Review: Steel Century Groove
Steel Century Groove bursts onto the gaming scene as a vibrant new rhythm game that successfully blends high-energy musical battles with engaging RPG and adventure elements.
The concept is instantly appealing. Create your unique character and learn to pilot colossal mechs. Challenge rivals to dance battles in a colorful sci-fi world with an undeniable sense of fun. Plus, there’s queer storylines and characters too!
Steel Century Groove game wastes no time, immediately throwing you into the action with a spectacular, televised mech dance-off that promises an exhilarating experience to come. The camera then pans out from the TV to your character allowing you to customize them. You can finely tune the appearance of your avatar with a solid selection of choices for size, body type, hair, faces, and colors. You can even select your character’s name and pronouns with non-binary options included.
The journey begins in the player’s small hometown. The pacing is initially a little slow. A few top-down perspective fetch quests with simple puzzles get you going on your first robot. However, the early grind quickly pays off. The moment you get your hands on a working robot and engage in your first dance battle, the gameplay immediately picks up and locks into an addictive rhythm.
The dance battles are undoubtedly where Steel Century Groove truly excels. The robot animations are electric and perfectly choreographed to an original soundtrack that absolutely slaps. Success requires more than just hitting button prompts at the right time. As you unlock new skills, the strategy deepens, allowing you to equip different moves for complex combos and even counter your opponent’s attacks as the game progresses.
While the core mechanics are strong, the dance battles have a couple notable areas that caused me frustration. The main complaint I had was that the interface, while very informative, felt too spread out across the screen. This made it difficult to track simultaneous elements such as beats, upcoming enemy moves, and knowing when my time-based actions were ready. Because of this I tended to guess and rely on luck instead of timing all my moves correctly with skill.
Also, the robot feedback lacked punch. While a quick knock-back animation played when I missed a beat, the robots seemed to maintain the basic dance animations regardless of how well I was doing. Adding some more pronounced stumbles or dance flourishes when I got a perfect score would go a long way in enhancing my engagement with the game.
In addition to a great soundtrack, Steel Century Groove has the ability to add in your own music. I was genuinely impressed by how well the game adapted to a variety of tracks and genres. I tried some different songs from electronic dance to punk rock and it behaved well on all of them. Even without custom tracks, the default soundtrack is consistently high-quality.
Another major positive was accessibility. The UI is generally intuitive and includes numerous options to help players with different needs to adjust timing, latency, and settings for button holds. It works well with the keyboard and controller.
One small note was that keyboard navigation didn’t work on the menu screen and I had to fall back to my mouse. Also, the floating arrow indicating interactable objects occasionally blended into the background, which could be improved if it had a better contrast color or some sort of outline.
The story is fairly simple, but it features strong, well-defined characters, including a cute same-sex subplot between the professor and mailman which adds warmth to the world. I loved exploring the world and interacting with all kinds of people. Each had their pronouns listed by their name.
All in all, Steel Century Groove is a poppy, high-energy, good time. The game successfully delivers on its ambitious premise, offering an excellent mix of rewarding progression and top-tier rhythm action. It’s a game I can easily see becoming a popular choice for streamers, offering hours of laughs and pure, unadulterated fun.
Steel Century Groove is available now on Steam.
Rating: 7/10
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