Deemo The Last Recital is a rhythm game with a dash of the point & click genre. We play as a mysterious man-like shadow with a passion for playing the piano. One day while playing, Deemo catches a young girl that fell from a window far above. He then starts to play the piano to grow a tree with the eventual goal of it growing tall enough to reach the window to get the girl back where she came from. It is a very unique setting with only a few characters inhabiting it. One is the aforementioned Deemo, the silent pianist. A masked woman that is always sarcastic and ill-mannered then finally the young girl whom tries to find a way to entertain herself in such an odd place.
The girl is the only one that has a voice actor and when we are not playing the rhythm section of the game we are clicking around the place to see what we can uncover. From what I played there are no puzzles, just a few hidden songs you can gain by taking the time to click around the place. This game is entirely controlled via the touchscreen with the buttons having no use. It was originally a game for the IOS and Android smartphone platforms but was later ported to the Vita for the Asian markets only. There is a Western release coming for the Vita in Spring 2017 so importing it is pretty pointless.
We start off with a few songs and unlock more by either playing certain songs, finding them or when the tree grows to a certain height. Gameplay is very simple, featuring only two input commands, one being tap and the other is sliding notes. It intends to simulate a piano and has you use multiple fingers to tap or slide on the notes when they reach the indicated line at the bottom. Timing it perfectly counts as a charming note that triggers an orange effect, yellow meant that you hit it too soon while blue means you missed it completely. The black notes you are meant to tap and the yellow ones require you to slide your finger around.
I found it extremely difficult to reach the notes while holding the Vita and found setting it on a table to feel far less award. It is definitely not the type of game I would play without something to set my Vita on but that is entirely a personal decision. There is not a real way to fail at a song since even if you miss notes like crazy, the tree will still grow a bit. A song is considered a victory if you have at least a 65% hit rate. While simple it does get quite challenging on the higher difficulties of Normal and High as more & more notes are thrown in rapid succession. You can control the speed they fall out before jumping into a song, 1 being the slowest and 9 being the max speed which is just ridiculously fast.
Not all of the music is piano based however. There is also Techno and Kpop among others. Playing the song for the first time makes the tree grow a fair bit compared to the measly amount you get from replaying it. Playing it on a different difficulty does count as a new song to encourage you to bump up the game’s challenge. Getting all perfect notes and combos will also grow the tree a fair bit. Sadly, the accursed tree grows far too slow and new songs unlocking are way too far apart meaning you’ll be playing and replaying the same songs for quite a bit. I’ve played the 18 or so tracks currently available to me on multiple difficulties and the tree is just at 9 meters.
The mundane grind with very infrequent new content to play was just too much which is why I stopped playing and this is not an actual review. It really feels like you’ve been given the bare minimum and are expected to purchase some of the plethora of DLC available. While that may work for a free phone game, it does not on a retail console purchase. There are significant differences between the phone and Vita versions. The Vita has nifty animated cut-scenes, some exclusive songs, and an Afterstory mode. There is a rather intriguing story told through these cut-scenes that trigger when the tree reaches a new milestone.
Deemo’s artwork is stunning, the cut-scenes animation is great and most importantly, the music itself is quite simply amazing. I was tempted to buy some DLC but decided to wait until I can get it for my US PSN account which was the main reason I stopped playing, not because I disliked the title itself. While it relying so much on heavy grinding to unlock a small scrap of content is definitely something I don’t approve of, this article is not meant to persuade you into avoiding it but to give my opinions as a gamer that only played it for a few hours. Once again this is not a review, just me talking about a game I otherwise wouldn’t have and such a unique game like Deemo: The Last Recital is definitely worth talking about.
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