Rhythm Heaven Groove Will Get Stuck In Your Head For Days

There are two very consistent ways to tell if a Rhythm Heaven game is good. The first is if you catch yourself tapping your finger or foot to its remembered beat randomly throughout the day. 

The second is if it makes you so mad that you yell triumphant expletives at the TV when you finally get a Perfect.

In the 11 years since the last Rhythm Heaven, Nintendo has not forgotten this. Rhythm Heaven Groove is designed to delight and infuriate you, often both simultaneously, and that’s what makes it fun. It’s a collection of rhythm games, focused around a single-player mode where you can simply play through game after game, unlocking a new one each time you complete the previous with sufficient accuracy. The games vary, often wildly, in speed and tempo and what beats they ask you to focus on. In the first set of four games alone, you’re asked to:

• Press A on the fifth count of a steady series of beats
• Use down on the control pad to close an umbrella and A to open it on the fourth count of a series of four, mimicking the umbrellas that came before you each time
• Count to 7, which is impossible
• Press A to mimic the rhythm of some flowers shooting hearts at you a beat after they shoot

Like the Rhythm Heavens before it, the actual mechanical components of Rhythm Heaven Groove’s minigames are pristinely designed. The music for something like this needs to be fantastic, and thanks to the return of beloved Japanese songwriter Tsunku, it is. While I like some pieces more than others, I don’t think there’s a bad bit of music in here. The marriage of actual rhythm mechanics with these songs is as close to flawless as one can get. Everything has strong beats that are easy to feel when needed, pieces evolve as necessary to push the player with more complex rhythms, and almost all lead up to a triumphant finish.

There’s a lot of bonus challenge baked in for dedicated individuals who love self-torture. I will not be joining the absolutely buckwild ranks of people who are Rainbow Perfecting these songs (getting three perfects in a row, then a fourth Perfect entirely without visuals). But every stage is at least passable with a little practice, even if you’re not musically inclined. Even when I was struggling to succeed at some of the rhythm games, I never once felt that Rhythm Heaven Groove itself was unfair. 

I did, however, occasionally question whether or not I should be playing with a Pro Controller on my TV. This was expected. Such is wireless communication. I successfully got through most of Groove on the Pro Controller, passing most stages on the first try and medaling in many. But the latency is often noticeable, and it did trip me up. It was sometimes a bit tricky to tell when it was latency, and when it was just me playing poorly. Probably, it was some of both. But whenever I was having serious issues, I switched to handheld mode, and was fine. If you’re aiming for Perfects, you’ll probably want to hold your Switch in your hands.

The rhythm stuff, the stuff that really matters in a game literally called Rhythm Heaven, is indeed heaven. And I like the rest of it a lot, too. All the rhythm games have adorable little characters and themes, some of whom appear to be recurring friends from past Rhythm Heaven games, like the beloved Karate Man who’s back to catch some sticks. This is a fantastic game for lovers of cute little guys: I’m a huge fan of the umbrella guys from Brolly Good Show and the squatting germs from Germ Aerobics. A lot of the fun of Rhythm Heaven is seeing the little stories told between games as characters cross over between them, like the photographer from Alien Alphabet showing up in the band in A for Effort 2, or the frog singer from the old DS Rhythm Heaven game of Frog Hop appearing to sing for the jump ropers in Soda Hop 2. I also love the sly ways Rhythm Heaven Groove pokes fun at you when you mess up. The way the Brolly Good Show umbrella guy next to you scowls when you goof is hilarious. I apologize to the car in front of me in Stop N Go N Stop for all the times I hit it. It seemed mad.

But there is something that isn’t quite working for me with the visual components of Rhythm Heaven Groove, and I’ve been having trouble articulating what exactly that is. At first, I thought it might be the natural result of playing on a big TV; I do think this almost clip-art style works better overall when you switch to handheld mode. But that’s not quite it. The best way I can explain it is that a noticeable number of these games feel…less spectacular? than I want them to. One thing I love about past Rhythm Heaven games is the escalation, the story told through the visuals with the music that builds to a feeling of triumph when you nail those notes. 2015’s Rhythm Heaven Megamix really had that down to a science, but Groove feels like a slight step back.

Here’s an example. Compare Rhythm Heaven Groove’s Remix 1:

To Rhythm Heaven Megamix’s first remix, the Lush remix:

Both of these are just the first remix you encounter, so I don’t expect them to blow me away. But Megamix’s actively changes up the visuals of the four games along a theme so that it all feels cohesive. There are even a few little Easter eggs in here, like the Spaceball hitter getting weird little helmets and the alien flying off into the screen at the very end.

