Just Dance 2025

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way at the very beginning. Just Dance 2025 Edition is not a completely new game. Following the same pattern as the 2024 Edition, Just Dance 2025 is instead a very extensive content pack that brings with it several new enhancements to the existing experience.

To be clear, if you don’t already own a Just Dance game, then yes, this will be a net-new experience for you. However, if you already have Just Dance installed, no new icon is going to show up on your console. Instead, the new version will just kinda glom onto the existing version, swelling it with new content.

Last year, I found myself somewhat frightened and confused when loading up the new Just Dance. The game had been converted into a platform – something it had been flirting with for several years. The 2024 songs just showed up in the 2023 version of the game, with a bit of a color swap and a few new features. There were disappointments expressed, and some raised eyebrows concerning the future of the franchise.

This year, I was expecting the new songs to insert themselves into my existing Just Dance experience and had readjusted my expectations somewhat. Now that we have three years’ worth of songs in one spot, I’m starting to appreciate the wisdom of this new approach; my kids no longer have to ask me to install older versions of the game to access favorite songs from years past. It’s all right there. Think of it as like Zen Studios’ Pinball FX, where you buy new table packs, but they all show up in the same UI, and that should help ease the transition.

I can appreciate the fact that instead of reinventing the wheel every year UI-wise, the Just Dance team is now free to spend most of their time constructing interesting and fun new dance experiences for players. The bottom line is that while the UI remains mostly the same, the production values on the videos themselves have skyrocketed.

This doesn’t mean that this new configuration is without problems. There are once again no new trophies to earn this year, and the reward system is so convoluted at this point that we mostly just ignore it. Are these prizes from this year, or last year? Are there any new prizes from this year at all? Do any of the prizes even matter in any meaningful way?  

I should also mention that the UI is fairly difficult to navigate; there is so much content that it took a few moments for my family to zero in on the new stuff. Having a nice campaign-like experience to introduce the new content would be welcome indeed.

I haven’t yet had the opportunity to experience every dance in the game; about 15 songs have been hidden in the pre-release version. As such, I’ve not had the chance to check out the video for “LUNCH” by Billie Eilish, the two versions of “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter, or “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion (and oh lord, what are they going to do with that?).

Oh. Well, that's one way to handle it, I guess.

Still, even with only 2/3 of the songs available during the review period, this is already a great swath of new material for the game. Setting aside the goofball fun of “Spongebob’s Birthday” (which my kids thought was hysterical), there are the usual shockingly huge songs included, including a bucket of material by Ariana Grande (your girl landed five songs in the game with a partnership deal). The size of the artists and songs involved continues to astonish.

Though there are also newer tracks, I’ve found that it’s the instantly recognizable stuff that gets the most initial play. You get two versions of “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus, instant new favorite “Poker Face” by Lady Gaga, two versions of “Basket Case” by Green Day, and a few weirdo tracks thrown in for fun, like “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)” by The Tokens and “Chattahoochee” by Alan Jackson. One of the best things about Just Dance is the way the game can consistently maintain an off-kilter sense of weirdness, and this new batch of songs is no exception.

Kitties!

There is little reason at this point to review the dances themselves; anyone that has touched the game in the last fifteen years knows what to expect. The art style continues to be spectacular and varied, but still recognizable as Just Dance.  Some dances are harder than others, but in general, you can expect to reasonably succeed if you have any sense of rhythm at all. This is definitely a “do your best and you will have fun” proposition.

Technologically speaking, a vitally important improvement has been added into the mix this year. I played Just Dance 2024 for review in a pre-release period, and during that time, the game performed pretty well. However, after the general release, my family noticed that the game turned into something of a glitchy mess; instead of playing the videos directly from the PlayStation, it seemed that Just Dance was streaming them on demand - poorly. This was, for lack of a better term, a total shit-show. Videos would take forever to start, would pause to buffer right in the middle of songs, would pixelate randomly, and would frequently fail to start at all. And, I must add, I run 1Gb download speed at my place – this is not a bandwidth issue.

These problems are still rampant in the 2025 edition of Just Dance, BUT the game now offers players the ability to download up to 40 tracks to play offline. I cannot stress what a major improvement this is; nothing destroys a good time at a family gathering like a game that refuses to load correctly. So, high-fives all around to whoever noticed what a wreck this was and took action to fix it. We immediately downloaded everything in the new game and were perfectly fine after that.

In another very nice touch this year, Just Dance has made some initial moves into accessibility, including a few songs for players to play while seated (my old man knees thank you, Ubisoft). There are also some maps that allow players to select between three on-screen coaches – which is not new, but in this case, each coach offers a different level of difficulty. So, you can set up Grandma to dance to the easy coach on “Poker Face” this year at Thanksgiving, which she will appreciate. All jokes aside, this is a pretty cool touch and is likely appreciated by a large number of Just Dance fans.

As usual, you probably know already whether or not you will be into this year’s edition of Just Dance. The improvements are nice, but the core gameplay is still – and likely always will be – the same. Just Dance is just plain fun, and the pink/purple rave vibes never fail to put me in a good mood. The music delights, the dances are endlessly clever, and the shared fun with family never gets old.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, fix it a little, I guess. But mostly don’t fix it.