Country Star is a follow-up to the mobile rhythm game Beatstar, which I have never played, with—you guessed it—an all country music soundtrack. Like many games in the freemium mobile space, it’s fun to play, but bogged down with passes, events, currencies, limits, timers, and unskippable mobile game ads. Some of it I wouldn’t mind if it were all cosmetic, but here it reaches beyond that and makes the simple act of unlocking songs and different difficulty options for each into a bit of a random lootbox treadmill.

I have to give them credit here and say they did a nice job with the song selection. Some huge names are definitely missing for now, but the game has a long list of songs that are mostly pretty relevant, ranging from enduring classics to trending modern stars to smaller indie artists. While it takes time to unlock the songs, they do throw you a bone in a couple areas. You can “wishlist” a set of songs and occasionally get a “wishlist box” that guarantees one of them. Similarly, often when getting different types of currency, you can choose to prioritize putting them toward songs from a certain category like “90’s country” if you wish. Ultimately, however a lot of stuff is still coming from random lootboxes, even seemingly if you want to pay money for a song.

As you’d expect from country, not every song really suits the rhythm game format. Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night”, for example, is an undeniable inclusion from a relevance standpoint, but its midtempo singalong vibe makes for a rhythmically simple song that’s dull to actually play. Others like my personal favorite song in the game, Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine”, are slightly hamstrung by how the note charts only track the vocal melody as opposed to more interesting rhythmic elements happening in the background. However, once you play a bit and get all the types of notes, just about every song is decent fun to play. The game is definitely mechanically solid, readable, and responsive.

While this is a game I enjoy playing, it’s hard not to wish that it came in a different package. I don’t even have all the songs unlocked on Normal, where I perfectly full-combo every song on the first try—how much do I want to sit and play through those until I can unlock harder versions? (Not much.) I have not hit this yet, but apparently you also have to spend limited “gems” to retry failed songs. They are doing every single trick in the freemium mobile playbook here and just targeting it at a different audience that is hungry for this sort of game.

With this in mind I feel like the game somewhat squanders its potential and would only be reasonable for someone who hasn’t already spent much time with these kinds of games and doesn’t mind the grind. I did my time on this sort of thing years ago…