“Cruel” Is Pretty Accurate

I think of all the consoles I’ve owned, the Switch has been home to some of the weirdest games I can remember playing. That’s not a complaint, it’s actually been a blast and I’ve played some games I’ve really enjoyed that as a younger gamer I wouldn’t have given the time to. I’ve also played some hot garbage, some of which I’ve reviewed here. Cruel Bands Career is definitely up there with one of the more original games I’ve played I’ve played this year. Unfortunately the originality along with a great art style hasn’t made it something I actually enjoy playing. Before I go into specifics though – I do want to say that if you’re a fan of puzzle or even strategy games that are particularly punishing then this is something that may be for you.

It’s not a rhythm game by any means, nor does music really play any part in it. I’d classify it as a mix between tower defense, strategy, and a hint of puzzle. Also for a game about managing a band, the music’s really bland, other than the title screen and menu. The song that plays there is great, and I wish everything in the game was some version of that or at least a style that’s a little more concert-like, but otherwise nothing stands out about it and it really just blends into the background. I feel like better music could’ve helped me stay invested in the game.

The graphics, however, are pretty great. All the little characters have a ton of personality and the art style is really fun and has this almost trippy like quality, in addition to always being in motion, like the animation style you’d see in Cuphead and its inspirations. The bosses I encountered are really interesting and well designed, also.

There’s not really much story to the game. The band is on a secret mission and what’s standing in their way of completing that mission is the audience. You basically go through 6 stages – 7 if you count the tutorial – and the object is to basically survive wave after wave of a variety of characters that are spread out over 3 lanes who approach you, like the way lanes in Plants vs Zombies or even the old Tapper arcade game are set up. You can’t attack, so basically you have to juggle how each character gains and loses health along with using special abilities to try and survive each level, or “show”. If it sounds stressful, it is. You occasionally get a message from some weird doctor and his nurse, and playing through the game will get you little snippets of – I guess I’ll call it story or background but the game refers to them as “films”. Not sure how you can call it that when it’s just one picture, but there you go.

Now onto the big issue I have with the game: the difficulty. I don’t mind difficult games. I’ve played through all the Dark Souls titles, I grew up with the NES and practically lived in arcades. I don’t even mind getting thrashed 1000 times by people when I play Street Fighter online. I used it as an opportunity to learn and get better. So again, difficulty doesn’t bother me. What does bother me though is in this case, when the odds are unfairly stacked against you that you’re basically relying on the game’s random placement of enemies – or visitors – to help you get through to the next level. To me that’s not good game design.

So basically it works like this. If you get a visitor with a smile to touch a bandmember, they gain health, and the other 2 bandmembers get pissy and lose health. If visitors who are sad or angry touch a bandmember, they just lose health and that’s it.

So basically it works like this. If you get a visitor with a smile to touch a bandmember, they gain health, and the other 2 bandmembers get pissy and lose health. If visitors who are sad or angry touch a bandmember, they just lose health and that’s it. If one bandmember loses all their health, then for reasons that I don’t understand they will explode like that guy who took too long with the sticky bomb in Saving Private Ryan and you have to start the level over. You get 3 lives to make your best run to the end and then once those are gone, that’s it and you’re starting the whole game over – no saving in between levels. You don’t get lives back, and your health carries over to each level so if you barely made it out of the last level and everybody’s got low health, then you are most definitely going to lose in the next one. In between levels you can choose a random upgrade for your run, or if nothing is appealing you can opt for a health item. You also get some breaks where there’s a shopkeeper you can buy items from in between entire shows. The only other help you’ll receive is from characters who will give you items, and also someone who looks like the chick from The Ring who will give you something as well.

This altogether doesn’t sound that complicated, however the game also tosses in status effects. If someone with a status effect touches a bandmember, then they automatically get it. Think of it as an STD without all the nasty side effects. So for example dizzy status makes it so whatever visitor the bandmember touches has the opposite effect of what it normally does. Sleep status makes them ignore all visitors for a set amount of time, alcohol gives them a random status, fear status drains a bandmember of health until they have none left without killing them, and so on. You get 1 energy for every visitor a bandmember touches – good or bad – and then at 5 energy they can pop a special ability. If they wait that out and get more energy they can pop a more powerful version at max, but you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the risk because it’ll eat up all of your energy when you do.

So there’s a ton of little rules you’ll need to remember and there’s times where the randomness of the visitors will work against you to a point where I honestly don’t believe you can win. You’ll be deciding on who can take the most damage so that you’ll maybe encounter some happy visitors to help bring your health back, or maybe you’ll have to decide on using up all your energy in one go to clear lanes of visitors. There’s runs where I’d make it several stages and whoop bosses with zero difficulty, and then there’s runs where I wouldn’t get past the first couple levels. Heck, I failed the tutorial a few times because I just couldn’t figure out how the hell everything worked.

If you progress far enough there’s unlocks you can purchase in the way of “friends” who can give you a very small boost throughout each run, and you can also unlock new bandmembers with new abilities as you progress as well. The downside to that is actually getting far enough to be able to actually unlock them, so it’s possible that if you’re not good at this game, you’ll be stuck choosing from the original 4 for quite some time and you’ll just get dealt with by the game over and over. To me that just sucks.

So at the end of the day I’m really mixed on this game. At times, I can’t stop playing it because I do like that it’s this reverse-approach to tower defense where you’re just basically tanking everything you touch. I love the graphics and art style and even though the music is pretty boring I can get over that as well. It’s the difficulty to this game that enrages me after awhile because it really does feel like the game sets you up for failure no matter what you do and like death and taxes, it’s just a matter of time before you’re due. Just to make sure it wasn’t me, I did check other opinions online and my complaints appear to be common. So again, if you want something really challenging and this still sounds like fun, by all means go for it.