Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! Review - Incremental Mastery

Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master!

Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master is the first Taiko game for PC and the first recent game (after the very underwhelming Drum 'n Fun and ports of two 3DS originals) to be released in the West on anything other than Switch. It was released on Gamepass, which was a good decision for its visibility, but is exclusive to the Microsoft Store, which is incredibly bad for its visibility. TDM ditches the crappy minigames and pointless motion controls from DNF while also bringing back the costumes and competitive online multiplayer from the PS4's Drum Session.

And that sums up a lot of the game, really. This release is all about undoing bad decisions made in DNF and bringing the game closer to DS. DNF had some truly mind-boggling songs (the alphabet song, anyone?) included in its set, and while TDM doesn't have a lot of truly new songs, they're at least all reasonable to be in a rhythm game.

TDM will be best for people who don't have access to any other Taiko game, which sounds worse than it is. This is a fine game, but it lacks the fun async multiplayer and seasons from DS, the challenge mode from most of the series, and the silly adventure modes from the 3/DS releases. There's just not really anything here to make me want to play this game over any of those others when I'm in the mood for Taiko. Hopefully the recent release of Rhythm Festival on Switch will be more of a return to form.

Rating: 75%

Time to beat: 3 hours to pass every song once.

MSRP: $50, but free on Gamepass