This is all to say that the overall direction of Keylocker as a JRPG is top notch. It contains beautiful pixel art, excellent soundtrack, thorough worldbuilding, and difficult gameplay. It’s only held back by a lack of optimization of its Switch port.
Keylocker claims itself to be a Cyberpunk turn-based rhythm JRPG inspired by the Mario & Luigi series and Chrono Trigger. Knowing this, I went in with the expectation that rhythm gameplay would be the core element, be it tapping to the beat, notes on a note highway ala Guitar Hero or DJ Hero, or hearing my musical attacks change the flow of battle along with its soundtrack. The few screenshots I saw looked Mother-esque – a cyberpunk Undertale or Deltarune, if you will.
Imagine my surprise when rhythm was treated as a secondary element, manifesting as minigames and side quests that acted as threads that intermingled into an overarching narrative in a universe where music in all its forms has been banned from society.
Keylocker is a JRPG about music, but don’t go in thinking that this is a game where you’ll be presented with a strong focus on rhythm gameplay. You could argue that its turn-based battles (which involve hitting a few inputs at specific cues separate from the battle song banging in the background) are similar in nature to a rhythmic gameplay loop, but timing those battle inputs is tied to visual cues instead of audio cues. It’s an unforgiving and grittier variant of the Mario & Luigi series.
There, I said it. Keylocker is unforgiving, but it gives players a chance to try again from a recent point instead of an autosave that was most likely done hours before.
In a cyberpunk-fueled future where Saturn is home to doppelgangers and cybernetic beings, music has been outlawed. The lowest beings in the Saturnian caste system host illicit concerts while plotting a revolution to overthrow the Satellites that bind the world to eternal silence. It is here where I am introduced to Bobo, the lead singer and doppelganger of her older twin brother, Dealer. Bobo begins her story incarcerated for singing, only to find a music robot named Rocket upon her explosive escape from one of Saturn’s multiple prisons.
I was to guide Bobo, Rocket, and occasionally Dealer, up and out of the sandy wastes as part of this musical revolution of sorts.
Keylocker looks like a 2D-inspired RPG and it plays like one, too. Its battles took me to grids of various construction where I could choose to move a character’s position or attack an enemy. Each of my attacks presented me with a quick-time-event (QTE) that dealt critical damage when timing a button press perfectly. Too early or too late, subpar damage. I could wager electric power (EP) to deal additional damage or I could use a turn to rebuild my EP for next. This is all the while I had to keep track of my party members’ life points (LP). Keylocker’s nomenclature might be convoluted at first, but much of the naming schematics and typical JRPG stats exist in all but name.
Several classes were made available for me to assign to each character. I thought that making Bobo a Samurai gave her cool armor and access to katanas. Imagine a samurai with a green electric guitar – that was my Bobo! I opted to make Rocket a samurai, too. I mean, why not? A futuristic samurai robot complimented Bobo quite well. Dealer was a hacker, for lore reasons.
At around the five-hour mark, I was able to select a secondary class for some of my characters, thus granting them characters additional attacks and access to new weapons and skills they otherwise would have missed.
Bobo, Rocket, and Dealer’s movesets constantly evolved thanks to new equipment that I came across in each new chapter. When I gave Rocket a flamethrower, it changed his windup animation and made it so that he could roast the entire board and sap their EP. Bobo could quickly follow up with a fully charged harpoon attack and obliterate an entire row of enemies.
The QTEs played out similar to those from Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. Most attacks had a windup animation and had me press a button at a specific moment. There were a handful of other types of musical attacks that simply had me press specific buttons.
Nothing too difficult, except when it came to timing those danged inputs at the perfect moment.
On the Nintendo Switch, there are moments where the hardware worked against me, most frustratingly in the form of frame delays and lag in battles that had multiple concurrent animated elements in the background. Some battles became overwhelmingly frustrating due to me being unable to properly time an attack or a block based on what the animation cadence should have been (based on prior battles) instead of what it was thanks to the lag. One such battle had me against two nurses who were constantly refilling their EP shields and were able to attack me multiple times in succession before I could get a single hit in all the while my animation frames slowed to a crawl. Another boss battle resulted in a crash halfway through, requiring me to start over.
