My Thoughts on Various Rhythm Games

Last updated: 20th of April, 2026

Here are my thoughts on a range of rhythm games I've played. This may be updated to include more games, information and updated perspectives of mine on the games.

Since some of these games are constantly under development, I'll make it clear as to when this page was last updated so you can know what information has changed and may of become out of date.

Below this line is a table with info on each game. You can jump to a game's section by clicking on its title. If the game's section doesn't yet exist, it will be crossed out.

Covered Games

Game	Rating (1-10)	Estimated Play Time	Skill / Rank
osu!(stable)	8	See relevant section	←
osu!(lazer)	6.5	Low	Same as stable
Muse Dash	7	Middling	Can A 10s
Etterna	9	~40 hours	27.99 MSD
Project SEKAI	6.5	At least rank 11	Can pass most Masters
Dance Dance Revolution	5.5	Low	Can pass some 12s
Pump It Up	8	Middling	Can pass some 11s
Maimai	9	Pretty high	Can AA 11+ Experts

osu!(stable)

This is probably the first rhythm game I played, and one I hold closely to my heart. I created my account in March of 2018. By then the game had already matured, but its old website (which I actually preferred tbh) was still fully usable. I've never cared too much about the PP system. I always just played it for fun and to push myself towards higher levels of play. I've only ever farmed on occasion and in short bursts. I just don't see the appeal in limiting the skillsets I can play just to see a god damn number go up.

What I like

• Deep history
• Massive library of mapsets to pick from
• Official and unofficial competitive and collaborative events are held constantly; a large and active community
• Great UI
• Can run on basically anything with remotely modern OpenGL support. I've even been able to get a recent version to run on Windows XP
• Has a solid editor for the standard and mania modes
• Their forum is still going strong despite the rise of centralized social media platforms

What I don't like

• Community outside the forums is complete cancer. There's constant drama, cheaters (many of which are pretty high profile), sloptubers, etc
• The PP and star rating systems (especially in osu!mania) are complete dogshit despite the developers constant attempts to fix it. As for mania, it's even worse. It's highly biased towards LN and quad double chordjack spam, and for some reason none of the developers have tried to fix it DESPITE BEING THE 2ND MOST POPULAR MODE.
• Most aspects of skinning which don't just involve drag and dropping an image into a folder require you to tweak the skin.ini folder. Many of these changes require constant trial and error to set correctly
• No custom rates. You have to choose between the ill-named Half Time and Double Time / Nightcore mods which change the rate to 25% and 50% respectively.
• Although I find the combo-based scoring fun, it's terrible from an objective point of view. It actively encourages players to decimate their accuracy by mashing (or abusing the hit windows by intentionally hitting early or late to avoid misses) just to keep their combo instead of just dropping a note or two

Stats you probably don't care about

As of the 17th November 2025, here are my stats for all of osu!'s modes:

osu! game mode	Play time	My (Predicted) Skill	Total PP
osu!standard	3d, 20h, 38m	Medium-high	3,144
osu!taiko	1h, 35m	Low	296
osu!catch	21m	Very low	0 :/
osu!mania	4d, 17h, 40m	High	7,355

osu!(lazer)

Posed as the "next major update" to osu!stable, but actually an entirely new osu! client built from the ground up to be easier to build features upon, and to be cross platform. It's also open source, which has its benefits.

What I like

• Audio latency is really low, low enough that it's a bit jarring to me whenever I revisit Lazer, as my muscle memory is tuned to the latency of Stable.
• Graphical skin editor makes simple in-game UI adjustments easy to use

What I don't like

• Although the rate control is nice to have, the UI for accessing it is pretty clunky (especially compared to Etterna or Quaver)
• The file structure is impossible to work with
• changes in gameplay feel wreckless especially since the game's modes never changed since they got added
• Can't be skinned nearly as much as stable despite having
• UI (especially in the editor) feels like it was made for smartphones or tablets despite the game being desktop first
• osu!mania still kinda sucks, plus the gameplay changes just make it play like a bootleg of Quaver
• Only supports Windows 10 and above, and will likely jump ship to only supporting Windows 11. This isn't particularly important, but it's still a shame. osu!(stable) supports Windows 7 officially, and even works on Windows XP if you install .NET 4.0. oldstable even works on Windows 2000 and might even work on all versions of Windows 9x as since MattKC backported .NET 2.0-3.5

