In Falsus Review

When you come to In Falsus, the easiest thing to notice is where it comes from. Lowiro, the studio behind Arcaea, has taken the rhythm-game experience it knows well and moved it to PC with a very different structure. Instead of building only around songs and charts, the team has combined an arcade-style rhythm game with a visual novel, voice acting, artwork, and a card-based progression system.

The result feels like a project that offers more than a playlist while still making the music the main reason to keep playing. The bigger idea is not just to give you difficult songs, though. In Falsus puts those songs inside a narrative experience.

The rhythm game and visual novel are tied together more closely than you might expect.

You move through visual novel sections, unlock more content, build cards, and then return to rhythm battles. It is an unusual structure, and depending on what you want from a rhythm game, it can either make the package feel richer or make getting to the music unnecessarily slow.

In Falsus, the story is told through a linear visual novel built from connected vignettes rather than branching routes. You get a definitive narrative instead of choices that send you down different paths, and there is no route system to replay for alternate outcomes.

The writing digs into mental health struggles, alienation, the pressure placed on younger generations, toxic relationships, trauma, and the different ways people cope with hard experiences. The story also uses a fantastical setup in a far-future world that doesn't initially present itself as you might expect.

In Falsus follows one straight route with no choices or alternate endings. It also lacks a codex or story recap, and the visual novel can leave several seconds of transition and interface loading before dialogue begins, making a replay after a break harder to follow.

This narrative choice shapes how the characters, voice work, and story access come together.

You can see influences from Arcaea in the overall atmosphere, while the far-future premise can bring 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim to mind. The character artwork is one of the stronger parts of the package, and important characters, including Nia, Mei, Iris, Story, and Ayame, receive plenty of attention.

The dialogue between characters is voiced, with key female characters receiving full voice work in the visual novel scenes, though much internal narration remains unvoiced. In Falsus is not interactive in the traditional visual-novel sense. You follow one path from beginning to end, which makes the long presentation more noticeable when you are primarily there for the rhythm gameplay.

There is no codex or convenient recap for major events, either. If you put the game down for a while and return later, you do not get much help remembering everything that happened, so keeping your own notes can become useful.

The biggest issue with In Falsus is how much the visual novel controls your access to the rhythm content. You start with only a small portion of the roughly 70 songs available. To reach more of them, you have to progress through the story. A fast-forward option moves through most scenes quickly, but it isn't a true skip.

Song gating shows up constantly, even as the story slowly reveals what you've unlocked.

Some sections still require you to move through them manually, and the game will sometimes stop on dialogue it considers important. Those pauses are especially noticeable because they can also signal that you have just unlocked something.

That something might be another scene, a card, a Remembrance for freeplay, a dive, or a song. The result is a strange rhythm where you constantly wait for the game to finish presenting story material before you can get back to what you actually came to play. Once the narrative gets moving, the unlock pace becomes more reasonable, but the system still feels more restrictive than it needs to be.

In Falsus can also feel slow in its presentation. There are moments where you can sit through several seconds of transition, fading, and interface loading before the first line of dialogue arrives. That kind of dead time is not disastrous, but when you are already fast-forwarding through scenes, it makes the process feel even more drawn out.

Still, once you reach the rhythm game, the reason for all the attention on In Falsus becomes clear. The actual rhythm gameplay is excellent. It has a higher skill floor than many rhythm games, and its one-handed 6K approach is immediately different from more familiar layouts.

Understanding how those controls actually work explains why the learning curve feels so steep.

Your keyboard inputs handle the tapping while mouse movement becomes part of the action, particularly when you are dealing with the side lanes. At first, the control scheme can feel awkward because your fingers and buttons do not map together in the simple one-button-per-finger way you might expect.

You have to learn how to move around the controls instead of treating every input as a direct finger assignment. That can be uncomfortable at first, but the design starts making much more sense once you adapt. The game rewards that adaptation.

After enough practice, patterns that initially seem strange begin to happen naturally, and you can settle into a flow where your hands coordinate without constant conscious thought. You may replay difficult charts repeatedly, but the repetition has a clear purpose. You learn the patterns, build the required coordination, and eventually get that satisfying moment when something that previously felt impossible suddenly clicks.

The difficulty ceiling is another major strength. The hardest material can feel comparable to difficult SOUND VOLTEX 14–15 charts, so you are not going to run out of challenging content quickly if demanding rhythm gameplay is what you enjoy.