The weird thing is that some of Groove’s games and remixes absolutely nail this feeling, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason (or rhythm) to where the big, flashy moments show up. I want to call out Remix 11 as a standout banger. It’s catchy, it’s themed, and it messes with your head when it puts Disc Dog into picture-in-picture mid-measure while you quickly do a Space Sentry count, then come back for the Disc Dog catch. It’s also, just musically, an actual remix of the original Disc Dog track which, if you’re like me and had to play that game repeatedly to medal, you’ll immediately pick up on to either your benefit or detriment.

Games like Sneezy Moon and Soccer Dreams also do a great job of escalating from their original forms to the sequels, becoming more frantic and (appropriately) more visually distracting, and moving the silly stories they tell forward in different ways. Brolly Good Show is another great example: it speeds up, adds a new move, and becomes hilariously French! But then we’ve got weird stuff like A for Effort, which is actively hilarious in its use of what appear to be stock photos, but has the most mundane sequel possible (just puts a band in front of the same stuff, and has less funny photos). The overall effect of this is that there are several stretches of this game’s solo mode where it feels a bit repetitive, or even slow, even when the actual rhythm games themselves aren’t doing anything wrong.

Also the final remix is extremely whatever? The incredible Ado song from Remix 8, the finale of Groove’s “A side,” has so much more juice. Weird choice. Anyway.

Aside from a solo mode, Rhythm Heaven Groove has a pretty solid multiplayer mode with a number of other games built for up to four players, with multiple difficulties unlocked as you progress. Some are competitive, such as a game about racing to eat a piece of cake at the exact right time, while others are collaborative, like the return of everyone’s favorite onion dehairing game, Rhythm Tweezers. The presence of Rhythm Tweezers up top made me think that multiplayer would play host to a larger set of returning games from past Rhythm Heavens, but I was wrong. I don’t think this is bad inherently: we got a lot of awesome new games in Groove! But I do wish we saw a few more returning classics overall. I miss the Chorus Kids! And my hero, the reporter from Ringside!

Then there’s Beatspell, a solo adventure mode in which you progress through levels of monster fights, casting spells on enemies using rhythmic combinations of button presses. I almost feel bad relegating this to the bottom of my review, because this could honestly be a whole game by itself. But I genuinely didn’t think much of Beatspell when I first booted up Rhythm Heaven Groove; I was here for the regular solo mode, after all, and it’s not like the other alternate mode (the multiplayer) had been that deep. But as I went back to Beatspell ahead of this review to get a better idea of what it was about, I realized it was far more than a one-off minigame.

• Back-of-the-box-quote

  “Pa-cho, pa-cho, pa-cho, pa-cho….pa pa pa pa!”

• Developer

  Nintendo

• Type of game

  Rhythm game

• Liked

  Fantastic rhythm game design, cute characters, memorable music, cool adventure mode on the side.

• Disliked

  Some weird pacing in solo mode and overuse of reprises makes it feel a bit repetitive at times, sometimes tough to play docked.

• Platforms

  Nintendo Switch, played on Nintendo Switch 2

• Release date

  July 2, 2026

• Played

  Eight hours. About six to beat the main solo mode, plus bonus time medaling in certain games and playing other game modes.

This mode is…kinda sick! Each level has you casting spells to the beat of different songs, and your accuracy and ability to swap smoothly between those spells determines how successful you’ll be at each encounter, with more spells gradually added to your arsenal over time. There seems to be a ton to play here, too, with songs that gradually increase in tempo and complexity, several meaty chapters to work through, and a randomized roguelike mode available after you finish the final chapter so you can play endlessly. It’s wild to me that Nintendo didn’t advertise Beatspell more! It’s really good!

Man, what a great note for the Switch 1 to end on, truly. Rhythm Heaven Groove is really, really good. I can nitpick stuff like the pacing or lack of returning games for the purposes of writing a criticism, but the whole package, taken together, is everything I wanted for a glorious Rhythm Heaven return. While I won’t be chasing those Rainbow Perfects, I expect I’ll be returning to this game routinely to try and medal all the stages and finish Beatspell. I may even bust it out at small gatherings to see if anyone can steal that delicious cake from me at exactly 3:00. Still, Nintendo, great as Groove is, it’s not going to last me a full decade. Please keep making Rhythm Heavens as good as this one…ideally at a sliiiightly faster tempo than before.