#fred3ric

The general idea is that they're music/rhythm games in the style of Guitar Hero and Rock Band (although more specifically they're probably even closer to the older Beatmania), except they star Frederic Chopin. The first game is entirely remixes of Chopin's music, the second is entirely original but generally in the style of modern popular artists, and the third goes back to the approach of the first but uses several different classical composers. The music in the third was by far the most fun and interesting to me, but a lot of people seem to really like the first, which didn't do a whole lot for me.

The story is dumb and bad and poorly written and has questionable voice acting, although that mainly applies to the first two. The cutscenes are insufferably long and frequently just an excuse for racist stereotypes of whatever country you're in at the time. Thankfully the third drops almost all of that and just gives you an extremely brief introduction to whichever cybernetically enhanced composer you're facing in that level and then gets out of your way.

The art was also noticeably improved for the third one, with a lot more detail and better animation. I assume ditching most of the cutscenes let them focus more on the actually good parts. Although oddly enough a couple things that were nearly perfect in the first two are a little wonky in the third, like the note timing feels a bit off. I can mostly get over that because there's literally no point to trying to get perfect timing on every note instead of good enough. It affects your score, but I don't think the game actually cares about scores any more than I do.

Speaking of notes, the note charts are...ok, I guess? The first game they were mostly fine but not great, the second had some really questionable decisions (I'm pretty sure the final level was created by someone who's literally never seen a piano in their life), and the third was generally pretty good. It would really make my life easier if the stupid notes didn't spin and also moved at a constant speed though. Please steal the layout of any other music game that does that right, because Harmonix and whoever else do it that way for a good reason. At least the third game stopped flashing combo notifications (EXCELLENT!) right over the note area...

And getting back to the racism I mentioned earlier, the first two games really lean pretty hard on depicting everyone in an extremely stereotyped way, usually relying entirely on negative stereotypes. I'm pretty sure the only female character in the series (other than the three muses, who basically don't do anything) is a villain, and so is every non-white character. The third game avoids most of those problems by ditching 95% of the cutscenes and dialogue, which improves the game significantly. Also there is one exception to the negative stereotypes in the first two games, and that's Poland and anything Polish. They're presented pretty much universally positively, while everything else is made fun of. I know the company that made the games is from Poland, and if it isn't composed entirely of edgy white cishet Polish boys with questionable politics I would be astounded. The internet has informed me there's a pepe somewhere in the third one, which doesn't surprise me at all after having played the first two...