LogFAQs > #934758673

#4 - Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party!!!!
Matrix Software / Taito
Nintendo Switch
Released November 7, 2019

Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party is the newest title in the Groove Coaster rhythm game series. Mostly a mobile and arcade series, it had its first release on PC last year, and consoles this year with this release on the Switch. This is the first game in the series I have played though, not knowing about it completely until the current VGM crew has been hyping up some of its tracks for a while now.

Groove Coaster's rhythm gameplay is pretty simple. Your avatar goes through a path on the screen, and notes that correspond to the music appear on the route. The trick is that the path can be unpredictable and sometimes can take random jumps and zigzags, similar to a roller coaster. There are additional notes that require different inputs as you proceed into higher difficulties. I have one complaint about this, and it's the addition of Groove Coaster's Ad-Lib notes, which are extra notes on the track that are invisible, but count towards the song's % score. Most of these notes correspond to the song's beat and can be easy enough to spot, but I feel like they are not a very fun addition to search for if one is hidden where you wouldn't expect a note to be. There is an item that reveals all the ad-lib notes making them just like regular ones, so it's not much of a problem in the end.

The setlist for Groove Coaster is excellent - though pretty similar in what Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! brought to the table last year (including a whole bunch of anime openings, a few Japanese pop songs, many really good Vocaloid tracks, and even a whole section for Touhou tracks), though playing them in another form is definitely a treat. You get obviously game music from Taito series instead of Namco series, obviously - and while most of them are tracks from various Darius games and the random DLC of ten Undertale tracks, there's a Bubble Bobble medley and a remix of Battle #2 from Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, which is always welcome. Now someone get me Daddy Mulk from the PC version and that would be perfect.

Groove Coaster also includes a menu navigator fully dubbed over in English, which is very interesting to see, and has 300 missions to complete, ranging from playing a song on a different difficulty to getting 10 NO-MISS playthroughs on a certain genre of tracks. The unlockables in this mission mode include some of the songs included in the game, as well as titles, other avatars (the default is the Space Invader avatar), and some other menu navigators (which are dubbed over only using a simple robotic voice).

With only slightly over 20% of the missions complete for me, I definitely think this game will last me a great deal of time making my way through everything. But with so much to unlock, I think I'll have a blast doing so. This is my favorite rhythm game released this year and definitely one to pick up at some point if you like them at all.

Soundtrack Links:

Battle #2 ~Hige Driver Mix~ (from Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blO9ElhNP6g

LINK LINK FEVER!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKysHvSg1o0

I've noticed that the game really likes exclamation points, though I'm not sure why exactly.


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