Back in early September, the Honey’s Anime team had the pleasure of attending a special VIP Bandai Namco press event at their local HQ in Tokyo, and we played a whole ton of Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! while there. It’s the type of game that you’d want to have friends over with and jam together for the entire night, seeing who can score the highest combos in their favorite songs. Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! is an extremely popular rhythm game that continues to bring a crowd at local arcades in Tokyo, and now you have all of that hype and excitement right in the comfort of your living room. Anyone who’s a fan of the franchise will fall in love with its new ranked mode, allowing you to take on ghost opponents and become the number one Taiko master online. For those looking for a brand new music experience with all of your favorite anime and J-pop tracks, Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! is one rhythm game you’ll definitely not want to sleep on.

Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! is a whole load of fun, not just in single player mode but also with friends and family. You can opt to use the full Taiko drum kit to really immerse yourself in the traditional Japanese cultural experience, or if you’re not too comfortable with it, there’s always the controller scheme that’s embedded in game. The new ranked mode allows you to hop online and take on other opponents via their ghost, to see just how well you match up against them. As you perform longer combos and tackle the harder difficulties, expect your rank to rise even higher as you make your way to the top of the world ladder! What’s great about Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! is that there’s really no limit to the amount of music you can play, since the replay value is just through the roof whether it be offline or online play.

You’re also able to unlock costumes and accessories for your Taiko drum, which only adds more personality to the game and truly makes it more immersive in that regard. While a lot of the songs are from older Taiko no Tatsujin titles, there are a plethora of brand new songs from popular anime such as Attack on Titan or Dragon Ball Super, just to name a couple. With so much to do in this game, Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! will be sure to keep you occupied. Just be sure not to make too much noise! 🙂

The Taiko no Tatsujin series doesn’t necessarily pride itself on its visuals, but it certainly looks very eye-catchy with all the flashy colors and such while playing. You have all of the different cultural designs which you can see on various characters such as Kimonos and Tengu masks, among many others, which really shows how much attention to detail the Bandai Namco team put into the game culturally speaking. With that being said, the game looks very attractive, and since you’re able to fully customize your Taiko drum with various colors and costumes, it adds a little more vibe to the whole experience.

This is of course where the game shines the most because well, it’s a music-based game after all. The wide selection of tracks, ranging from J-pop to exclusive Bandai Namco designed songs, is really impressive, which gives you plenty of options to choose from. Every song comes with its own level of difficulty, with some songs being more demanding than others and so a lot of practice is required to really master the hard ones. Vocaloid songs, for example, often start off a little slow to get you in the zone, but halfway through they really turn up the notch to maximum, and you’re just slamming away at your drum to keep up. That’s really the appeal of Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session!, where you’re constantly being tested on your abilities! The more you start to improve, the more the game rewards you for it. It’s quite healthy for your brain too since it helps to develop strong hand-eye coordination and cognitive thinking, since there’s so much that your brain has to register all at once, which also helps to keep you stimulated. Even if you lose to an incredibly hard track, for example, you’re not as frustrated because you know the reward of consistent practice will only benefit you down the road.

The game provides a nice assortment of beginner tracks to help you ease your way in, before moving onto the more over-the-top songs that will definitely give you a run for your money. Surprisingly, playing on the PS4 controller was quite easy since the type 2 layout made it so that most of your buttons were a specific color. So for example the X, Square, Triangle, and Circle buttons were mapped to red while the shoulder buttons were mapped to blue. It made it really comfortable to hit the right notes at the right time, since even if you pressed the incorrect button it still would count as that particular color.

Ranked mode is a very fun way to truly test your skills against other players around the world, and truly helps you to know just where you stand in terms of your own abilities and where to improve. For example, maybe you’re really solid at the more slower tempo songs but then once you hit the faster tempos, you start to slip up a little. By playing ranked mode you can see how the other opponent plays and try to perhaps learn from them so that later, you can improve on your pace over time. Through ranked mode you can collect coins too, which you unlock through completing various objectives on the bingo cards. You can take these coins to purchase in-game items as we mentioned before, as well as emblems and tags! There’s just so much to do, and with all the cool crossover characters like Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid and Heihachi Mishima from Tekken, the fun just never stops!

Many hours have passed and we’re still hooked! Just when you think your high score is enough, someone comes in and swoops away your spot. There’s always something new to explore about your own performance, and self improvement is always a great thing. We hope you found our review of Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! to be a worthwhile read, and that it provided you with enough information to help you better decide on your purchase!

We pray that sometime down the road, Bandai Namco will think to add in more songs so that we can continue to jam away all night with our Taiko drums! Again, we hope you enjoyed our review and of course, be sure to follow us on Twitch as well at Twitch.tv/honeysgaming to catch us live, playing your favorite titles! Hit us up as well on Discord to join our official Honey’s Anime community and share your passion for the otaku life!

As always, for all things sweet, with news straight from Japan, be sure to keep it locked here on Honey’s Anime.