Muse Dash

YOU GOTTA FLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY FROM THE LIIIIIIIIIIGHTS OF MUUUUUUSE

Basically Taiko no Tatsujin with 2 lanes and half naked anime girls

What I like

• Cool presentation
• Some of the reading-focussed charts are pretty top tier. They're only surpassed by NotITG modcharts
• Although there isn't an official way to add custom charts, there is a thriving custom chart community which has higher-quality charts than what's in the base game.

What I don't like

• The fact that you can get a higher score by intentionally getting greats is quite bizarre. The gameplay would also benefit from more judgements.
• It takes like a million years to unlock all the game's songs due to how the levelling system works.
• A ton of the game's content is stuck behind paywalls. However, THERE IS A MOD which unlocks all of the paid content.

idk what else to talk about there's not too much to this game and my playtime isn't very high either.

Etterna

TILL DEAAAAAAAAAAAAATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe I first installed this game some time during 2023.

What I like

• Inherits most of Stepmania's massive back catalog of user-made content
• Etterna ranks pretty much anything, so you'll see a wide
• Packs are really convenient
• Wife (Their scoring system) actually rewards high level play and punishes mashing accordingly. Pattern manipulation is still possible but it's more difficult and punishes you more than it does in most other rhythm games.
• MSD is more robust than most performance point systems (especially osu!mania's) and has not just a combined difficulty rating, but individual difficulty ratings for each major skillset.
• Accuracy is determined by your deviancy from when you were supposed to hit the note
• Has a lot more note types than most other VSRGs (Fakes, lifts, rolls and mines), which keeps the gameplay more engaging, and allows charters to represent the song in more accurate or interesting ways
• Incredibly customizable and extendable

What I don't like

• The UI is a little bland, but you CAN at least skin it to look nicer
• There's no way to download individual songs on the game's site. You'll have to download a whole pack containing the song if you'd like to play it.
• Etterna's site is bloated and pretty slow to use (probably because of it being made in a framework)
• Some UI elements are basically direct carry overs from Stepmania and thus aren't optimized for a mouse and keyboard
• No built-in simfile editor. This is pretty unfortunate as it adds a relatively large barrier of entry to getting into charting. I myself only got into charting for 4K VSRGs thanks to osu!'s map editor making it really easy to start dicking around with charts, and so I find it pretty unfortunate that Etterna doesn't provide the same level of accessibility for getting into charting

Project SEKAI

The first Vocaloid rhythm game I've played regularly. I gave

What I like

• its miiiiikuuuuu miiiiikuuuuu oooeeeooo the mobiel rhythm game
• Gameplay is pretty solid
• Has a nice wizard for offset and scroll speed adjustment
• The art style and presentation is great, even if the shows can be pretty intensive on resources. Luckily, they do allow you to choose between 3D, 2D and "Lite" shows. I usually pick Lite to improve performance and to help me stay focused on the charts
• Append charts are a nice addition to the roster of difficulties the game has to offer. These charts are quite a bit more interesting to play, since the charters for them were given the freedom to use up to 4 fingers instead of just 2.
• Tons of songs
• Story seems pretty cool but I haven't bothered playing it LOL

