You better have a good sense of rhythm, because these games are gonna put that sense and your patience to the test.
Rhythm Tengoku
- Rat Race, despite being in the second set of games unlocked, is much more difficult than anything else in its set (besides possibly The Bon Odori) because the only audio cue is a stoplight which is only present in the practice, meaning that unprepared players have to rely almost entirely on visual cues. Fortunately, in both of the remixes it appears in, the stoplight is used. It also gets brought down to its likely intended level of difficulty in Megamix, since over half of the game now has the stoplight and the game itself has a lot more audio cues added in.
- Remember how earlier it was said "very few games will give the player a Try Again for not performing near-flawlessly"? Quiz Show is one of those very few games. It's a basic minigame where you only have to perform the right amount of button inputs, the actual rhythm you perform doesn’t matter, and if you fail to input the correct amount of button presses the game gives you a Try Again on the spot.
- Ninja Bodyguard is a game that has a lot of rapid inputs without any real sound cues to lead the player. The second-to-last cue is especially infamous, as you need to deflect four arrows in a row (which is also required to get a Superb, and to get the Skill Star in Megamix).
- Its sequel, Ninja's Descendant, gets even more fiendish, with one cue going up to five projectiles in rapid succession, and another that has two that are so close together they're near-instantaneous. Naturally, getting a Perfect here is a daunting task.
- Polyrhythm 2 is rather infamous for (appropriately) having a part where you have to copy two rhythms at once. Normally the left and right sides mesh into each other, but not here.
Rhythm Heaven
- Both Love Lizards and Love Lab, due to how the game handles registering motion inputs. Love Lizards is a lot simpler (since you can hold the screen the entire game), but Love Lab requires you to flick at the end of its segments, making it possible to either accidentally drop/fling the flask or wind up holding onto the flask for too long. That said, Love Lab doesn't suffer from That One Level nearly as much as Love Lizards, since the game has an extremely cozy vibe.
- Rhythm Rally is one of the most cited, due to its overuse of flicking and its incredibly tight input window. Its practice session has a tempo that's way slower than the actual game, which will catch first-time players off-guard, as it sets itself up as a big stumbling block. It returns in Megamix, but it's a lot more tolerable when it's exclusively controlled by button presses.
- Rhythm Rally 2 is even worse! Not only does it have the fastest consistent BPM of any Rhythm Game in the entire franchise (only gimmick segments of some games are faster, such as Big Rock Finish C), but the song is twice as long, and now you’ll have to deal with four quick serves in succession! At least it was placed in a proper position in Megamix as the fourth to last game.
- Big Rock Finish manages to be disliked despite only having a single pattern — the difficulty comes from finding the tempo and then performing the proper inputs. You only get to practice the first and last song in the queue, and have to play out the remaining six by ear. Notably, a song's tempo changing is a trick that few other Rhythm Games utilize. The best feature of it is a Good Bad Bug in Megamix, where quitting a game during the fastest segment increases the input timing for every game, making Keep the Beat games much simpler to deal with.
- Fillbots 2 is pretty frustrating, as it goes for much longer than other minigames, has a track that uses a lot of unconventional offbeats and sometimes isn't properly synced with the bots. It's easier to turn the music down and focus on counting the beats yourself as the music can distract you from getting the timing right.
- Rockers 2. Remember when the bandleader from Frog Hop told you the game was controlled entirely with the touchscreen? This game defies that principle (you have to use the L/R button to bend the pitch of the notes, which you have to do quickly and precisely to properly match the lead rocker) and ruins the game for any who happens to have broken shoulder buttons.
Rhythm Heaven Fever
- Working Dough involves you memorizing long, varied patterns with no breaks in between that require quick button pressing and switching those presses to get them all. Not to mention that the Rhythm Game spans about 2 minutes.
- Working Dough 2 can be even worse. It replaces the extended patterns of the first one with nasty, off-beat patterns, some of which fail to sync up to the music, and entire sections with almost no accompanying music. And then it combines the two problems towards the end.
- Donk-Donk's difficulty is as absurd as its premise. The game involves maintaining a rhythm while triplet patterns get thrown at the player, all while dealing with strict input windows, with the only thing keeping it from being a Keep the Beat game being that the base rhythm gives you a one note pause.
- Love Rap, which ends up comprising the last twonote medals most people get, due to Love Rap being in swing rhythm. There's a notably nasty segment towards the 1:20 mark where you have to hit your input on the offbeat, making the input window much smaller than normal. It’s not as hard in Japanese due to how the phrase used, "Honto," is treated as 3 syllablesnote , but the translated version of the cue, "Fo' sho," registers as 2 syllables to an English speaker.
- Tap Troupe. The major reason is that the song constantly switches between a base rhythm and a 4/3 polymeter, with the last tap being when you're expected to return to the base rhythm. Due to this, the last tap's timing can feel very inconsistent, causing the game to feel like it expects you to memorize the song to people who lack the ability to keep track of a polyrhythm.
