Keylocker is a Cyberpunk, turn-based, rhythm JRPG in which you play as singer/songwriter B0B0, a doppelganger who rebels against her caste, Saturn, using music. This game was inspired by the Mario & Luigi RPG series and Chronotrigger and was a blast to play.
When you first start a new game, it gives you a quick and slightly vague cutscene with hidden messages and lore trickled throughout. After the cutscene, the game drops you off in the prologue, Abberant Decoding. It’s here where it explains that you’ve been imprisoned and are planning to break out. With help from your brother, you gain the chance. Before you can start the real game though, you have to choose your class.
There are four classes to choose from: Juggernaut, Samurai, Hacker, and Sequencer. Juggernaut and Hacker are offensive classes, while Samurai and Sequencer are defensive classes. Each class starts with different moves and has different gameplay. They cannot be changed once you pick, so choose wisely.
After that, you hop right into the tutorial where you’re taught some of the basics, then dropped you into combat which I’ll talk about in a second. After the prologue, you get to choose your difficulty, Soft Punk (easy), Cyber Punk (normal), and Hardcore Punk (hard), as well as a fourth locked difficulty, Horror Punk.
Combat in this game is hard. No matter what difficulty you’re on, no matter what class you choose, this game’s combat is just flat-out difficult and frustrating. Everything must be timed perfectly or else you’ll be taking damage and/or you won’t deal any damage. There are mini games for each action, and then there are other mini games to dodge attacks made against you. If you mess up on anything in either set of mini games, your moves are much weaker, and attacks against you deal a bunch more damage. This makes combat very frustrating to deal with, making it feel like a chore every time combat starts.
You level up with a customizable skill tree with keys that you get from winning battles. This skill tree is resettable, which is nice in case you accidentally upgrade something you didn’t want to. Throughout the game, you can also find different weapons and abilities that you can equip. These can be bought in some places and found in chests which are sprinkled throughout the world.
Each area in the game is very well-detailed and unique. They each have their own special details and characters with unique dialogue and interactions. The characters all have their own personality, motives, and ideals, which is something that I really like about Moonana Games’ characters. All their characters, side characters, and main characters interact differently with everything, and I just absolutely love it.
The visuals of the game are good, but there are some outliers. The attention to detail is amazing; there’s a lot of distinct individuality between each character’s appearance. But not everything always lines up; some of the walking animations don’t work and line up as they should. This would be fine if they weren’t very noticeable, but it happens in cutscenes as well, which ruins the immersion of some parts for me. The visuals of the combat and each attack are all very well made. And while sometimes the animation of the attacks doesn’t always line up with what they’re hitting, I still think it looks good.
The audio and—more specifically—the music of the game are, without a doubt, amazing. Each song is phenomenal and essential to the story and plot of the game. The sound effects are also great, lining up perfectly with each attack and move. I also love the fact that you’re able to change what music you’re listening to via the menu.
I only came across a couple of bugs and real problems with the game itself. A lot of quests just don’t work, and others cannot be progressed—which can be very frustrating. The game also sometimes just crashes whenever you interact with the environment. This can be especially annoying due to the fact that there’s no autosaving in this game. Lastly, enemies will sometimes just stop in the middle of combat and not do anything which will force you to restart the fight. This is really annoying, especially if you were about to win.
The worldbuilding, characters, story, and area designs are absolutely amazing. The music and sound effects sound flawless, and especially the music is essential to everything the game is about. The combat could be made a little easier but if you’re determined enough then it shouldn’t be a problem.
