Tips for climbing the Rhythm Tower

Upon beating the main campaign of Hi-Fi Rush, you can access a new challenge gauntlet called the Rhythm Tower by speaking to Korsica in the hideout. This mode functions similarly to the Bloody Palace from Devil May Cry 4 and 5 in that it has you dealing with multiple floors of enemy waves and the occasional boss while adding more seconds to an initially strict time limit. If you only care about the gear rewards, then you conclude your current run at one of the many rest areas and cash in whatever you earned. But if you want to clear all 60 floors of the Rhythm Tower in Hi-Fi Rush, this guide will share some tips on how you can do just that.

Related: Hi-Fi Rush – how to find and complete all Spectra Doors challenges.

Hi-Fi Rush: Tips for climbing the Rhythm Tower

Focus on building time during the early floors

When starting off the Rhythm Tower, you only have a measly 30 seconds on the clock. This obviously isn’t enough time to clear 60 floors’ worth of enemy waves, so your first priority should be to add as many seconds to the clock as you can. Landing Beat Hits, parrying attacks, activating parry or dodge counters, and finishing fights with a high ranking on your Rhythm Meter all help in increasing the time limit. Early on, using Quick Beat Hits is an especially effective method for keeping the time limit in check. Even if you don’t hit an enemy with the Quick Beat Hit, you still gain seconds on the clock just by timing it correctly.

Landing parry or dodge counters isn’t strictly as necessary, but if you throw one out every once in a while, it will still help greatly with the time limit. Parrying, on the other hand, is essential, as even though individual parries may not give much time, parrying strings of attacks in quick succession will boost the timer considerably. Even just parrying a single attack is useful for making sure the timer doesn’t deplete too quickly. As for earning a high rank on your Rhythm Meter, simply mixing up your attack strings and staying aggressive against enemies should go a long way.

If you use enough of these tricks to increase the time limit by several minutes early on, you won’t have to worry about the time as much later on and can focus more on simply surviving. Even building up to, say, three minutes on the clock early on will set you up for success during later floors.

Try to spend time on items only during later floors

When you arrive at one of the Rhythm Tower’s rest areas, you have the option of spending seconds on the clock to earn consumable health and battery items. As noted above, though, it’s in your best interest to gain as much extra time on the clock as possible early on. Because of this, you’ll want to refrain from using up any valuable time on these consumables in the early floors, even if you took a lot of damage from the previous encounters.

Many enemies throughout the Rhythm Tower will drop health items upon death. And the equippable Parry Health chip makes it so that successful parries have a random chance of dropping health items. Additionally, the ‘Pick Me Up’ special attack heals you by a hefty amount at the cost of only two segments of your Reverb Gauge. You should rely on these healing methods during the early floors instead of buying healing items.

By the time you reach the later floors and accumulate more time, you can more safely afford to spend some seconds on healing during rest areas if you’re low on health. At first, you should go for the roulette, as that is by far the cheapest option available at only seven seconds apiece. Even if you only get a battery or nothing at all for some of your roulette attempts, there is still a good chance that you’ll get a decent healing item without sacrificing too much time.

Keep in mind that a single medium health pack costs 30 seconds, so you can roll the roulette up to four times to potentially receive the same healing item or better at a lower cost. Only consider going straight for the healing items if you come up short after several rolls and still have time to spare.

Juggle enemies off the floor

Performing juggles in the air, or ‘aerial raves’ as the game calls them, is extremely useful for the Rhythm Tower. They allow you to more easily focus your attention and damage on a specific enemy while staying out of range of most enemy attacks. Because of this, the dashing heavy attack is your best friend, as it’s the fastest and most reliable method for launching enemies into the air.

However, keep in mind that unless you’re fighting the most basic enemy types, you won’t be able to launch an enemy whenever you want. For the bigger enemies especially, you will want to fill up their stun gauge by landing hits and parrying their attacks. Once the stun gauge is full and you hear a shattering sound effect, you can launch the enemy and deal as much damage as possible before they recover. If you’re dealing with a particularly troublesome enemy and want to fill their stun gauge as fast as possible, you can use Korsica’s wind blasts to make the gauge build up more quickly.

Use the training room for enemies you have trouble with

Even after finishing the game once, it’s likely that there are still some enemies you’re not used to dealing with. Either they have some tricky parry timings with some of their attack sequences, or you are simply unfamiliar with their tells. Fortunately, Hi-Fi Rush contains a surprisingly in-depth training room that lets you fight against nearly every enemy in the game aside from bosses.

