No Straight Roads: Encore Edition

Mayday and Zuke, a scrappy two-person rock band, declare war on NSR, the all-powerful EDM record label that runs Vinyl City and has decided electronic music is the only music worth hearing. No Straight Roads sends them through the city's neon districts to defeat NSR's roster of musician-boss "Discordists" one spectacular set-piece battle at a time, and reviewers are close to unanimous about which half of that pitch the small Malaysian studio behind it actually nailed.

A presentation reviewers praise in strikingly sincere terms

Across a review sample of over 1,200, the art direction and character design draw some of the most consistent, warmly specific praise this lane has seen for a game with an otherwise mixed reception. Reviewers repeatedly describe the visual style as a genuine standout, and the original soundtrack earns its own dedicated praise, with several reviewers singling out individual boss themes and the way the score dynamically shifts and layers as genuinely inventive craft rather than a simple licensed-track playlist. The story and its central underdog premise, two independent musicians against a corporate EDM monopoly, draws real emotional investment from multiple reviewers, who credit the writing and character work with a sincerity that survives even into reviews that ultimately can't recommend the finished product. Boss encounters specifically are repeatedly credited as visual and musical spectacles that carry real weight regardless of how a given reviewer feels about the mechanics underneath them, with each Discordist boss designed around a distinct musical genre and stage gimmick that reviewers say keeps the game visually fresh from one encounter to the next even as the underlying combat stays largely the same. The game's small-team origins draw their own specific goodwill: reviewers explicitly credit the Malaysian studio behind it, whose leads previously worked on Final Fantasy XV and Street Fighter V, with a level of ambition and craft that punches well above the scale of resources a debut studio typically has available.

The gameplay complaint that shows up almost everywhere in the sample

What holds this review back from a stronger score is a genuinely rare degree of consistency in the sample's core mechanical complaint. Reviewers across the spectrum, including many who ultimately recommend the game, describe combat as loose, stiff and unresponsive, with attacks reported to land with a noticeable and frustrating delay and combos that frequently fail to connect the way a player intends. One especially detailed review sums up the split directly: "It's like going to a bakery, find an amazing looking cake, but 90% of it it's not edible" — a line echoed in substance across dozens of other reviews in the sample, positive and negative alike. Camera problems compound the issue specifically during boss fights, with multiple reviewers independently reporting enemies attacking from off-screen without adequate warning, a problem serious enough that several single it out as a bigger practical obstacle than the combat looseness itself.

A rhythm game that reviewers say doesn't fully commit to being one

A more specific complaint concerns the game's central conceit. Despite a premise built entirely around music and rhythm, several reviewers report the actual combat is only loosely tied to the beat in practice, describing it as more of a music-themed action game than a true rhythm game where timing genuinely matters mechanically. That's a meaningfully different complaint than simple combat looseness — it's specifically that the game's most distinctive selling point doesn't fully deliver on its own premise, leaving several reviewers wishing the rhythm elements had been pushed considerably further given how central music is to everything else about the game's identity.

A story reviewers say ends before the mechanics catch up

Beyond the moment-to-moment combat complaints, multiple reviewers report the story and content feel abruptly cut short, with the game ending before its skill and ability system has had a chance to meaningfully develop. One reviewer describes finishing the game before unlocking enough abilities to experience any real combat depth, framing the pacing mismatch as a structural problem rather than a simple case of wanting more content for its own sake. Co-op support draws its own specific complaint along similar lines: at least one detailed reviewer reports two-player sessions are hampered badly enough by camera problems specific to that mode that co-op is barely functional as marketed, despite being an explicitly advertised feature.

What the achievement data shows about the mastery gap

Global achievement data adds a useful data point to the combat-quality debate. Story-progression achievements clear a healthy majority of the playerbase, generally in the 58 to 80% range, but mastery-focused achievements tied to parrying every boss perfectly or completing the hardest difficulty settings fall to as low as 1%. That gap between finishing the story and mastering the combat is wider than this lane typically sees in action games with a genuine skill ceiling, consistent with reviewers' accounts of combat that's playable enough to finish but not consistently satisfying enough to draw players toward optional mastery content.

Verdict

No Straight Roads succeeds unambiguously as a showcase for its small studio's presentation talent: the art direction, soundtrack and story are genuinely distinctive and draw sincere praise even from reviewers frustrated by everything else. It sits at a middling score here because the mechanical complaints are neither rare nor mild — a large, detailed and remarkably consistent share of the review sample describes combat and camera problems serious enough to undercut the game's own central premise, issues that reviewers report persisting even in the improved Encore Edition released a year after the original launch. Worth playing for the music and visuals if the concept genuinely appeals, especially on a sale, but go in with expectations calibrated to rough, unfinished-feeling combat rather than the polished rhythm-action spectacle its presentation promises.