Rift of the NecroDancer review: GuitaRPG Hero

Brace Yourself Games’ Crypt of the NecroDancer was a fascinating game tailor-made for sickos. What if a Mystery Dungeon-like dungeon-crawling RPG was also a music rhythm game? That’s a question few have asked with a heck of an answer. Rift of the NecroDancer is a follow-up, but rather than just do a simple sequel, that fresh energy was channeled into a new angle. What if a music rhythm game like Guitar Hero was inundated with RPG-like combat hooks? It’s a wackier idea with some inherent limitations. But at the end of the day, Rift of the NecroDancer is tremendously novel, an absolute blast to play, and I can’t get enough of it.

Vibing in another world

Cadence, the hero of Crypt, finds herself drawn into… well, a mysterious rift spitting her out into another world. Gone are the fantasy RPG trappings, replaced with modern day style. Cadence’s adventurey clothes turn into a hoodie and jeans, and her weapon transforms into a guitar. Now in a strange world full of art galleries and yoga studios, Cadence has to use her musical abilities to fight hordes of monsters coming through the rifts and figure out what the heck is going on otherwise.

Rift of the NecroDancer is absolutely just Guitar Hero with a twist. And sometimes that’s all you need. The twist here is that instead of simply following a note chart and hitting buttons to the tune of a song, the charts are full of slimes, skeletons, bats, zombies, and other creepy-crawlies you’d expect to be mauling in underground caverns for experience points and money. Rather than surviving the depths of dungeons, you’re clearing songs and solving problems out in the real world, as strange demon-like villains are trying to disrupt your friends’ efforts to adapt to their new surroundings. You’d think the NecroDancer himself is behind all this, but he’s busy at the local fast food joint trying to make a living too.

Note charting or note crawling?

With all these living (or unliving) creatures playing the part of notes, that means the note charts themselves are your opposition. You don’t simply hit the notes as they fall into place; you have to track their movements, predict their positioning, and hit them with the right timing on top of everything else. These notes are doing everything they can to be a problem before they get into striking range, trying to mess you up well beyond the basic challenge of the music. It’s an exhilarating twist, making the basic act of reading the note chart a massive challenge compared to pretty much any other music game like this on the market.

Sometimes it can be annoying, other times overwhelming. Managing not just your reaction time, but your memory is not something most music game fans will be used to doing. Enemy variety is surprisingly deep, and each new creature has a new kind of ability they’ll use to make sure you don’t hit them. Color-coding adds further complications, and it’s just as easy to get jumbled up remembering what everything does as it is getting lost in complicated note segments. Luckily, alongside basic difficulty options, songs have healing items strewn throughout the note charts to make sure a few mistakes aren’t a guaranteed game over. Although you’ll still probably hit a few game overs anyway. It’s a tough game! But it never feels unfairly so, and I found myself happily restarting songs to re-challenge the sections that tripped me up.

Trading RPG elements for... Rhythm Heaven?

While Crypt was a roguelike with progression systems, stats, items, and other gimmicks, Rift is a more straightforward music game. There is a story mode, with fun characters, decent jokes, and several minigames and boss fights. But you won’t be leveling up, building the game with unlocks, or doing other RPG-like things. That said there’s still plenty of game to dig into, especially since there’s a whole custom song tool that lets you use the developer’s own note charting system to share challenges with friends. You can also download fan-made tracks through the Steam Workshop, and there are some gems in there already, let me tell you.

Speaking of minigames, there are some amazing surprises in the non-standard gameplay moments Rift has tucked up its sleeves. I’m spoiling those surprises of course, but hey, it’s still good stuff. While the bulk of Rift is inspired by Guitar Hero, Rift uses its minigames and boss fights to invoke two other games: Rhythm Heaven and Punch-Out! Finding a game paying tribute to one of Nintendo’s quirkiest series is a real treat, and the Punch-Out! stuff is just too silly not to get a kick out of, even if the gameplay itself in those sections is kind of shallow. Still, I applaud Rift for clearly having fun with itself as it goes on.

There isn’t a whole lot more to Rift of the NecroDancer, but that isn’t a problem at all. It’s a clever core concept that doesn’t wear out its welcome with additional complications or gimmicks, opting instead to deliver the best experience possible based on that core. It’s a ton of fun to play for long or short sessions, and holds the door wide open for the community to take over for further shenanigans. As a follow-up to Crypt of the NecroDancer, it’s a very different kind of experience, but one that’s delivered with the same kind of creative energy that made the first game such a hoot.

Rift of the NecroDancer is available now for the PC, and later in 2025 for the Nintendo Switch. A code for the PC version was provided by the publisher for this review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.