Sequence

I heard about Sequence a year or so ago. The Kickstarter page professed to combine an RPG with a rhythm game, and looked interesting, but the goal was so far away I pretty much forgot about it. So, imagine my surprise when I was browsing the Xbox Live Indie games and saw an RPG/rhythm hybrid. 'Hey!' I thought, 'Wasn't there one I saw ages ago that wanted to do that?' And lo and behold, it was the same one. So I used half of the last of the points I had to get it (the other went on Cthulhu Saves the World, but that's a post for another day).

First impressions are really good. The jist of the game is thus: You are in a tower, you have to get to the top. To get to the top, you have to synthesize keys and beat the guardian of the floor. To synthesize keys, you have to get them from enemies. The fights are the rhythm part. There are three fields, damage, spell and mana. The damage field is the attacks from the enemies, to void the damage you must press the buttons at the right time. To damage the enemies, you use spells. There is a spell selector, and once you have triggered a spell you have to hit the buttons correctly to use it. And mana is used to cast those spells - that field has buttons to press all the time to refill the gauge.

Outside of battle, your character converses with his guide, an unseen and sarcastic woman. The script is well written and often chuckle-worthy. You can also equip weapons, synth items and learn spells, and there's something moreish about replaying the enemies until you have enough items to synth all the recipes you gained on this level.

I am really enjoying it so far. Hopefully it'll keep giving me new songs to play to so I don't get bored.