Rocksmith® 2014 Edition REMASTERED LEARN & PLAY

Absolute beginner here. I'm a week in, and I've gone from zero to... something more than zero. While there could definitely be a LOT more for complete beginners, it has a lot of good core elements, and the guitarcade feature makes technique practice a lot more interesting (aka I'm actually doing it).

I am using the realtone cable for simplicity, and it works great.

Makes learning really fun and presents a simple version of songs that increases in difficulty as you get used to them. It also does all the pedal work for you and tells you what it's doing so you can ignore the pedals and effects at first, but then replicate them on your own later.
BAD - to be the only source of learning for the guitar. it could cause you to develop bad habits.
GREAT - to be a tracker for exercises and a way to learn new songs

It's great for learning how to play, Just difficult to set up and get audio, took me forever

Use Customforge and ignition search and you are good to go, Dont buy any of the songs when you can just get them all for free, Also install CDLC, Ubisoft is Greedy and makes bad games now they dont deserve your money at this point, Chainbrain on youtube has good tutorials for getting songs

It does not work anymore. It simply don't open. It is my first and last game I buy from this developer. Now they want you to pay for a full microtransaction version. Do not recommend this

Messed up my audio interface drivers completely. Had to do a full reset to fix it.
Literally not at all compatible with audio interfaces – you need their crappy Ubisoft cable.
Bad experience.

Just download a slightly less legal version honestly, they usually have integrated audio interface support.

I had an audio problem in windows 10. Excesive buzzing sound at the start make it unplayable. So I found the following fix in a forum, I hope others with this problem can get it fixed by doing thisÑ

in the rocksmith folder in rocksmit.ini you need to change the following valuesÑ

-select your audio output which you want to use and use the 48k,16 bit format
(like this: http://imgur.com/9zzkY9M)

-go to your rocksmith.ini which is located in the instalation folder (Steam\steamapps\common\Rocksmith2014) and open it up and simply copy the following to the audio section

[Audio]
EnableMicrophone=0
ExclusiveMode=0
LatencyBuffer=1
ForceDefaultPlaybackDevice=1
ForceWDM=0
ForceDirectXSink=0
Win32UltraLowLatencyMode=1
DumpAudioLog=0
MaxOutputBufferSize=0

now you should be good to go, not too much distortion, no crackling noises and good quality with every sound card. Dont forget to save before exiting.

Only buy this when its on sale for less than 3 dollars so you can install custom DLC (CDLC).
The modding community put a piracy checker on the CDLC fixer , because I guess they work for ubisoft or something so you need to buy the game for it to work.
The game doesn't allow custom songs by default, so an official non cracked copy and the fixer is required.

Aside from that, the games note lag corrector and the tuner are absolutely terrible.
If you play bass mostly like I do, tuning the low E string never works, and the game gives you a very short window to get the tuning perfect or it will be off by a few semitones which affects if you hit notes or not.
Just use the tuner tool thats in the pause menu.

If you decide to use a Jack to USB cord instead of using the official cable, you won't be able to hear your bass in the game so you either need to play without a headset to hear it and get the lag corrector perfect, or buy the real tone cable.
I'm not sure if this next problem is with using a non official cable or a game problem but I'm not able to hear telegram or discord voice chat, or use my microphone when playing.

They also removed a lot of music from the game, which mostly sucks for people who originally bought the game, but you can always pirate the song files.

Lastly, the game asks you to sign up or login to ubisoft every time you start the game, and tries to load its servers when you get past the profile screen. It makes it take longer and its very annoying, no way to disable it. And in the tradition of Ubisoft these features are just 1 more thing to make it take longer to start the game, and theres no reason to have them anyways.

Ubisoft needs to go bankrupt.

Ubisoft, congratulations! You’ve somehow managed to ruin a game from 2014—in 2025—by re-releasing it on Steam without its original content. A game that was once great is now just a hollow shell, all because you want to force players into subscribing to Rocksmith+, your greedy, overpriced service.

No, thanks, Ubisoft. I’m not interested in paying again for something I already owned, only to get less. This is just another shameless cash grab, and you’ve officially hit a new low. Greedy company...

Fun and effective game to learn how to play guitar or bass. Unfortunately, the game no longer has hit songs that comes with the vanilla game. It now only comes with Ubisoft curated practice songs and some classical songs. The songs and song packs from Ubisoft are still available for purchase though which is great and CustomForge is available and works with this game as well which is even better. I originally bought this for Xbox and had several song packs and really enjoyed the game. It taught me how to play. I bought this version for the custom dlc and it's also great and very easy to use. You may have problems getting the game to open if you are running windows 11 but there is plenty of info online on how to get it running. I recommend.

