Script:
Putting this in front of my review as a forward. I wrote the below a few days ago, and now, reading it back, I see that the review has a pretty angry tone. A part of that is due to many issues that I have opened with Ubisoft Support, such as issues on the Ubisoft Connect platform that didn’t get resolved until just as I was writing this. I realize that it may have colored my review far more negatively than originally intended. I will accept that Ubisoft is a garbage company and shouldn’t be supported, but everyone already knows. I just wanted to clarify this before the beginning so people don’t think… “Why is this dude so angry?”. Well, now you know, it’s Ubisoft’s trash policies and software, of which Rocksmith+ is a part.
Ubisoft has reached a new low. Rocksmith 2014 is one of my favorite games for this channel. It is an incredible educational software that teaches you Bass and guitar while you are having fun. When Ubisoft announced Rocksmith+ back in 2021, I was absolutely stoked. I was so ready to jump back into this series. However, when it was released in 2022, the reviews were scathing. It was trashed by many online reviewers and the Rocksmith Reddit, especially on the switch from a one-time purchase to a subscription-based model. I decided to wait a few years for the software to mature and grow out of its baby stages. I know that brand-new Software-as-a-service platforms like this take a bit to get their footing. I waited two whole years later and finally picked up Rocksmith+. It still fucking sucks.
[Introduction]
Rocksmith+ teaches you how to become a rockstar by teaching you how to play Bass, guitar, and piano. I’ve done quite a fair number of these music subscription services, such as Yousician and HelloSimply’s apps. The original Rocksmith and Rocksmith 2014 games were one-time purchases, and downloadable content was offered. With Rocksmith+, the format has changed to subscription-based. It costs one hundred and forty dollars and is a competitor to the services mentioned above. While offering way less, might I add? I recommend watching my music series playlist after this one if you want to learn more on those platforms.
Before I jump into the game, let’s talk about my challenge. I wanted to play Rocksmith+ every day for sixty days for at least twenty-five minutes per day. I was planning on starting with Bass before jumping into Guitar and Piano. That’s how I do all my reviews: I do each instrument mode separately. In reality, I couldn’t finish the bass mode due to bugs in the Software. That’s how bad Rocksmith+ and Ubisoft’s game client is.
Rocksmith opens up with a few tabs. First is the learn tab, where you can take video lessons and go through practice tracks. This will increase your skill levels, I guess. The levels break down from Beginner to Advanced. That correlates to the song levels, going from basic to advanced. As you play the songs, it will get progressively harder as you add in new notes one at a time. That is illustrated by the bar before each song, which goes from one percent of the notes to a hundred percent of the notes.
It’s weird how that whole system works. You upgrade your skills by playing the practice tracks and songs, and I assumed once you beat the basic lessons, you will get all basic songs to a hundred percent of notes. However, it didn’t, and the overall difficulty of the songs never increased. As you can see from the recordings, all the songs pop up slowly. It’s because my rating was super low despite getting nearly one hundred percent rating in some advanced songs. I would beat the basic lessons, beat half of the intermediate lessons, and then jump into a low-rating song, and it would say that I am worth ten percent of the notes. I would then take one hundred percent of that section and unlock twenty percent of the notes. It’s on something like a Coldplay song where the basslines are like four different notes. Comparing how difficulty in this game works compared to Rocksmith 2014+, I think it’s a case of the algorithm being broken. Another reason why Rocksmith+ sucks has been added to the list.
Next is the home tab, which displays highlighted news and songs you recently played and saved. For some reason, they have a permanent beginners’ song tab here. You can also click this little flag on the top to go through an introduction challenge. As you can tell, the app is mostly about newcomers, leaving us experienced players down in the dumps.
Next is the discovery tab, where you can look at Rocksmith+’s huge catalog. Last year, Ubisoft stated that Rocksmith had eight thousand songs. They have to be up to ten thousand by now… it’s just a massive collection of songs, from Paramore to Dream Theater to Elvis to Coldplay. They have a ton of songs available for you to play. If you have read the reviews on Rocksmith+ in the past, you will see that the bad song catalog was one of the biggest complaints, and they have listened to that. Every month, they announce a brand new, highly requested artist. This came five months ago from an update titled Music Strategy Update. They wanted you to know that they are working on fixing your complaints… a year and a half after the game was released.
Now, they’ve been hard at work before then. Releasing new lessons, adding new songs, and releasing a mobile app. Two years of non-stop adding content that should have probably already been there. I hate to be so negative, but seriously… I work in software development, and we did many updates and new features then. I’m not dragging the developers of Rocksmith+. Oh no, the slow updates just mean management is not allocating enough people to the project. They probably saw the numbers slipping and thought, “Hmmm… we spent all this time on the platform. Let’s finally adequately staff this team”. Which explains the monthly updates and constant new features.
But again… this is all that should have been in the game. Ignoring the lack of a song catalog, another complaint is missing stuff from Rocksmith 2014. The daily challenges include the Guitarcade mode, the session mode, switching user profiles for multiple people, and differentiating songs between picks and fingering styles. There is just so much missing in 2014 that isn’t in Rocksmith+. That is crazy because there is stuff missing from the original Rocksmith that is missing in Rocksmith 2014 and Rocksmith+. Hearing your song after playing is gone, the story mode is gone, and unique venues are still missing for this trippy background instead. Probably to save licensing costs for the House of Blues and other venues. The entire scoring functionality of the original Rocksmith is still missing. That could have been amazing. The scoring could lead into a leaderboard mode, which is again missing in a Rocksmith game. Yousician has a leaderboard with weekly challenges. Why doesn’t the gaming company with this feature in most of their games not have this?
Lessons are missing… as of writing this script, there is still no slap bass or singing lesson. When comparing the learning path of Rocksmith+ to Yousician, there isn’t even a discussion. Yousicians have levels and progressive modes and music theory courses. Rocksmith+ has scattered lessons here and there. When completing the practice track, you would think more practice would be available, but there isn’t. Maybe a recommended song that has the technique you just learned, but no. Rocksmith+ is just so bad there isn’t a point.
Now, let’s get to the elephant in the room. Ubisoft Connect. That is one of the worst gaming clients I have ever used, and it is required for Rocksmith+. I’ve had multiple issues with the servers being down while playing. In fact, I took a break a couple of times to see what the latest update would bring. After this update, I can’t get into Ubisoft Connect at all. I tried reaching out to support, but they are useless in sending me the same guides as always. I might have to charge a credit card back. Something that I have never actually done before. Ubisoft Connect is just that much of a piece of shit.
I’ve played Rocksmith for forty-nine miserable days. I do not count when I would pop in to play a White Stripes song or something. Over those forty-nine days, I played for a total of twenty hours. That is not as long as I played Rocksmith 2014, but it was a great game. Overall, I am so disappointed in Rocksmith+. I tried to like it but I couldn’t. It’s just so buggy, so bad that no number of new songs can fix it. They need to improve the core software and experience before even thinking of adding another song. There was nothing to motivate me to play, and everything was pushing me towards quitting. Maybe Rocksmith+ will be worth something in two more years, but until then, don’t even bother giving Ubisoft your money.
So, guys, that is it for today’s review of Rocksmith+. If you liked this review, please give this video a thumbs up. In fact, go through all of my videos and give them a big thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel for more videos. I try to put up a new one every week. If you have any ideas for videos you want me to make, please leave them below. I will do any video topic that isn’t illegal or will hurt me too badly. Follow me on X and Instagram @truejackjenk. Visit my website at jack-jenkins.com. Lastly, have a fantastic day, everyone. If you are watching this, then you are just incredibly amazing!