Of the rhythm games I bought for my Quest 2, I'd consider OhShape the weakest and while I made myself give it a fair shake before writing this review, I expect I won't be likely to play it much going forward in place of Beat Saber, Smash Drums, Synth Riders, or Pistol Whip. Since a lot of rhythm games I find I like them more as I get better at them and play on higher difficulties, I pushed myself to improve at the game so I could at least get to the point of playing on the highest difficulty before coming to a verdict. I played about half the tracks on Normal, then played every song on Hard, then played through about 40% of the tracks on Expert with no-fail on, sticking to the tracks I liked more (or perhaps it's more accurate to say I avoided the tracks I didn't enjoy at all). By the time I was on Expert, I could hit most beats, but I didn't want to repeat a bunch of levels from failure so no-fail helped prevent a slip-ups from aggravating me with a game I wasn't crazy about anyway. I didn't buy any of the DLCs so this is based on the songs that come with the game in Albums 1-3 and the Electroparty album. As a quick aside, I don't really take screenshots on my Quest so these screenshots are from Google for illustration and they're not my own.

The basic premise of OhShape is that you have a song playing that you have to move in certain ways to match poses in a silhouette that is moving on-rails toward you. Unlike something like Beat Saber that may require you to "dance" to hit the boxes, you are more pointedly forced to actually strike poses periodically, a fairly intuitive way of achieving a dance-like experience somewhat similar to previous console titles like Just Dance but in a VR setting. On Normal and Hard, there's honestly not that much dancing, it's more like periodically striking poses as the walls are less common so you're not actually moving all the fluidly. I found Normal mode quite boring, though it is necessary to get used to the poses to improve so I had to put up with it for a while. Hard was a little better, but half or so of the maps were still kind of boring. Expert is where the game feels more like it hits its stride. It was quite challenging and a decent workout, but also it feels a bit more like dancing as the game is more comfortable sending a series of walls at you that forms into more fluid movements, even if this can get hard to read despite your being at a higher level.

One of the main issues I have with OhShape is one I've had with several other smaller rhythm games: I don't like the music. However, this game I feel like this game has this problem to an even more extreme degree. I'd consider most of the music to be meh, but several tracks like actively annoy me rather than just bore me. I did find a few songs that I liked okay, but that was to a relative degree; there were almost no songs in the game I'd like to listen to outside of the game. The songs vary from kpop, electro, dance (shocking I know), and trap (which I generally don't like at all). While these admittedly aren't genres I listen to a ton of, I can confidently say I've never heard of any of the artists in the game and only one song have I even heard before.

The other problem is that I just didn't find the game very fun. As I said, Normal and Hard were fairly dull, especially the former. Expert is definitely an improvement once you work your way up to it, but honestly I didn't find I was really enjoying the game as much other than a sense of accomplishment. I think maybe if I got even better to the point I was nailing the songs on Expert, it might be a bit more fun adding my own flair to the moves, but I don't really feel inclined to get to that point as even that would probably still feel like an average game at best. On that note, you can adjust the "accuracy" requirement for how perfectly you have to match the poses in the game. You can't adjust it a ton, just +/- 10 or 20%. One issue I had at the standard setting was I felt like any time I tried to add a bit of shake to my movements to feel more like actual dancing, I'd be slightly off the pose and get docked. Reducing the accuracy requirement by 20% mostly alleviated this and I felt like I was able to have a lot more fun with the poses and I highly recommend trying that if you're playing this game.

In conclusion, I'm glad I gave the game more of a chance as on Normal, it was a 1 star snooze-fest, but certainly had more potential than that. Unfortunately, I still don't find the game all that appealing. Perhaps if you happened to be really into the kind of music featured in the game, especially if you actually know some of these particular artists/songs, you might get better mileage out of it. But the fact I felt a wave of relief when I finally finished with the goal I set to "give the game a chance" is a pretty good indicator that I'm not really a fan myself and wouldn't recommend this game to most people.