Awesome game that is unplayable / broken for whatever reasons. You need to mod it because a generic USB to guitar will not function otherwise due to Ubisoft's greed when they made this game forcing you to buy their usb cable (which is expensive and difficult to find now and probably doesn't work anyway). So, you can mod it to bring out the hidden feature that allows the third party usb. But then, barely any songs are available, you need to use a mod to download custom community tracks that people made for a lot of songs and those are awesome! But now that doesn't seem to work anymore, and basically this game is just broken as it is, it seems it doesn't really load or work at all in 2025 and I can't recommend it at all, which sucks cuz it's actually an awesome guitar practice game. It's actually criminal that they're still selling this game when it doesn't even work, I believe Ubisoft should be reported for this illegal business activity selling a neglected game, it's a total disrespect to the artists who made the music being used in the game, honestly fuck Ubisoft.

super fun game that can be used as a learning tool as you have fun

The original licensed songs are gone, but if you weren't born yesterday, you can restore them. Fans also insert songs into this game, thousands of them out there.

Fantastic learning aid, although don't rely on it solely - hand-eye coordination is not as important as getting a feel for the sound only. Sometimes the screen proves to be distracting, making playing the guitar more difficult than if you were doing it by ear.

Also doubles as a digital guitar effect applier.

I downloaded rocksmith along with a bunch of DLC that was on sale for $1 but I noticed that the game didn't come with any original songs.. I can only see the DLC but apparently there are 66 official tracks available?????? PLEASE HALP??????

piece of junk crashes on startup and you have to do crazy workarounds to get it to work. not worth it.

This game is probably great for people with a firm grasp of how to play the instrument but as a learner there is no structure and i have no idea what exercises to do in what order and for how long before moving on. maybe a person with experience can enjoy it but it's not a good way to learn from novice.

Explain this game in a sentence?
"Guitar Hero with real guitar"

I've been playing this for few years on and off but I gotta say that CDLC (a.k.a custom songs mod) is the best thing about this game, even though the legality might be debatable, but it keeps the game and its community alive for years even now in 2025. This game got delisted in 2023 because I think they wanted to push Rocksmith+ (which IMO was Ubisoft's biggest flop ever lol) to have more players, but it also got a re-release the next year haha.

I'm impressed for what the game can do, I mean guitar is kind of complicated instrument to translate into digital, it has palm muting, hammer-on, pull-off and a lot more techniques to play, but this game can detect them pretty well, not perfectly of course, because it still relies on notes detection and guitar is an instrument with repeating notes so it can be played without following string and fret positioning as long as you play the right notes (even technically it can be played with keyboards).

Today I found out that I can emulate bass internally with it, so I guess I don't need to buy a bass that I won't use lol. There is a workaround that can improve the game by A LOT, I have Reaper (a DAW) that can be used alongside this, most songs I play are played in like 10+ variations of tunings, changing tunings can be a tricky thing especially if you don't have 10+ guitars which I don't, so I can change tuning with a pitch shifter VST in Reaper to pre-process my guitar input before it goes into Rocksmith.

Bad things about this game are the functionality as a windows program: lack of borderless windowed mode, audio output cannot be captured by screen recorder (without workaround), it's always on top, so other program can't be overlayed on top of it, setting some things required to modify .ini files in the game directory.

Also, Real Tone Cable is not required, you can use an audio interface thanks to the modder who made it possible, or a microphone if you're crazy (jk, but you actually can).

Not even on sale. They should just make it free, it's over a decade old and no longer has any licensed content (there are literally no songs in the "Learn a Song" Menu). The only means to add songs now is to use customs forge or some other equally poorly designed website where some random on the internet most likely just guesses what notes need to be hit to play a given song, and that's after you jump through hoops to make an account only to realize you have to have other accounts for the file hosts (google, dropbox, mega, etc) as no site where you can find this content actually hosts the files. This is just a cash grab by ubisoft, don't give them your money.

I've played this for over a decade. I was so happy when Ubisoft abandoned this game because every time they updated it, it became less and less functional. It's very fitting that the update designed to "resurrect" the game is what makes it completely unplayable.

The game is fun but it isn't some cheat code to learning how to play an instrument. There's tools out there that will help you more than this game in the long run. Don't give these soon-to-be bankrupt clowns your money.