What I don't like

• Your grade and HP drain being determined by your team or whatever is complete bullshit and completely steps over the point of ranks. They're supposed to be a simple, concise indicator of your performance, not of how deep your wallet or how much play time you have. Ignoring that, the
• It takes like 5 million years to go from opening the game to being in gameplay, especially when you have to upwards of like 150 MB of data just to be able to start a show. It takes so long that I sometimes just can't bother to start the game
• Gacha mechanics are annoying but I guess that's just how modern freemium games work nowadays
• You have to unlock Master difficulties by getting 7 or fewer GOOD or lower judgements. This makes progression (in skill) more difficult since you have to play charts within your comfort zone just to unlock the charts that actually challenge you. It really feels like an archaic way to force more playtime out of a game with limited content. On top of that, charts with a higher note density will be harder to clear with these requirements, regardless of how
• HP is only lost when you break your combo, and can only be restored with a character skill. It's beyond me as to why they didn't just implement something similar to what basically every VSRG does, where better judgements restore HP, and bad judgements reduce HP

Dance Dance Revolution

DDR World to be specific. I've played the most sets with the 20th Anniversary Model, but I have played using the White Model at least once.

This is the game Stepmania (which Etterna is based off) was originally created to clone.

What I like

• It's got the classic 4 button layout that's stood the test of time.
• The song selections pretty decent.

What I don't like

• For some reason the audio quality's pretty bad. It seems like the game's audio is at a really low sampling rate for some reason. This would've been excusable in the 90s (when the game first came out) but compression techniques and equipment has progressed so much since then that you really shouldn't be running into this issue on a modern cabinet running on PC hardware
• There's a lot of visual latency. You pretty much have to ignore where the arrows are in relation to the receptors as you have to hit many frames before the arrows reach the receptors to hit them on time. At least the audio latency is calibrated properly, so you can rely on the music to help keep your hits on time. I'm pretty sure it's caused by the LCD screen as the older cabinets (which use CRTs) don't have this issue.
• The charting is pretty bland, even on more difficult charts. For some reason they always seem to follow arbitrary rhythms which don't fit the songs very well. I've seen wayyyuu more interesting pad charts for DDR clones like Stepmania made by randos in their spare time.

Pump It Up

PIU Phoenix to be specific. I think that's the only version I've played.

This game's highly inspired by DDR, but has an extra button on each pad. Its song selection has more of a focus on K-Pop (which is to be expected from a Korean game)

What I like

• Feels very responsive
• Chart quality is pretty good
• There's an alright selection of songs
• You can create and play custom charts. I haven't tried this as I don't have an account but it seems like a cool feature.

What I don't like

• For some reason the late window is far wider than the early window, which actively encourages you to hit like 20ms+ later than you otherwise would in order to avoid bad judgements
• You need an account to change the scroll speed, or really any other aspect of the game's presentation.

Maimai

The washing machine game. I think the first version of the game I played was Maimai Orange. I played on that cabinet until some time in 2024 or 2025 when the machine was decommisioned. I picked the game back up in late 2025 when a different arcade added a DX cabinet. It initially ran Maimai DX PRiSM but eventually got upgraded to Maimai DX CiRCLE, which it's still on as of April 2026.

What I like

• Really fun gameplay
• Very customizable, especially for an arcade game
• Good variety of mapping styles
• KINO song selection, especially since there's so many vocasynth songs as well as songs commonly found in other rhythm games.
• You can plug your headphones into the cabinet. This is especially helpful in REALLY FUCKING LOUD arcades where you'd otherwise barely be able to hear the music and sound effects. It's also a feature that I've never seen in any other arcade games
• Your accuracy is displayed with 4 decimal points of precision, so it's very easy to tell how much accuracy you're losing from a slightly late hit.
• Wide variety of difficulties which can be individually picked during a sync play. This allows an ELITE SWAG GAMER to play allongside a n00b without anyone being either really bored or overwhelmed.

What I don't like

• It takes like a whole minute just to get to the song select since you have to spend so much time going through menus, waiting for loading sceens and for animations to finish.
• Some songs require you to clear the Expert difficulty of a song in order to unlock the Master and Re:Master difficulties. This basically forces you to waste one song of your set playing a chart that's way below your skill level. This is especially bad when you're playing as a guest, where you can't save your progress
• Western countries have to wait much longer to get new releases. Japan is often a release or 2 ahead

bonus video or something