takt op. Symphony, the game adaptation of the takt op. series, has been released after a long delay. Read on to learn what we think about the game's expansive list of classical music and high-quality artworks in our review.

takt op. Symphony Review and Score Explanation

takt op. Symphony Score Explanation

takt op. Symphony Review: A Mobile Audiovisual Triumph

takt op. Symphony is one of those games that leaves those who know nothing about mobile game adaptations of an anime series with a raised eyebrow. After all, most of them tend to fall flat on the ground in the center of a burning crater. That is to say, they fail spectacularly. However, the promotional videos released on their YouTube channel made people warm up to it. There was no overblown promotion, no promises of extravagant gameplay, etc. There was only music.

This game loves music. In fact, it may exist solely to be a love letter to classic orchestras and operas. Anybody who has tried out the game can attest to that.

"Oh, what a surprise; a game about music has excellent music." Yes, many other examples exist, such as Arknights and Punishing Gray Raven. However, while those games were a balancing act of gameplay and musical prowess, takt op. Symphony stands out as unique from those, for better or for worse.

takt op. Symphony has entirely focused all of its energy (and budget, probably) on creating some of the best musical pieces you can hear in the market today. It has also ensured an appropriately beautiful set of character artworks to represent them by hiring LAM, a prevalent freelance artist known for his bright, colorful, and distinct art style.

But unfortunately, the game's visuals and audio are its only strong points.

It's a common joke among the Arknights community that Hypergryph, its developer, is a music company pretending to be a game developer because of the game's high-quality scores. However, Arknights' music isn't its only praiseworthy aspect. It also has quite a robust gameplay and story to it. On the other hand, Game Studio Inc., whose work in takt op. Symphony has gameplay and story that pales in comparison to its music and art, might fit that description a whole lot better.

takt op. Symphony Review

Pros of takt op. Symphony

Things takt op. Symphony Got Right
The Game's Music is Jaw-Droppingly Good The Artworks Are Amazing Exploration is Fun and Rewarding

The Game's Music is Jaw-Droppingly Good

There are a lot of mobile games with excellent music nowadays; as mentioned earlier, Arknights is an easy example, as well as Punishing Gray Raven and miHoYo's games such as Honkai Impact 3rd, Genshin Impact, and Honkai Star Rail. Those games can thank their aural successes to the hard-working teams behind them, with Vanguard Sound Studio leading Punishing Gray Raven's trance music to great heights and miHoYo's in-house studio HOYO-MiX taking charge of their games' wildly popular pieces.

Similarly, takt op. Symphony also owes its music to Noisycroak, a Japanese sound production company specializing in video game music. Their pieces can be seen in games such as Blue Protocol, NieR:Replicant, and Alice Fiction. However, before words completely take over this review section, try to first listen to this piece, the theme music for one of the game's characters.

In case you started wondering, yes, you just listened to a modern remix of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Specifically, it's a segment of the composition called March of the Toy Soldiers from Act I, which the character design faithfully illustrates. It's widely regarded as one of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's most popular works. And, of course, that's not the only example.

Well-beloved compositions such as Richard Wagner's Die Walküre, Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, Antonio Vivaldi's Le Quattro Stagioni, Georges Bizet's Carmen, and another one of Tchaikovsky's beloved work, Swan Lake, can also be found in the game.

And yes, even Mozart's "Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman", more commonly known as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", is there too.

This is the kind of music the game embraces and proudly presents to its players. They are all memorable pieces whose beauty can only be understood by their timelessness. It's everywhere, from the game's lobby music, the gacha pulls, every character's status windows, and even its promotional materials.

It's important to note that these compositions aren't simply the game's background music. They make up the fundamental backbone of the series' character concepts, with many of the main characters being the anthropomorphic versions of a classical piece, referred to as Musicarts. Their melodies are an integral part of not only their character but also their skills, synergies, and weaponry.

This is certainly not the first time a mobile game has ventured into modern adaptations of classical compositions. Punishing Gray Raven, for example, has its version of Clara Schumann and Heinrich Heine's "Sie liebten sich beide", albeit in trance form. However, takt op. Symphony's complete resolve to embrace the genre is unique due to its use of anthropomorphic musical pieces. Unlike something like Eternal Sonata, a game based on the life of Frédéric Chopin, takt op. Symphony can integrate far more musical pieces into their roster, as it is not restricted to following just one composer.

