YMMV / Rhythm Doctor

• Breather Boss: Out of all the current bosses, One Shift More is probably the easiest as there’s no unique gimmick, no distractions and it plays like a normal level... doesn't stop it from being a sad song though.
• Difficulty Spike: The game gets noticeably harder with Act 3, where most songs start requiring you to keep track of multiple patients simultaneously, with more challenging rhythms.
• Harsher in Hindsight: During the tutorial, Ian apologizes, as he started a ranked match in a video game and can't teach you how to play as a result, so he pushes the task onto Paige, much to her annoyance. This is Played for Laughs and not dwelt on for long, but that little joke becomes much less funny after Act 3, which revolves around how Paige is horribly overworked due the hospital being so understaffed, and this is causing her severe stress which affects her physical and mental health.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: "Cocole" for Cole/Nicole.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The window Interface Screw in certain stages, while hugely impressive and innovative, are prone to dropped inputs depending on the computer you run. Thankfully it can be mitigated in the settings by turning on simulate mode, which basically emulates a fake desktop within the game.
• Shocking Moments: Most of the bosses (aside from Breather Boss "One Shift More") have surprising gimmicks, but the dancing game window of "All The Times" in particular has been known to make streamers absolutely freak out when they first experience it.
• Signature Scene: The Act 2 boss, "All The Times", is the most iconic level in the game due to the shocking gimmick of the window dance. Players will often say that if you want to give this game a fair shake, you should play up to the end of Act 2, which shows how much passion and creativity went into it.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The music that plays during Beans Hopper (itself an arrangement of the stage select theme) sounds a lot like the tutorial music from the Rhythm Heaven series. Given how open the creators are about the game's inspiration, this was likely intentional.
  • The music that plays in 2-2N, "Unreachable", sounds a lot like "Beautiful Lies" by B-Complex in some parts.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The situation of the Stevensons, an elderly couple.
    • This is mostly iterated in 3-3, Distant Duet. Both of them are in the hospital—Mr. because he slipped and fell, Mrs. for less defined reasons. Throughout the first segment, photos of what can be presumed to be the two of them scroll past, from childhood through marriage—a segue to today, with them both being in their old age. Midway through the song, Mrs. Stevenson confides in you that Mr. Stevenson hasn't been picking up the calls she makes every morning, and tries to ask for assistance—but due to the limitations of the Rhythm Doctor software, response is impossible. While the player knows that he's perfectly alive (being treated by Ada on the lower half of the screen), she has no way of knowing.
    • Later, in 3-X: One Shift More, Ada goes to attend to Mr. Stevenson; while we learn that he hasn't broken anything, she rushes through the run-down, making him need to make a few attempts to note that Mrs. Stevenson hadn't called since yesterday. (While contradictory, it could be that one party or the other forgot, as they are growing older—but it's still troubling.) But before Ada can say much more, her pager goes off, and she brushes off Mr. Stevenson's concerns as she frantically rushes to the next patient. The end of the song has the camera panning to Mr. Stevenson's room, with him forlornly holding a framed picture. While the pixel art makes the details vague, one can assume it's of Mrs. Stevenson.
    • Thankfully relieved during Act 5, "Seventh-Inning Stretch"; The Stevensons are finally reunited, and dialogue suggests that the sweetness of their reunion is a Tear Jerker in-universe—However, since the player is busy attending to Lucky, they don't get to see any of it and have to just overhear other characters talk about it secondhand as it happens.
• That One Attack: The final section of the fourth boss. The preceding part switched the beat to Uncommon Time, which can already mess up your sense of rhythm, but in the final section, the level of Interface Screw, both visual and auditory, reaches an all-time high, to the point where the only thing you can really rely on is your own internal metronome. If you go off-beat just once, it's nearly impossible to find the rhythm again since both the visual and audio cues are screwed up to the point of being useless.
• That One Boss: 5-X takes what was amazingly catchy and fun about 2-X and turns it into one of the most deceptive boss stages that gives Super Battleworn Insomniac a run for its money, combining all the new gimmicks in act 5 with the Interface Screw from All the Times.
• That One Level: 5-2 has become a notorious level for players of all skill levels with its introduction to freeze beats. Not only that, but the second half of the song changes to a very unorthodox 5/4 time signature, which doesn't seem too bad at first if you've played the latter half Super Battleworn Insomniac a lot, but what makes this level even more irritating is the song itself; it's just a lo-fi tune with several vague musical layers and no consistent back beat. Be prepared to instantly lose your S+ rating unless you've studied the song top to bottom.

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