so i finished Hi-Fi Rush earlier and it was way better than i was expecting it to be. from the trailer and the very early game, it was very easy to assume it was going to be grating, but once it starts introducing your ally characters, they start carrying more of the narrative and i thought the character-driven story they end up telling was pretty fun. i was rather fond of the party by the end of it, and the main guy isn't all that bad, even if he is a bit of a Season One Sokka at times.
i think the rhythm-based components of the game are kinda mid, but they never felt actively bad to me, even playing on hard, so that's something. the licensed music is a lot less prominent than i assumed it was going to be, and the original music that plays for most of the game is alright but (with an exception or two) kind of forgettable just by virtue of needing to be playing all the time without getting annoying. the final few licensed song segments were pretty good, at least.
anyway, one of the main characters is "what if Harriet RWBY was a combination mechanic/hacker voiced by Futaba Personafive" and one of the bosses is basically Red Action OKKO with a Scottish accent so i was simply doomed to simp from the start
minor spoiler under the cut that is probably relevant to the demographic on this Webbed Site
while this is definitely an instance of "Jill loves to eat table scraps", there are at least three instances of Peppermint (the hackerwoman) blushing at Korsica (the pink-haired Scot) and the world will be a better place once fan artists set their big brains on this pairing