Before tackling the Rhythm Tower, you should head to the training room and take some time practicing against any enemies that give you trouble. The good thing about the enemies in Hi-Fi Rush is that they all have consistent, readable tells for each of their attacks and strings. So even just a little bit of time spent studying and parrying their attacks will help you immensely in the Rhythm Tower.

Hi-Fi Rush Rhythm Tower tips: Don’t be afraid to use special attacks

Special attacks can be the difference between a fight going poorly and a fight going well, so don’t hesitate to use them if you find the right opportunity. You can equip whichever special attacks you’re most comfortable with, but a good beginner option is ‘Pick Slide.’ It only costs two Reverb Gauge segments, has a large area of effect, and can instantly destroy enemy shields without the need for your partners. Shielded enemies can be fairly time-consuming to deal with when fought in groups, so you can speed up the process significantly with a well-placed Pick Slide.

What helps is that, unlike in the main game, any remaining Reverb Gauge you have carries over between fights. So right when you begin a fight with a group of shielded enemies, you can use Pick Slide right away to neutralize their defenses before building the gauge back up to use in the next encounter. And again, the Pick Me Up special attack is exceptionally useful when you’re low on health. To maximize your special attack usage., you should extend your Reverb Gauge as much as you can before going into the Rhythm Tower. And it goes without saying, but you should also do the same with your health bar so you can afford to take more damage before using Pick Me Up or another healing method.

Watch out for the new enemy variants

As you climb up the Rhythm Tower, you’ll encounter a handful of unique variants of standard enemies that are completely absent from the main campaign. As a general rule, these variants don’t get staggered as easily as the enemies they’re based on, and they boast more durable stun gauges to boot. Additionally, the variants have considerably more health than their normal counterparts, so be prepared to beat them up for quite a while if you don’t have a high-damaging special attack equipped. The stronger versions of the buzzsaw enemies are particularly tanky, and they don’t stay stunned for very long either.

However, the good news is that these special variants don’t behave any differently from their counterparts. If you know how to fight the standard versions of these enemies and deal with their attack patterns, then you’ll know how to fight their variants, at least for the most part. As long as you keep their increased health and more durable stun gauges in mind, these variants shouldn’t give you too much trouble.

Be prepared for the bosses

Aside from the fight with Korsica in Track 7, every boss in the game makes an appearance at some point in the Rhythm Tower. These are probably the scariest parts of any given run, as they have more complex attack patterns than the standard enemies and generally drop fewer health pickups. Additionally, unlike the standard enemies, you don’t have the option of practicing against them in the training room.

At the very least, Mimosa and Kale have entire tracks dedicated to them, so getting a few practice rounds in and getting a feel for their movesets is relatively easy. On the other hand, QA-1MIL, Rekka, and Roquefort are all placed at the end of long stages, making practicing against them quite time-consuming.

Even still, if you’re not used to a particular boss, fighting them in their respective tracks and studying how they work can go a long way. Bringing in a few health tanks so that you won’t immediately die after losing all your health can also help you greatly. Also, keep in mind that completing individual phases of the fight will add quite a few seconds to the clock, so don’t panic if you initially see the timer ticking down more than you’d like. Just make sure that you have full health before the boss, and you should make it out alive even if you perform moderately well in the fight.

Hi-Fi Rush Rhythm Tower final tip: Abuse certain parry opportunities

Some of the best things that can happen during a Rhythm Tower run are the parry sequences that the stronger enemies initiate when low on health. Not only does the timer stop ticking down throughout the entire duration of these sequences, but each individual parry, of which there are usually many, still adds seconds to the timer like normal. On top of that, equipping the Parry Health chip will make it very likely that at least one of these parries will spawn a health item. All of this makes the parry sequences incredibly useful for gaining resources and generally taking a break from the action.

On top of this, if you’re particularly confident with your parries in regular gameplay, you can use them to farm both health (again, only if you equipped the Parry Health chip) and time if you find yourself low on either. This is particularly useful against the buzzsaw enemies, who sport several multi-hit attack strings that they throw out at a rapid pace. Keep in mind that many enemy types simply aren’t as aggressive as the buzzsaw ones are, so only abuse this strategy if you feel that you won’t spend too much of your in-game time doing it. By keeping these tips in mind and generally playing smart, you will have a much higher chance of finishing the entire Rhythm Tower in Hi-Fi Rush.

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Those are our tips for conquering the Rhythm Tower in Hi-Fi Rush. Be sure to check out our review.