REVIEW – Maestro doesn’t try to convince you that you could stroll into a conservatory tomorrow and take over the podium – it sells a smarter fantasy: setting the tempo with both hands, with your whole body, dead center on an opera stage. The staging and gesture language nail that “I’m in control” rush, even if the game quickly makes it clear this isn’t a simulator, but a sharply tailored rhythm game with a conductor’s costume. We tested Maestro on PSVR2.

Someone once said Maestro “perfectly captures what it feels like to be a conductor”. I’d pay good money to say that in front of an actual conductor and watch the face they make – the same expression a sommelier would wear if you poured them a bargain-bin bottle and demanded an emotional response. The developers absolutely want you to feel like a baton-wielding virtuoso. Just don’t confuse that with an accurate job description.

The trick works because most people don’t really know what conductors do. From the seats, it can look like a lot of arm choreography, a few sharp stabs at the air, and – somehow – the orchestra stays glued together. Maestro leans into that outside view: it doesn’t replicate the profession, it recreates the performance of the profession, then builds a game system around big, readable, stage-friendly gestures that whisper, “Relax – this will look convincing enough.”

The Visuals Conduct, Not The Score

Maestro isn’t chasing realism – it reverse-engineers the idea of conducting into satisfying rhythm-game mechanics. First comes the motion, the flair, the pose; then the “translation” into inputs and timing. That flips the relationship in a subtle way: on paper you’re directing the music, but in practice the on-screen cues direct you, and the orchestra follows the system’s expectations. It’s a compromise, sure, but it’s a working one – you’re the star on stage, while the score stays politely in the wings.

Like any rhythm game, it speaks in symbols. Arrows slide toward you and tell you which direction to sweep your hand – you want to hit the timing as they cross a horizontal reference line. Circles light up in different spots, and you point to “activate” specific sections of the orchestra. Ramp-like streaks of light script your left hand: yellow means raise it, blue means drop it. The setlist is basically a greatest-hits tour of classical showstoppers: Carmina Burana, Swan Lake, Ride Of The Valkyries – and on the PSVR2 version you also get the more cinematic, crowd-pleasing lane, like Star Wars and Duel Of The Fates (as separate add-on content).

The core rhythm-game recipe – timing, clear prompts, rewarding precision – hasn’t really changed in decades. What Maestro adds is a very VR-specific payoff: with PSVR2 hand tracking, you can drop the controllers and conduct with your hands, for real. That alone changes the feel. There’s something genuinely freeing about not “performing” through plastic grips, but through your own body. The idea of bodily rhythm play isn’t new, though: Dance Dance Revolution was doing full-body input back in the 90s with arrows and a body that follows. Maestro just dresses the same principle in opera-house velvet.

A Familiar Formula In A Tuxedo

Some VR games get their magic from physics and space in a way flat screens can’t – Walkabout Mini Golf and Eleven Table Tennis are perfect examples, where your motion and the “object” you’re handling are the whole point. Maestro is modern in a different way. It doesn’t reinvent interaction so much as transplant a proven rhythm template into VR and let you perform it in the air. That’s not a flaw – it just means the wow factor comes from staging first, invention second.

And yes, it’s fun – especially in short sessions. I can’t picture many people “conducting” for an entire afternoon, or even grinding it for two straight hours without the repetition setting in. Maestro fits that classic VR pattern: a 15-20 minute hit where you smile, buy into the fantasy, then put the headset down. Not because it’s bad, but because the concept doesn’t really want to become bigger than it is.

It lands squarely in the “VR attraction” bucket that still makes up a huge chunk of the catalog: clever, instantly readable, great to show friends, easy to shelve once the novelty fades. It reminds me of early cinema’s short spectacle films – what scholar Tom Gunning called “the Cinema of Attractions”, where the whole point is the stunt, the “watch this” moment. And every time I play something like this, I think the same thing: ideas this strong would hit harder as chapters inside larger games, not as the main course. Blade & Sorcery triggers the exact same feeling – one great core idea, executed well, begging for a broader framework.

When A Gimmick Becomes A Real Chapter

The good news is that this evolution is already happening. The developers behind Horizon Call Of The Mountain almost certainly learned from single-concept VR experiences like The Climb: take a strong core action, then scale it up with exploration, combat, a narrative spine, and big set-piece moments. The result isn’t just a VR trick you demo once – it’s a full game where the “special part” is one segment among many.

Maestro could absolutely shine in that role. Picture it as an Assassin’s Creed set piece: you impersonate a conductor to get close to a royal dignitary, the baton is actually a blade, and the finale isn’t applause – it’s controlled chaos on cue. I enjoyed “conducting” Carmina Burana, but honestly? I’d have enjoyed it even more if the performance ended with one clean, quiet gesture in the front row, then smoke and an exit. As it stands, Maestro is exactly what it promises: a polished, elegant VR rhythm game that plays like an appetizer rather than a full meal – but it’s a tasty appetizer.

-Herpai Gergely „BadSector”-

Publisher: Double Jack SAS
Developer: Double Jack
Genre: VR Rhythm Game
Release: June 19, 2025