I've been waiting for UNBEATABLE to come out for a year now. The reveal trailer absolutely blew me away, and I waited for early access to end so I could play the entire thing in one go.
Let's talk about it.
Let's start by the negative.
There is a distinct lack of QoL and polish on some parts of the game.
No chapter select is a big one, I really wanted to replay the best parts, and I can't unless I delete my save and spend hours redoing the story. Only one save slot in 2025, what are we doing.
(EDIT : This was fixed in an update a few weeks after the game's release, but it did impact my playthrough quite a bit.)
The game blends 2D characters and 3D environments with... some success, but there is an inherent jankiness that results from this blend almost immediately.
Camera weirdness, getting stuck on geometry, it's not unplayable, but it's... messy. The game in general is a little buggy.
Same with transitions between gameplay sections, some feel almost unfinished, jumping from one gameplay to another with a weird flash in-between, or not giving you any time to react to prompts...
No option to restart a gameplay section, you're forced to quit out if you want a 2nd try.
(EDIT : Again, some of this was fixed since.)
And finally, the big one that people are mad about : the "rythm" part of this rythm game doesn't feel very precise at all. There's a gigantic window to hit your inputs, even on hard mode.
I understand why they did this, but be warned, if you buy this to play a rythm game, you might be disappointed.
With the bad out of the way, let me talk about UNBEATABLE.
I LOVED playing this game. I adore what they tried to do, even if it's not executed perfectly. It really really frustrates me to not be able to replay parts of it indepedently, because I had such a blast playing them!
UNBEATABLE puts EVERYTHING it has on style points : it is flashy, it is loud, it throws stuff at you from left and right, it bares its pure unfiltered soul at you, and sometimes it falls flat but I can't help but love it anyway for the way it desperately tries to be the coolest thing ever.
The big thing for me is the animation. A huge amount of effort went into making the amazing character sprites, and all of the little cutscenes throughout the game. The game looks incredible from start to finish, both in 2D and 3D.This focus on style and flashiness does means that it sometimes becomes very confusing to follow the prompts you're supposed to execute. I got lost in the screen multiple times during my playthrough, failing songs because I couldn't see what I was supposed to hit in time.
The dialogue is very "tumblr", in that perticular way of speaking that people that grew up on forums in the 2000s will resonate with but might be grating to others. The story is confusing, and told in a confusing way, but I loved the characters and their struggles, they all felt very endearing.
I will point out that a large part of the plot might not have happened if characters just, you know, TALKED TO EACH OTHER but it's free drama so w/e.
Also big shoutout to the INCREDIBLE voice acting, genuinely a highlight of the game. And of course, really good music all around.
UNBEATABLE was a fantastic experience from start to finish, I adore the way they went all-in on style, even if it's very obvious what took a big hit to compensate, and I heartily recommand you give it a try.
