2 solely for the awesome story and atmosphere, but if you're just wanting to see what the rhythm gameplay is like, go ahead and try the free version of Cytus. Another game I must recommend is VOEZ, which is completely free with some IAPs available. You can unlock stuff by playing through the story (which is super challenging) or pay little bits of money here and there to unlock stuff without having to complete the story. The game cycles a lot of paid content into the 'free for now' sections so each week you have access to new paid content without having to pay anyway.

But yeah, playing Cytus II again now with ConneR and Xenon unlocked got me super hyped about this game again, and I had to write this entry. It's especially nice because I've been dying for a game I can play without having to sit at a desk for when I can't or don't want to sit up in my computer chair lol. But yeah, if you're a fan of rhythm games at all, go check out Cytus and VOEZ. There's also Deemo, which is a bit older and not as solid as the newer games, and based solely around piano tracks. It's amazing, too, but I'm spoiled by the newer games.

#cytus 2 #cytus #voez #deemo #rayark #reviews