The musical component of NecroDancer gives it a feel like nothing else, and it’s as fun as it is challenging. If you manage to keep moving in time without skipping a beat, you’ll be able to raise and hang on to a significant multiplier - complete with disco-light effects on the dungeon floor! - which grants you more rewards from enemies and a better chance at survival. Your actions only count if they hit on the beat, so every step, every attack, and every essential recovery item needs to be dialled in with rhythmic precision. The difference is that here, rather than waiting patiently for you to make a move, the turn changes automatically with every full beat of the music, in time with the pulsing 4/4 tempo. As is common in the genre, every action - including movement, attacking, and using items - all takes place within a universal turn cycle. This rhythm-game spirit manifests itself especially in COTN’s turn-based system. Except, of course, for COTN’s titular twist on the formula: the infectious rhythm of the dance beat that runs through it’s heart and soul. In all these elements, COTN summons up the spirit of any old-school dungeon-crawler, and if you’ve played any recent incarnation of the Mystery Dungeon games - Pokémon Mystery Dungeon or Etrian Mystery Dungeon, for instance - you’ll have a good idea of the basics at play here. There are enemies to fight and avoid, mini-bosses to defeat to unlock the next set of stairs, shops to sell you life-saving upgrades and equipment, and plenty of traps and secrets to discover as you go. Like most roguelikes, you’ll start at the ground level and head downward through discrete, randomly-generated floors on a quest to beat the boss at the bottom of each area. Of its two main components - dancing and dungeon crawling - COTN’s main gameplay focus lies in the latter. Now that it’s out on Nintendo Switch - complete with all previous DLC and an exclusive new character - it’s ready to bring that same rhythmic pulse to Nintendo’s newest console, and it’s a very welcome addition it's addictive, inventive, and irresistibly fun. When it first released on PC in 2015, Brace Yourself Game’s Crypt Of The NecroDancer was an unexpected delight: a personable dungeon crawler on a rhythm game base, it combined the procedurally-generated levels and relentless challenge of the roguelike genre with the beating heart of a dance game.
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