So I bought a riffmaster...

I've played Rock Band and Guitar Hero games since 2008. During a time in my youth, I was one of the best players in my school. Nowadays I play Clone Hero or Phase Shift from time to time with my old GH World Tour Guitar, which I've repaired beyond recognition, but I wanted to take the leap to current gen and bought the PDP Riffmaster for PS5 and my honest opinion is:

It's Mid at the best case scenario and quite uncomfortable and very difficult to play in the worst.

The worst part of the guitar is the strumming bar, it feels off without "clicking" and the fret buttons feel weird doing a clicking sound. There's no "back" or "touch pad (select)" button on the controller so you can't check your quests or activate the overdrive without the tilt, speaking of which, it's very random and sometimes doesn't activate, even when you put the guitar vertically, so it's frustrating. And even more when you stop to think that a guitar controller from 18 years ago did well all the stuff I mentioned before.

Having said that, and ignoring a bit those details, I have to admit that is very fun to play Festival this way, It took me just a couple of tries to get used to the new "note engine" that it's more forgivable than the Rock Band ones. It's cool that a game based off Rock Band have continuous support with new songs and some bug fixes now and then, a very cool 2nd wind for rythm games, and definitely I'm happy with my purchase to enjoy it even more.

The controller can improve a lot, there are a lot of design flaws that can impact your experience in game, like being unable to choose what emote do when you open the emote wheel, you're restricted to the top choice of each category. Using the built in stick should be a core function, but it's only used for moving your character.

I tried the controller on PC and it works good, you have to do some extra steps to get it running for games like Clone Hero and others but it's usable. I'd recommend to wait for a revision of the controller if you haven't bought one yet and you're curious to try it out. But if you don't mind those details I mentioned then you'll enjoy the Guitar.