You can't bypass the rhythm minigame. Personally I wondered why this wasn't a bigger aspect of the game. The game is all about the music but you only ever deliver one bar of music, and only then for 'special' moves? Which I guess brings us to your second point. It mixes up a lot of different gameplay without excelling in much.
- RTS was bad. I've not played the multiplayer because it's all RTS. I've finished the game and the only time I lost an RTS battle was the second to last fight. The next time around it was simple. I still don't know what I did differently.
- Driving was ok if pretty simplistic. I fell off lots of cliffs (to my death). The game is so spread out you have to drive a lot. The only reason for making it so spread out seems to be so all the secrets can be hidden. Which is ok if you're encouraging exploration but the exploration wasn't satisfying.
- Action was good when you were fighting by yourself.
- The boss fights required such obscure strategies the game had to tell you what to do.
- Minigames were repetitive other than the driving minigame. The enemies changed, pounding X didn't.
All in all a confusing mashup of gameplay.