The Artworks Are Astonishingly Beautiful

The character designs are provided by LAM, a wildly popular illustrator known for his work on WACCA, the arcade rhythm game by Marvelous. He's also worked on many Vtuber models, such as Nijisanji EN's Vox Akuma and Fulgur Ovid, and Hololive ID's Kureiji Ollie. Known for his bright, colorful, and distinctive artstyle, his popularity has recently skyrocketed among many other names, such as Mika Pikazo.

Carrying over the art style that made him so famous, LAM has blessed takt op. Symphony with a cast of brilliantly-illustrated characters, each overflowing with personality from just their images. The anthropomorphized classical compositions represent their pieces well. For example, Twinkle Star's childish appearance perfectly illustrates her music's synonymity with the famous nursery rhyme. The Nutcracker's doll-like appearance is also very appropriate with the composition section the game adapted as her theme music.

The game is also generous with quantity, with each character having multiple artworks by many other great and prominent artists. These are presented through the game's cinematic storytelling, the characters' status screens, and equipment artwork (Memories). They are mostly Live-2D as well, so the characters move as if they're animated rather than just static images on your screen. To top it all off, the story mode also has several fully-animated scenes!

Exploration is Fun and Rewarding

takt op. Symphony provides its players with multiple areas to explore. Whether it's getting around the central hub, taking a stroll around town, or doing some dungeon-crawling in the Battle Simulation mode, each area has things to discover and interact with to provide a healthy immersion. For example, you can interact with the Musicarts on the central hub and pick up items from the ground. You can even play minigames, such as a quick cooking minigame where you create refreshments or challenge the girls to Mutarot, which is basically a game of Old Maid.

Dungeon-crawling at the Battle Simulation offers more of takt op. Symphony's core gameplay, though. It features combat sections and quite a lot of puzzle-solving, searching for hidden passages, and discovering treasure chests. And to further incentivize exploring every nook and cranny of every area, takt op. Symphony provides an alluring set of rewards for completing a dungeon thoroughly, such as upgrade shards for your characters and currency to pull on the gacha.

Each area also offers opportunities to develop your relationships with the Musicarts, often through dialogue. These are usually presented to you through essential cutscenes for the story to continue. But sometimes, these are hidden, and players must diligently comb through the area to find locations of interest where potentially important events with the Musicarts can be triggered.

Cons of takt op. Symphony

Things That takt op. Symphony Can Improve
There's Not a Lot of Music in Combat Player Choice is an Illusion

There's Not a Lot of Music in Combat

takt op. Symphony is a game about music. The visuals follow that idea faithfully. The storyline barely gets a passing grade, because despite following the premise, it is full of cliches and is such an average plot.

The combat system, however, utterly fails at it.

The game uses turn-based combat with relatively simple mechanics. Each character has skills they could use with varying effects, such as healing their allies or weakening their enemies. Those skills charge up a different tuning meter, which is basically their energy, depending on the tuning color. Saving up an appropriate amount of tuning energy allows a Musicart to perform their Peak Performance, this game's version of an ultimate skill.

Only specific skills can charge tuning energy. However, most skills only have a limited range. That's why character positioning is essential to plan for in the game so that you can maximize each character's skill usage. Regular attacks and skills that shift your character's placement in battle do not provide tuning energy (though those that change your enemies' placements do), so there's a bit of strategy involved in planning moves.

Have you noticed anything? I didn't mention anything regarding music. That's because there's a severe lack of anything incorporating music into the core gameplay. Although the terminologies are music-adjacent, nothing utilizes anything related to their musical scores. The most players are treated to is the BGM being changed to a character's musical piece whenever they use their ultimates.

That's what makes the gameplay so disappointing to experience, especially when games such as Hi-Fi RUSH, Crypt of the Necrodancer, and the Ar tonelico series have proven that it's possible to make excellent gameplay with music incorporated into it.