Difficulty comes from charts built around the control scheme, though some issues remain.

Either hand works for exploration, so you can approach the unusual control setup in more than one way. The high skill ceiling gives the rhythm side a reason to keep pulling you back. The charts themselves are among the strongest parts of In Falsus because they take advantage of the control scheme instead of simply forcing familiar patterns into unfamiliar controls.

Lowiro brings the chart-design experience it developed through Arcaea, and that experience shows. The songs give the charts room to be varied, while the unusual inputs keep you adjusting how your hands work together. However, some usability problems remain on top of that otherwise strong foundation.

Note readability on the side lanes can be difficult. Bright objects can sit against white beat lines while moving through transparent or moderately bright tracks, and the contrast does not always make the information easy to read. That becomes more frustrating when the control scheme already demands a lot of visual attention.

The game does not help much with customization, either. On PC, you can bind keyboard keys, but broader peripheral support is limited. If you want to use mouse buttons or other devices, you may need an outside solution. You also have relatively few options to change the interface or improve visibility.

Accessibility gaps aside, a card-based progression system adds another layer to manage.

For a game that already asks you to process unusual notes and movement, more accessibility and UI customization would have made a meaningful difference. Outside the rhythm charts, In Falsus uses a card system that adds an RPG-like progression layer.

You collect IoTA and place those pieces into card shells according to the available recipes and restrictions. As you progress, those restrictions loosen, allowing you to create stronger versions of your cards. The system can feel like a puzzle at first, but its practical purpose is mainly to adjust difficulty and give you enough power to survive later story battles.

In Falsus, the cards matter because story charts can eventually require enough power to reduce the enemy meter and move forward. There is an assist option that can handle this part for you, so you are not completely forced to master the crafting system.

In freeplay, the cards are much less important unless you want to farm IoTA. That separation helps because it keeps the rhythm experience from depending on progression mechanics when you are just playing songs. In Falsus, it works because its music is another strong part of the package. The song roster is varied, and the lineup gives you plenty of different material to learn.

Song variety comes down to a strong lineup of artists shaping the game's sound.

Artists include Feryquitous, void, t+pazolite, Kobaryo, cybermiso, and virtual Nice dog workS. Feryquitous' role in the sound design is especially notable because the audio has the energetic, tactile quality you want from an arcade-inspired rhythm game. The background music during the visual novel sections doesn't feel like a track just looping endlessly either.

The artwork and voice acting complement that music well. The visual novel looks polished, and the voice work gives important scenes more presence, even though not every line of internal narration is spoken. The combination of art, audio, and story is clearly made with care. That production quality makes the package feel substantial, not like a rhythm mode with a story attached at the last minute.

In Falsus also offers a fair amount of content for the launch price. Around 70 songs, a substantial visual novel, voice acting, artwork, and the card mechanics make the package feel considerably broader than a basic rhythm-game release. A launch price around $50 AUD can initially feel high for a niche PC rhythm game, but the amount of material included makes the cost easier to justify. 

One thing you keep in mind with In Falsus is the lack of competitive infrastructure. There is no multiplayer and no official leaderboard system, which stands out more because lowiro is known for a competitive rhythm-game audience. If you are looking for online competition, rankings, or a social score-chasing layer, that absence leaves the game feeling less complete than the core charts deserve.

Despite those missing features, the rhythm gameplay still stands out as In Falsus' biggest strength.

What you have now is a substantial single-player rhythm game whose strongest feature is still the moment-to-moment charting. Ultimately, In Falsus works best when you are actually playing its rhythm stages. The controls demand patience, the charts reward practice, and the music gives you plenty of reasons to keep retrying.

The unusual one-handed setup can look confusing at first, but once you adjust, it creates a distinctive rhythm experience that feels built around its own rules rather than copying a standard layout. The title succeeds because its rhythm foundation is much stronger than its surrounding friction.

You enjoy learning the patterns, adapting your hands to the one-handed 6K system, and working through the original songs. The visual novel, cards, and progression add structure, but they also create the biggest barriers. Your main reservation is that the game sometimes makes you work to reach the part you enjoy most.

Song gating, weak UI customization, difficult side-lane readability, and the absence of multiplayer or leaderboards all stand out. None of them changes how good the charts are, but together they make the overall product less polished than its strongest component.