Suri The Seventh Note review: A beautiful rhythm platformer that misses its own beat
A rhythm game is usually played within an environment that features neon lanes of a keyboard and falling notes. Suri: The Seventh Note changes all that by incorporating the rhythm game within a 2D platform game. In principle, that sounds very interesting. You have an island, an Indian mythological background, the protagonist Ajira and a world that creates a song for you as you traverse through it. I fired up the game on my laptop and ignored the pop-up recommending me to get a controller and played with the keyboard like a seasoned PC gamer. What the game offers you is a game worthy of applause both visually and audibly but loses those points as soon as you require it to be accurate, which is essential since accuracy is the key to this whole game.
The controller recommendation
During my playthrough with Suri, there was a prompt to plug a controller in. However, Mouse and keyboard have carried me through a decade of PC gaming, and in this case it was mostly just the keyboard doing the work.
In the beginning, there was some sort of latency test of player's actions, and this aspect is particularly important in this game compared to almost all other platformers that I know because every jump should be made according to the beat. For PS5 owners there is one more pleasant thing - they will experience haptic feedback of DualSense. I cannot give information about it because my test was held on a laptop with an Intel Core i5-13420H, 16 GB RAM and RTX 4050 6 GB VRAM.
A hand-drawn island worth getting lost in
Let me get the good stuff out first, because there is plenty of it.Opting for a 2D game revolving around rhythm-based gameplay is an audacious choice and one that is refreshing in a genre that thrives off repetition. But then comes the art, and boy does it take center stage from there. The hand-drawn scenery is vibrant, the colors are bold and vivid, and each and every frame feels like something straight out of a painting made by someone who clearly put their heart into it. The Indian mythology isn’t a superficial facade either. Tathvamasi Studios draws inspiration from actual culture and tradition and the influences of Rajput fortifications, Theyyam performance art, and Himalayan monasteries are unmistakable. Suri stands out among all the other platformers out there. If the game were judged on the visuals alone, we would be done here. It is not.
The progression system
It deserves credit for its progression system as well. In Suri, there is no need to increase numerical stats of any kind, but instead you get some abilities, which alter your interaction with the environment in a way. For example, with Echo ability, Ajira gains the possibility to use runes and get some extra airtime, while with Phase she can pass through some obstacles as well as activate environmental mechanisms, and with Sonic Attacks she will be able to get rid of obstacles and creatures by syncing with the rhythm. This is an excellent solution for developing a rhythm platformer as such powers maintain the central theme. Excellent game design, indeed. The problem is what lies beneath it.
When the jump and the beat stop agreeing
Here is my main complaint. I tested my latency. I followed every instruction the game gave me. But my jumps were still inconsistent. Some of my deaths were deserved. More than a few were not. I was tapping on the button at the right moment; watching Ajira jump just slightly too early or late; and watching the leaf beneath me move to the side. For a game where timing makes or breaks the experience, this is a major issue. This is supposed to be a platformer which revolves around rhythm, and should therefore work perfectly, like a precise metronome. It does not.
Perfection from minute one
This is compounded by how difficult it is. There is an introductory training phase, but it teaches very little in terms of skills as it just pushes you into the deep end. You are of progressively introduced to the rhythm system and there is opportunity for fail, but it feels like Suri expects perfection right from the get-go.
Level progression in Suri is linear and does not give you different paths to level up through or practice on the side. What should have been a learning experience becomes trial and error, trial and error becomes memorization, you are not improving at the game; you are simply memorizing the level. Consider this: a rhythm game that forces you to rote memorize the obstacles forgets all about rhythm.
Suri has no difficulty toggles, no lenient timing windows and no extra checkpoints. For a game this punishing, that omission stings. Players who might love the world and the music will bounce off the wall instead.
A combo meter
The game does keep a counter of your successful jumps, and watching it climb is a small thrill. One misstep and it disappears. That feels disappointing, because it is all you get. No rewards, no bonuses, nothing unlocked. Just a little intrinsic satisfaction, which is fine until you remember how hard this game makes you work for a clean streak.
A story you can play with one eye
This concept works very well. Ajira is from the island of Suri, which has nature intertwined with rhythms. There is a rhythm corruption that has killed her father and now her mother is also infected. She goes on a mission to find a magical fruit from a tree to save her mother. That was a really interesting premise.
The execution leaves a little to be desired. The story is slow and I never really fully felt pulled in. The cutscenes relied on minor changes of portraits and basic text of dialogue. Even though they needed to hit you right in the chest, they didn’t entirely. Part of it could be due to the lack of voice acting in the game and so the game became one that you could just play in breaks while working on something else on the side. That, by no means, is a bad thing because I do enjoy games you can play to take your mind off of things.
Music that builds a world, and repeats it
The audio gimmick is definitely the most ingenious one. The music in Suri isn’t simply background music. It dynamically builds up, with different platforms, dangers, and successful jumps by Ajira giving off individual tones, and thus a complete song gradually appears after finishing one level. When everything works as intended, it seems as though the player creates the music.
However, when the player fails – something that happened to me quite frequently – the song loops back to its beginning. Because the platforming is so hard and demands constant retries, you end up hearing the same short musical phrases on repeat until they wear thin. A lovely idea starts to feel like a loop stuck in your head against your will. This could very well be just a problem of skill on my part but I won’t know until I try it with a controller as well.
There were sound effects glitches too. Not very frequently, but sometimes the sound effects related to specific obstacles would play without the said obstacles being visible on the screen. When it comes to a game like this, a sound effect of this kind shatters the harmony very quickly indeed.
Despite the flaws, I kept finding myself drawn to the graphics and the music when it wasn’t starting over again and again. Suri is one of the more beautiful 2D games that I have played in recent memory, based on mythology and an aesthetic which should get much more space in games. It is a shame the difficulty and the story could not keep up with the brushwork. As much as I would like to see it improve, there is no doubt that Tathvamasi Studios has built a world worth watching.
SKOAR! - 6/10