That's not even the end of it. In terms of sound design, the game severely lacks any weight to the combat sound effects. At most, they'll just sound like really loud but distant noises, with no real punch to them.

I really wanted to give takt op. Symphony's Audio a perfect score of 10. I really did. However, with the game lacking a good set of sound effects to immerse the players in combat, it is quite the dealbreaker for many.

Player Choice is an Illusion

During the prologue, there were points where the game presented me with options to respond to a character's question. Sometimes, I would be rewarded by an increase in the character's affection meter, and sometimes I wasn't. At first, I thought it was just a predetermined event where my choices didn't matter, since this was just the prologue.

But as I was rerolling and trying out different options to reply with, I soon discovered that there is actually a set of answers that can get the most out of each event. It also meant that my replies really DID matter. Choosing the appropriate option for each Musicart increased their favorability. And since this was the prologue, a section in the game rarely made to be revisited, that made me excited.

"There's a correct way to play the game," I initially thought. "Finally, a game where my decisions had consequences."

Unfortunately, that glee didn't last long. Soon after I finished rerolling and got a decent account to work with, I realized that the stages I'd just played through were all replayable. Not only that, the game actively encourages you to replay those stages if you choose the wrong words to respond with. That's because each stage's full-clear requirement, instead of having to fulfill specific combat criteria such as finishing it within a certain number of turns, is dependent on the number of events you trigger and how correctly you respond to the Musicarts. That was such a massive disappointment.

One of the aspects that made the characters appealing to me was that they didn't have easy-to-understand personalities. At least not from when you first meet them. Understanding their preferences was a slow learning experience. Making mistakes when dealing with them is inevitable. It felt realistic. Although it probably wasn't the game's intention, those first few moments gave the impression that how you answered to those people around you mattered.

takt op. Symphony Story Plot

The game is set in a futuristic world where monsters called D2s have appeared on Earth. These monsters came from a meteorite containing Black Night Siderites. They detest music and are inclined to destroy it, effectively causing a stop in humanity's musical culture as it becomes dangerous to play music. It is up to the Symphonica International Organization and the Musicarts, anti-D2 weapons possessing the power of musical scores, to defeat them and bring music back into the world.

The player takes on the role of Takt Asahina, the protagonist of the game as well as the anime series, who wakes up from a long slumber while suffering from amnesia. Awakened abruptly by Destiny, a Musicart who felt that they needed his power to protect the Symphonica, Takt is thrown into a life or death battle with no idea of what's going on.

Who Should Play takt op. Symphony?

takt op. Symphony is Recommended if You Enjoy:

• takt op. Destiny
• Eternal Sonata
• Classical Music

Fans of MAPPA and Madhouse's takt op. Destiny will easily find a home in the videogame adaptation of their work. Most of the anime characters make an appearance in the game, and the story even hints at it being connected with the original work.

On the other hand, those who haven't seen the anime will still enjoy takt op. Symphony as a love letter to classical music. For example, players who love Eternal Sonata will find the same kind of adoration for these old compositions in this brand-new mobile game.

Is takt op. Symphony Worth It?

If You're a Fan of Classic Orchestra, This Game is a Must-Try

The game is a musical and artistic experience. There are few games in the market, aside from HoYoverse's products such as Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact, that can match it in those aspects. But even then, takt op. Symphony still distinguishes itself from the rest by embracing a genre that's often forgotten by most of the audience mobile games typically target.

Also, the game offers many activities for players to engage in outside of combat. There's rarely a dull moment in the game, even when players are waiting for their stamina to recover. Character interactions between the main character and the Musicarts are similarly abundant, from inviting them to tea parties, experiencing their side stories, and even strengthening them through the game's many ways of improving their performance.

takt op. Symphony is a product that defies the convention of the usual failures of game adaptations of an anime series. It's a beautiful game with many pleasing experiences to offer. If the developers can maintain this level of passion for the arts, then the game is bound for a decent amount of success despite its relatively mediocre gameplay.