I’m confident that optimization is on the way, but it’s unfortunate that the Switch’s version feels subpar. I watched some of the developer’s livestreams in the Steam client, and no such animation lag and frame delays existed in the same battles. I fear that due to the lagginess, there will be more players who give up too easily and move on to play something that feels smoother on their little consoles that could.
In theory, though, Keylocker has the potential to live up to immersive greatness – the same turn-based battle immersion that the M&L series have perfected so well. Hitting that “perfect” attack right after Bobo’s character sprite flashes white at the split-second is oh so satisfying; perfectly blocking an enemy’s attack with Rocket’s beefy robo arms and landing a massive counter attack is relieving, especially when Rocket is at low health. Playing an active role in a turn-based battle, even in the form of pressing a single button at the right time, makes the grind meaningful. Who wants to sit through repetitious battles of pressing the same two buttons and same animations over and over?
Not me, that’s for sure.
At several points, the “Save Dinosaur” (more on this character in a minute) had me give a concert to the NPCs I had saved earlier in the game. This little concert minigame played like a simpler version of Guitar Hero with notes flying downwards down a highway to get a high score and using blue lightning power to add a multiplier. Another rhythm minigame took place at the end of the third chapter which used different buttons. It was at this point where I got a greater taste of Keylocker’s excellent original soundtrack, featuring vocals and all.
I usually appreciate it when RPGs break up the monotony of the grind with minigames and sidequests, especially when these side objectives grant something meaningful like secret weapons and powerups. Keylocker was clever in how it disguised these side objectives in nature and location because of how I always got something out of going out of my way to do something else. I could easily pull up the Quest menu to see what was available, but it didn’t tell me where I could go.
When RPGs show their hand in the form of giving players a glimpse of what is available to do at any given time, it tells me that the developers don’t want me to waste time wandering around looking for something that might or might not exist. Sure, I could walk up to just about every single object and get a unique dialogue box, but I wasn’t forced into doing these things as part of the main quest.
I think of Toby Fox’s UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE as JRPGs done right with meaningful gameplay and worldbuilding. These titles have amassed a cult following for good reason: They’re fun, they have a banger of an original soundtrack, and they have a deep lore that is full of humor and wit. That lore emerges in multiple cutscenes with absurdism and charm that warrants a player to set the time aside to grow emotionally attached to the NPC on the other side of the screen…even if that NPC turns out to be a boss.
Keylocker has several of these threads, but the discovery falls short in creating lasting attachments between players and the pixelated Saturnian characters. There may be an instance where you come across an enemy who refuses to battle you because they just got a new set of acrylic nails or a pyramid-head-shaped spirit who has chosen the pious, rather than righteous, lifestyle, but these characters are blips. The amount of worldbuilding that Moonana conducts is deep yet thorough, but it lacks the special sauce that elevates an otherwise benign NPC to a meme.
The Save Dinosaur is the exception to this, however. It feels weird for me to talk about a single NPC who isn’t even a main character, but I cannot help but wish that there were more silly characters like the Save Dinosaur. At the start of the game when I was looking through the menu, I saw that I could save by entering the “Save Dinosaur” menu who encouraged me to save early and often, otherwise he would go hungry. This silly little dino would show his face in random rooms throughout my journey, sometimes sticking his head out of the ground or waiting for me in the corner of a room.
I am not saying that Save Dinosaur stole the show in terms of Keylocker’s humor, but the closest thing to a consistent punchline emerged in that single NPC. I wanted consistency from the other beautifully drawn characters, you know? If they are given the time to have unique portraits and personalities, I want more of these personalities to emerge frequently in the story if not to remind the player of the thought that went into their creation.
This is all to say that the overall direction of Keylocker as a JRPG is top notch. It contains beautiful pixel art, excellent soundtrack, thorough worldbuilding, and difficult gameplay. It’s only held back by a lack of optimization of its Switch port.
