Sayonara Wild Hearts (2019)

Sayonara Wild Hearts is a playable pop album and it's incredibly fun and beatyful.

This game is very short (1 hour) but very varied and recommended if you are a fan of pop music and rhythm games, it is worth it.

Sayonara Wild Hearts is the most beautiful game I've ever played and in my opinion the best rhythm game. Before you play, please note that the use of headphones is recommended and this game should best be played at night.

"Sayonara Wild Hearts" is not a traditional rhythm game, and for a game that you can finish in one sitting, there is a lot of variety.

You first skate on a longboard, then you sit on a motorbike and drive around as if you are playing a racing game. To reach that level, you literally surf on a tarot card. After a ride on a deer, the character then becomes drugged, leading you to jump on several large mushrooms. Later in the game, it turns into a shooter with a boss battle. And that's only the half of it; it gets even crazier.

Overall, for a game with a length of 1 hour, it offers constant gameplay variety and a non-verbal story about overcoming past relationships.

Everything is fantastically put together and harmonizes perfectly. This is also the reason why I constantly jump back and replay it when I am having a difficult time in my life.

Often, I forget that it is even a rhythm game.

Thank you for reading my review, and sayonara wild hearts!💙💜

Ricci

Just finished my second playthrough of Sayonara Wild Hearts and it is a total masterpiece. The only way I can describe this experience is just pure, unadulterated art.

Presentation-wise the game is perfect. The graphics while not detailed at all, are extremely stylized and have some super fluid animation behind them. There are no other words to describe the look of the game, other than Beautiful. However, I don't think the graphics are the most important part of the presentation, but rather the soundtrack.

I'm not one to care much about the soundtrack of a game, however the way the music is beautifully integrated into both the gameplay and the visuals of the game, even though this is not a rhythm game. Playing through this is an absolutely incredible experience.

Gameplay wise, i'd describe this way as a casual, hyperstylized take on runner games. You just have to move side to side dodging buildings and grabbing gems. The more gems you pick up, the higher your score is. At the beginning of the game the gameplay is kinda boring, but the more you get into the game the more mechanics they add, and even though they're all just simple twists on the base gameplay (Changing your bike for a car, driving on the ceiling, etc.), they're all more than welcome.

The game is incredibly short, with each playthrough taking about 90 minutes. Some people would probably be against this, but for a game that's basically just a music album you play through, I think it's the perfect length. Plus there's a lot of fun, hidden, cryptic achievements you can try and get if you're looking to get more out of this game.

In conclusion: I absolutely love this game. The music is incredible and complements the gameplay perfectly. The graphics are simply beautiful, and the story is cute although a bit confusing. Everything about this experience is incredible, and it's honestly something everyone should try playing at least once, and like it's just 90 minutes dude just to it. 10/10

Damn, I wish I liked this game more. Aesthetically it's on point, the OST is great pop music, and there's an entire section in the game that's just that dril tweet that goes "strongest blade in the world, howeve,r it is so fragile as to shatter when handled by any force other than the delicate touch of a lesbian ."

Sadly, as a game, this falters in a lot of ways. The game has an uninterrupted narrative with seamless transitions between areas, with an announcer telling you your score after each level during downtime. Visually, each song ends with a period of anticipation for a second, so obviously it's gonna just go into the next song immediately ri- hahahahahahahaha no you're yanked out of the game into an obnoxious level select with about ten seconds of animations your first time through. An actual, uninterrupted, seamless experience (like listening to an actual album would be) is only possible on a replay.

And replay you will, because this game's note placement is really annoying! Obstacles will obscure the highest-value items, the limited palette creates contrast issues in the busier stages, and the frequent perspective changes create pleasing visuals but disorienting controls. Dying is incredible forgiving, where you're sent back at most ten or fifteen seconds, with the only penalty being that your combo will be reset - a death sentence for a gold medal. If the continues are already this forgiving, why not just have the only penalty for getting hit be the score reset?

Note timing is incredibly uneven, with it sometimes aiding the visuals and score and other times feeling slapped-on to fill in downtime between setpieces, which is really weird to me when this game is already only an hour and fifteen minutes long.