How takt op. Symphony Matches Up to Recently-Released Mobile Games

Mobile Games That Came Out Recently	Pros	Cons
Brown Dust 2	While both Brown Dust 2 and takt op. Symphony both have excellent art and music design, the latter possesses a more centralized theme. The Musicarts embody the musical pieces they are based on, which directly reflect their character designs. It provides the game with more cohesiveness with regard to the game's overall aesthetics.	Brown Dust 2's gameplay is significantly more challenging and strategic. Instead of being limited to a linear formation with four available character slots, Brown Dust 2 provides players with a grid of 12 squares on which they can freely place five characters. With enemies that can deal very high damage regardless of their levels, each encounter in Brown Dust 2 is a high-stakes chess match between the player and their adversaries.
Aether Gazer	takt op. Symphony has a far, far better audio design than Aether Gazer in terms of the themes and sound effects. It also features an auto-play mechanic, which allows players to simply watch the combat while they enjoy the background music.	Being a hack-and-slash game, combat in Aether Gazer is much more fast-paced, action-packed, and hectic. Most of the time, the enemies won't give the players any time to think, and they'll simply have to adapt on the fly.
Undawn	Unlike Undawn, takt op. Symphony placed a lot of effort into their art and music design. Simply having the game running on your phone is already a pleasurable experience. Not only that, playing the game is rewarding, as having more Musicarts on your team allows the players access to more classical pieces to listen to.	Undawn is a survival game where planning can benefit players anywhere from a short to a long-term period. The real-time combat also creates more exciting gameplay, regardless of Undawn's inherent mediocrity.

How takt op. Symphony Matches Up to Similar Mobile Games

Mobile Games Similar to takt op. Symphony	Pros	Cons
Alice Fiction	While Alice Fiction's music and artwork certainly are good, the amount of care and passion placed into takt op. Symphony's every character's illustration and on every note in their themes are on a different level. The game is about the Musicarts and the classical pieces they embody. takt op. Symphony makes no effort to hide that, and in fact, takes every measure they could to show it by providing the musicarts a large amount of space on every interface while their music plays at every opportunity.	Instead of classical pieces, Alice Fiction adapts legendary figures from history into their futuristic, trendy style. Its gameplay is also quite different and quite a bit more engrossing, where players must match skill tiles within a time limit to launch attacks. This mechanic fits quite well with the game's modern, digital theme, as it plays like an arcade game and even sometimes like a rhythm game during very heated battles. Its fast pace, engaging combat and neon-colored graphics combine to make any player hyped for every encounter.
Project Sekai Colorful Stage	takt op. Symphony is a showcase of classical music with an RPG backdrop. And just like any RPGs, it has a comprehensive character growth formula encompassing different methods to invest in the strengthening of Musicarts. It is very much unlike Project Sekai's more one-dimensional mechanics in improving their idols.	Being a rhythm game, Project Sekai's gameplay is far more engaging than takt op. Symphony's where you can leave it up to the AI completely. The game also features a more diverse selection of songs that would appeal more to the younger audience or those who grew up listening to the popular tunes of today.
Honkai Star Rail	takt op. Symphony's gacha experience is far kinder than Honkai Star Rail, featuring rates almost triple that of the latter and a much better economy. On top of that, the daily missions for takt op. Symphony have much more variety, which includes having to battle, participating in minigames, interacting with their Musicarts, and holding tea parties.	Honkai Star Rail possesses better character models, featuring fully-3D models that can move more dynamically both in the overworld and in battle. It also has better, more exciting animations. The character placements might be linear, similar to takt op. Symphony, but every slot functions the same way. This forces players to synergize their teams more to handle a wider variety of situations, such as slotting in a Preservation character to tank hits.

takt op. Symphony Trailer

Game8 Reviews

takt op. Symphony Product Information

Title	TAKT OP. SYMPHONY
Release Date	June 28, 2023
Developer	Game Studio Inc.
Publisher	DeNA HONG KONG
Supported Platforms	Android, iOS
Genre	RPG
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	Teen
Official Website	takt op. Symphony Website

Alfonso Majarucon

Writer of things from game, anime and manga reviews to news and webnovels. Hopelessly addicted to story-driven games, especially cross-platform ones. Favorite games include Punishing Gray Raven, Arknights, Limbus Company, Elden Ring, Touhou, Soul Nomad and the Disgaea series (except 3 and 6). Avid..