Once more with rhythm!
When I first read the title "Orgarhythm", I had no idea how to pronounce it. When I first heard it pronounced, I got a few ideas, but I didn't get the full picture until I actually picked up the Vita and started going at it. And y'know what? It plays how it appears: intriguing and slightly confusing.
The play is akin to mixing Patapon with a wide-open overhead view in an RTS setting: You control the armies surrounding a war-marching God of Light, charged with defending him against attacking soldiers. Three different soldier types are at your beck-and-call to toss at the invading armies, controlling fire, water, and… uhh… yellow. I dunno what the yellow guys do, but they inflict a lot of damage on their own. Choosing the right element (or color) can do mucho-damage, like Rock-Paper-Scissors with tiny doods.
Play is entirely performed on the front touchscreen (nope, nothing to utilize the back touch pad), and tapping the right key at the right time powers up attacks and levels up your micro-fleet. Tapping the middle readies your little friends for battle, and from there you pick the fleet and the type of attack. According to the info given to me, the AI will even remember how you played previous campaigns and adapt to your play style, so the same stages can be played multiple times without having the same exact experience twice.
There's even online multiplayer! I can understand how a co-op mode will work—maybe two players protecting the same God of Light—but there's also a versus mode to pit two people against each other. Since the stages are on a sort of track I don't know just how it will work in the end (might focus more on the rhythm than the battle) but that's just speculation at this point.
With songs to be released via DLC (and aspiring musicians able to submit their work for review… or make the devs laugh at their attempts, either one) and how it plays now, it looks like a good package to look forward to this summer. The God of Light shines upon thee!
