Songs that have a difficulty rating of 1 to 2 will lull you into a false sense of security. The game has an easy and a hard difficulty with each individual song having their own difficulty ranking. It all comes down to personal preference in this regard. As a counterpoint however, it is much easier to do the drag notes using the touch controls as opposed to using the shoulder buttons on the controller. Which is frustrating when you are aiming for 100%. The only downside is that on occasion -at least in my experience- notes can potentially be blocked from your line of sight by your hand. Cytus Alpha also includes a touch screen option which is well implemented. Certain notes will have you tap the button, hold the button or drag the shoulder button respectively. There is also the added difficulty of managing the different input commands. When there’s few circles on the screen this is rather easy but once the screen is loaded with them it gets challenging to choose which to tap when the line first appears or to wait for it to bounce back up.
Depending on how accurate the input is will depend on the receiving a ‘perfect’ all the way down to a ‘miss’. This is the music! When the line hits the circles that appear on the screen the button input needs to be pressed when the line is directly in the middle of the circle. Once you have selected a song and start to play you will notice a thin black bar moving up and down the screen. The gameplay in Cytus Alpha is simple to understand and yet difficult to master. There is no doubt that Cytus Alpha is the complete package. The game includes an updated user interface, beautiful graphics and two additional chapters. Cytus Alpha is an updated port that includes over 200 songs – both from the original game and new songs specific to the Switch release. Cytus is a rhythm game which had its humble beginnings on mobile. The CD provided gives you a snippet of what to expect from the vast array of music in the game and it is worth listening to. As with any rhythm game the music is where the game shines and that is certainly the case with Cytus Alpha.