Steel Century Groove looks set to sweep us off our feet later this year
Last November we reported on the announcement of Steel Century Groove - a new RPG where the battles all revolve around rhythm game dances between giant robots. Needless to say, we've been eagerly awaiting a chance to see more.
Earlier this week, we finally got the chance to give it a try. First things first - the battle system, because I'm sure I wasn't the only one wondering how things would work merging a rhythm game and an RPG battle system. Turns out, it depends on which mech you bring to a fight. During our preview, we had the chance to check out two separate mechs, each with their own gimmicks that can rather drastically inform how the game's battles are handled.
The first mech we used had a heavily cooldowns-focused structure. You have an energy below the dancing mechs in the middle of the screen, and normal moves require energy to execute. Every time a note appears on the screen, that's when you can input an action - and at a basic level, for this mech the name of the game is managing your energy reserves by rotating moves that replenish your energy, and those that expend it to gain Acclaim.
Acclaim is the one constant in dance battles. Steel Century Groove is an RPG, but you're never actually attacking your opponent with your giant mechs - you're strutting your stuff to the beat, trying to outpace your dance partner. As a result, neither dancer has an HP bar; they have an "Acclaim" bar that fills with successful dance moves. The goal of every battle is to get the bar on your side of the screen filled before your opponent, and not necessarily to decimate your opponent (though, some mechs do have attacks that will damage an opponents Acclaim bar).
There are a few wrinkles to it all, too. While the two main actions are always available, the first mech in question also has a few additional mechanics to be aware of. One is an action with a hefty cooldown that also grants a bunch of Acclaim at once; while you can wait out the cooldown, between segments of the song the bottom corner of the screen will fill up a list of your opponents actions on each note for the upcoming dance. If you use another, shorter cooldown on a note when your opponent is resting, you can instantly recharge the other cooldown, allowing you to efficiently build up Acclaim.
The second dancer we had the chance to use plays entirely differently. Instead of a set of dedicated actions, every segment of a song you gain a different set of actions that you can switch between. This dancer doesn't utilize energy, but rather requires more active involvement from the player to think on the fly and adjust to what actions you've been given; its cooldowns allow you to give up one of your actions to buff the other, so if you think fast you can greatly boost your actions for a given section.
As you level up a dancer (XP is replaced with the followers you gain from posting your dances on an in-game social media), you gain new moves, new passive abilities and by completing milestone battles you'll unlock mod slots to equip specific perks to your dancer. Some passive abilities include additional mechanics added to the song itself. Maybe you'll get a string of notes, that if you input them all you'll gain a buff for a number of notes, among others.
Outside of battles, this is all wrapped around a Pokemon-inspired RPG romp. We didn't get a chance to see too much about how things will play out with the game's story, but what bits of dialog we got to read were promising. All of the different options for social media posts after battles are charming, even including our characters dedicated hater in the rival character. Visually, the game looks quite nice - and absent of the official Valve seal, we can say it runs perfectly on Steam Deck, as that was the setup the preview was based around. As things stand, Steel Century Groove is absolutely on our radar for when it launches later this year - and it should be on yours, too.