Sayonara Wild Hearts

Have you ever played a 90min music video?

Why

Why Not

Impressions

Sayonara Wild Hearts is the ultimate argument for short games. The thing about rhythm games or endless runners (the closest comparisons in terms of gameplay) is their endless nature means the visuals are necessarily kinda samey and generic, so they can be reused across multiple songs/levels. Totally logical and practical, but Sayonara Wild Hearts has not interest in practicality. Every moment of this game is handcrafted to feel like an action movie or anime set piece, perfectly synced with each level's soundtrack and designed to encourage a feeling of fluidity. The whole game elicits the same feeling I get from getting into a flow in a crazy Silksong boss fight but without any of the frustration; everything feels frantic but the game implicitly guides you toward the right move with point-granting pickups while offering seamless restarts at frequent checkpoints if you do fail.

All the levels have spectacular visuals and ideas, which I'd love to talk about but don't want to spoil the excitement of seeing them for the first time. Just know that at some point you end up in a retro bullet-hell style level presented in absolutely wild diegetic fashion and fight a boss with basically the powers of 'X' from 'To Be Hero X' plus a comically large sword. Being as short as it is means every second of gameplay can be packed with mindblowing ideas; to the point where I started a fresh playthrough in the Arcade mode (the whole game stitched together without breaks) immediately after finishing the story mode and it all still felt amazing.

If, like me, you find it hard to put Sayonara Wild Hearts down when it's done, the game has you covered. You can try to get gold rank on each song; get an overall gold rank on the full story in arcade mode and solve/complete the cryptic arcana challenges. A 1.5 hour game for this price might be a hard sell, but if you ever take a chance on a short game make it this one. In the highly likely event you can't get enough there's plenty of reason to sink more time into it, and even if you don't I'd be very surprised if you didn't walk away feeling like your experience was worth the money. An absolute banger which everyone should try.