This is one of the best tools out there that I have found for learning guitar and I've been playing guitar for almost 20 years now and I still come back to it for lots of fun playing songs and learning to play with a full band with the session mode. I also love the community that is still behind this game with modding/tracking new songs. Thank you to everyone that made the game and the people that play it and keep it alive and fun to this day!

This game is so fun! I severely wish more songs were available. Playing both electric and bass guitars on this game make just about every song worth the DLC price. Learning new chords and techniques is always a good time, and riff repeater makes it so nice!

Absolute trash. Nothing works with this game. Ive had to use mods and hours of research to get anything to work with this and even then, it non stop issues. DO NOT BUY. DLC store does work so you have to use a 3rd party site to download songs. Real Tone Cable doesnt work, so you have to use a mod to get it to work. TRASH game. Ubisoft should be ashamed they released this in the absolute trash state its in

Great for experienced players or beginners. A huge library of tracks to play along to without the inconvenience of messing around with amp settings. Definitely a buy.

Game will legitimately not function or even launch if you have too many sound devices or too new of a CPU.

If you use Elgato Wave Link, don't even bother buying the game you won't be able to play it.

A game from 2014 held together with tape and tears of guitarists trying to get their gear to work with it.

kinda impossible to setup if you dont have a realtone cable and a wired headset. Otherwise you have to download mods that might fix your issue but youre gonna give yourself a massive headache and maybe destroy your guitar in frustration.

Oh yeah. If you have many audio devices, goodluck :)
(Still havent gotten the game to work, maybe the review will change if i ever get it to work)

both the game and the cable it uses are dogshit and barely work half the time

fun video game style way of learning guitar, its best to have some familiarization with a guitar, it does just throw you right into learning, i wish they had hour dailys and something for you to practice when not playing the game, the lessons are souly on you to learn and you can pick what lessons you wish from string bending to cords, i do wish it was more of a class style heres todays lesson for the next hour, practice this for tomorrows lesson.

very good game and I love that you can mod the game now to play custom songs

Good game for practicing with the song but learn as well but you can learn from youtube and other media fast and play this game for fun. this is super fun.

Ubisoft bringing this game back onto the market with an update has broken the game. Songs last for maybe halfway through before hard crashing steam and/or my pc. At this point, I am looking forward to the day when Ubisoft shuts it doors forever. Fuck their executives and their greed. The only reason they brought this game back was to nuke it to force players to join their shitty new "Rocksmith+". Do not buy this game. Do not buy Rocksmith+. Do not buy Assassin's Creed Shadows. Ubisoft constant failures for the past few years is finally catching up to them.

I can not get this game to work well at all. There is a horrible audio delay that makes the game unplayable. I tried so many different things to make it work and its just impossible

The only good rocksmith.
recommend looking up Customsmith and the reddit post on using rocksmith effectively.

Thank you, Ubisoft, for finally listening and bringing this masterpiece back! It works much better than Rocksmith+.

You can use custom songs with this, which makes it GOAT. It’s not without its problems, but everything can be fixed thanks to the amazing community behind the game.

Scarlett Solo 4th Gen works perfectly with no latency.

Worth the price if you know about CustomsForge for songs, otherwise it's real basic with no music worth playing.

Do not bother with this game.
All the songs in the base game leaving only the notecracker dlc leaving only a empty shell of what it was once was.

Definitely the best software and amazing way to learn guitar, however the UI and navigation are horrible.

This games held together with sawdust and spit. you got too many sound devices? cant play it, too many CPU cores? cant play it. I shouldn't have to download a community fix after buying the game, which didn't work either.
Only thing i LEARNed was that this games shit. AND the only thing i PLAYed was the white screen before it eventually closed.
do not buy this game, you will not get it to work.

f!ck you ubisoft.

The only Ubisoft title that's worth getting. It's sad that there's no real alternatives to Rocksmith 2014 (I'm not touching anything with a monthly sub) when it comes to ease of use, and sheer fun of learning how to play guitar/bass. It takes a long time to actually set it up so you'll need some patience and computer know-how, like knowing how to edit ini.files, changing your system's sound properties, youtube tutorials is a must, and you'll need a way to connect your instrument to your PC, like the Rocksmith cable (sold separately), or your audio interface. When you actually have everything set up it's smooth sailing from there.