This game's flaws stick out to me more because to me, rhythm gaming is all about the flow - Thumper has these long levels with seamless transitions between smaller sections, only giving your twitchy, aching thumbs respite after true survival. EBA is about hyperfocusing on specific segments that're broken up. Sayonara is somewhere between, forcing you to focus on individual segments that aren't that interesting to play on their own.

I really wish that this game had Album Arcade unlocked from the start or was just an animated movie. As I already said, it's an hour-and-a-quarter long, and yet it feels choppier and ruins flow more than games double and quadruple in length. I feel like I'm going against the grain of not only these reviews but my own taste, but I just really think that the gameplay drags down what could've been something really special.

Absolutely beautiful.

Back to back bangers creating a cohesive aesthetic to chomp down on every minute, with heartpounding tracks to navigate ingame as well as listen to. It's a pleasant joyride that I enjoyed for the entire hour and a half-ish it lasted.

I'm going to be the jerk here and list a couple gripes, like how disorienting a couple of the tracks around The Hermit were and some things that just didn't seem reactable at first and required replays to get higher ranks on.

But overall, I think if you were interested in the trailer at all, if that music or the art spoke to you in any way you absolutely should give Sayonara Wild Hearts a try, so you as well can find some harmony of your own. (8/10)

Sayonara Wild Hearts feels indebted to Rez in all the right ways: It works as both a game and an infectious visual album, it has a distinctive and uncompromising visual style, it gradually increases in difficulty but never becomes unapproachable, and it ends without overstaying its welcome.

I started the game on my Apple TV just to test out Apple Arcade with the SteelSeries Nimbus controller I forgot I bought forever ago, and ended up playing through to the end in one sitting. A real gem!

It's like this game was engineered specifically to my tastes. I love visual albums. I love good pop music. I love games. If you love these things too, do yourself a favor and get this game ASAP. But even if you're not a huge music nerd like me, you should really give this a go, because it's another demonstration of what games can do and why the future looks so bright for this medium.

You've probably already gathered it's an interactive pop-album. More specifically it's part rhythm game, part Bayonettas cinematic QTE sections. It's visuals are impeccable, pure fireworks. This game had it's hooks within seconds, and my excitement held all the way through to end. I don't think this happened to me before. Granted, it's a rather short game, but that's how it's able to achieve being this flawless. Plus, replaying this game is like relistening to an album, with the added bonus of trying to get a high score. And there's also something to unlock for getting a gold rank on every chapter. I don't know what it is yet, but I hope it's another chapter. There's also some kind of horoscope riddle in the menus, I have no idea what that is yet...I blasted through the whole game last night on christmas eve. My eyes got a bit watery at the end, that's how gobsmacked I was.

The creativity on display here is unmatched. Every level is so unique, and stylish in way I haven't seen before. This is the kind of game that reminds me why I love this medium so fucking much. Games forever!

on a sidenote: If you like playing games stoned, this is perfect for that! Either play it on the Switch with headphones or a TV with a nice sound system. But in both cases: Turn the volume WAY UP and the lights down!

Absolutely loved it. It's one of those games that put me in 'the zone'. That makes the real world dissapears.

It's like an concept album made interactive. You know how The Wall (Pink Floyd), Into the Never (Metallica) and Interstella 5555 (Daft Punk) were movies made about what the music can express thru cinema? Sayonara Wild Hearts it's the same, but with video games.

If you like electronic pop and the music of artists like Sia, Chvrches or Ellie Goulding. You'll like this game. This is the game that finally dared to give Carly Rae Jepsen a sword.

I really hope I can se more things like this in the future.

You can read my full review (in spanish) here.

I love this so much. This game is gorgeous and it deserves to be played on a big screen and over an awesome sound system. I love the gameplay. Aspects of it remind me of S.T.U.N. Runner, which to this day is one of my favourite arcade games. Sayona Wild Hears would be fantastic in a S.T.U.N Runner style arcade cabinet!

This was fun on mobile and plays very well via touch or a controller, but I’m excited to get a copy for Switch and play some more, aim for some more gold ranks and delve into the extras.