The main issue I have is the longevity of the game. All the song licences are slowly running out, Ubisoft clearly doesn't care about the game further than just milking people with the remaining DLC's. There's custom DLC's made by the community, but the quality of the transcriptions varies a lot. Nothing's worse than finding a track of your favourite song, only to learn it's made by someone who's clearly never touched an instrument before. But it's better than nothing.

iI had this game for years.. got extra songs.. now out of no were i cant play it... it crashes after 5 seconds... dont buy

TONS of issues. Huge potential wasted, but still fun. Basically a virtual amp with a game attached and a bunch of neat practice features.

Negatives:
Tuner forces you through it without actually getting the guitar in tune so it's just another button press to skip after actually tuning it yourself if you want something playable.
Program freezes after about an hour requiring a force close.
Half the DLC doesn't work and the ones that do don't always. Mods allow you to play a lot more songs but Ubisoft has their mits in the modding scene so good luck getting a REAL version of anything they've put BAD versions of into DLC.
Ubisoft keeps updating it just to make it worse. Probably to force you into their "Own nothing and be happy" subscription version they replaced it with.
Doesn't have real tabs, chord charts, or sheet music, just their weird floating thing that's HARD to read and get a feel for timing of any kind.
Sets all your input volumes at 17% and then adds a bunch of gain to the guitar to compensate which is really stupid and creates poor sound quality by default. You can disable the autogain and set it how you want, but your mic will still be inaudible unless you tab out to turn it back up, and if you plan to actually use your mic for any communication on your PC, like other games, Steam chat, Discord, or whatever new stupid version of Skype your business is on these days, you'll have to turn it back up EVERY TIME YOU BOOT THE GAME (unless your mic is overpowered to begin with I guess.)
Half the time it just straight up breaks your audio for everything but itself until you reboot the PC.
LOTS of latency by default, but if you have a good CPU, you can remove most of it.
Starting with a single note per minute and adding in notes as you go is REALLY boring and silly if you have any musical ability at all. It's much better to turn off their advancement/punishment and just use the acceleration mode of riff repeater on the hard parts. Speed is a byproduct of accuracy. If you try to look at it the other way you'll never sound good.

Positives:
The jam mode is kinda cool.
It has some little practice games that are kinda a good idea.
There are a FEW good songs from different genres in the default lineup.
If you know what you're doing with PC audio you can make it decent, but note detection is still awful sometimes because of the way it handles volumes and gains.
Honestly it's a REALLY GOOD AMP sim for the price if you set up the gains right and are able to turn the audio latency down enough. That's about the only reason it gets a thumbsup from me, even if it does say Ubisoft and potentially make them money.

I remember it working... But now, it is impossible to set up right, I either have some horrid input latency, or it doesn't work at all. Tried the RS asio that's recommended, but instructions are vague. I even purchased the rocksmith cable for it, and it still doesn't work right.

Some people report they have it working, but I don't think you should tinker, edit .ini files and browse logs, and browse forums without end to make a game playable as intended after paying for it and its' cable...

Amazing but get mods to make it way more fun and actually playable (the re-released version which I have, sucks because of the expiring licences for songs so mods are your only option

love this game but i wish you could use custom amps for already existing songs

Much better than Rocksmith + that has a subscription model. This has a better interface and is much better local multiplayer.
This is why they brought it back and they really dropped the ball on the Rocksmith+ that they are trying to say is better, it is inferior in just about every way.

Definitely recommend it, the lessons are good, the guitarcade is fun and CDLC is endless. The learn to play ":songs" are definitely worth your time too. A good utility to aid in improving at guitar.

Greedy ass company who broke their game on purpose. Nobody wants to get the new one you idiots. Game is completely broken now and crashes on launch everytime

I own the original but wanted it on my steam account. as of 1/30/25, the game crashes and every time I try and play it which in the end makes it completely unplayable. Don't buy it unless you want to contact steam for a refund.

DONT BUY THE GAME. ITS GARBAGE.

Don't get the new one. Get this one. This is the real deal. It gets you to play guitar. A great complement along with a teacher or self-taught. Just don't rely only on this and you'll be golden.

Great learning tool. This version doesn't have any songs so you'll have to load your own, either buy DLC songs or look up customforge CDLC for fan made ones. If you don't have the old usb to guitar cable for it you can use an audio interface like a Focusrite but it needs a mod to recognize it. Overall it's fun to use but takes a bit of setup work because the publisher didn't include songs.

no songs available unless you download a mod installer. all ubisoft are giving you is an empty shell for you to fill