Rocksmith® 2014 Edition REMASTERED LEARN & PLAY

I remember my dad getting this for me as a gift back in 2014 when I first picked up a guitar. I didn't really take advantage of the full capabilities it had, but now with a fresh perspective it has been a game changer. I've been playing guitar for roughly 14yrs now and this game really sobered me up to my skill level. I am definetely not as good as I thought I was, but I am getting better! The first hour I almost put the game down, but as I am improving my sight reading it's getting a lot more fun. The only thing I don't like is having to download cdlc, I wish the game had built in songs like it used to, but I knew what I was purchasing. For $10USD YOU CAN'T GO WRONG

This game rules. Do your research beforehand though, it can take a lot to get running perfectly, but it's worth.

The game couldn't hear half the notes I was playing. It prompted me to detune my guitar to a soft stringed mess with no discernible similarity between what it wanted me to tune to and what it wanted me to play.

The removed all the base songs and added a bunch of lesson crap. Basically you have to pay for every actual song that you want to play now. Knew it was to good to be true when I saw they put it back on steam. Ubisoft sucks as usual.

just do it and find out the beauty and wonder of the title and what it has to offer

Amazing tool to practice and keep sharp. I personally love having a bunch of songs I don't have to pay for done by a community at custom forge. Amazing community.

It seems that the time has come. The game does not work anymore, there are no more patches, and I lost all the money I've spent on DLC. Good bye Rocksmith, we had some good time together.

I'd really only recommend it if you plan on using custom songs alongside this, but, to be fair there is still a good amount of dlc available even considering the re-release. As far as actual guitar playing goes, I'd use it to more understand techniques and learn new ones over straight up using it to fully learn guitar. All in all, I still think it's worth the $10.

Hey UbiSOFT STOP REMOVING SONGS ALL OF MY AVENGED SEVENFOLD IS GONE. The only reason i play this is for stuff that i was able to buy. You guys are ruining this game keep all of your DLC this is Ridiculous. Thanks for ruining my favorite way to play. congrats i will never buy another game or dlc from you guys again.

Not having a great start to this program, Wont let me use my USB interface for my electric guitar and instead wants me to go buy a Rocksmith branded usb to guitar cable, I tried to download voice meter to use it as a Microphone option and run my interface through voice meter, but Rocksmith would either not launch or launch and instantly close before even getting to any screens, after uninstalling voice meter it launched normally again.

unable to calibrate my electric guitar using my desktop microphone as it keeps saying its too quiet despite being right up next to the mic
and a bunch of features are disabled with the disconnected option

I fking hate it. It is frustrating and not fun at all. Better off with Yousician. Now I got a trauma of the song Blitzkrieg Bop. Everytime I hear that song, it reminds me of the terror's of Rocksmith. Everyone is talking about how amazing it is, but it sucks balls. Waste of money on cable and on game

thumbs up

highly reccomend getting dlc packs if you're ever getting the game. helps you learn a lot, both in lessons and songs. comes with pre-made exercises and a few classical songs to test your skill with. fire game. you WILL need to calibrate manually (sound recieving).

[This is a review for the learn & play edition]

Rocksmith is NOT "The Fastest Way to Learn Guitar". It's not even a good way to learn guitar. Sorry Ubisoft. However, it is a fun and engaging practice tool, and serviceable as a rhythm game.

This review assumes you are playing the game with mods and CDLC enabled. The quality of the official DLC is very good in my experience, but the unofficial content is seriously where it's at. Modding also helps to alleviate some of the numerous technical issues and limitations inherited from the console versions (which i've played extensively), such as the long ass unskippable intro, and lack of third party audio interface support.

The gameplay.
So this game has some resemblance to popular rhythm games. Colour coded notes come down a lane towards you and you hit them at the right time. It works surprisingly well, however, it has some problems. To make reading the fretboard at all possible, the devs made the tradeoff of making the rhythms incredibly hard to read. To compensate for this, they made the timing so lenient you can sometimes be off by more than a beat and still hit the damn note. Yeah. Since the game has to analyse the audio of your guitar in real time, they made the note detection incredibly lenient as well. It mostly counts as a hit when you hit the right note, but sometimes also when you don't. The game is also very sloppy when it comes to detecting techniques like palm mutes and bends. And it doesn't try to represent the ends of notes at all, which makes some charts feel empty and lacking detail.

What this means is you will have to listen to your own playing and correct your own mistakes. With that said, if you can do that, it is pretty fun to learn a song using the automatic difficulty scaling and the "riff repeater" mode. But if you are a beginner this can be a trap, as the game doesn't emphasize the importance of rhythm enough, and doesn't provide any real constructive feedback.

In the end, i still recommend this game. How could i not, when it's this fun? But i want you to be aware of it's flaws. Most important of all, don't use Rocksmith as a substitute for guitar lessons, and don't use it as a substitute for real practice. It's a fun game, but it's just a game. That's all.

Necessary for an all rounded guitar player or bass guitar player,if you have the disc version you can now transfer it to digital. also there's tons of DLC for it too, not as much as there used to be but still a good selection due to the fact that the rights to some of the songs were revoked. This is the game that taught me how to play

Addicted to this. So much fun. Have mastered one song and am close with a couple more. My musical ear is a bit lacking so I am not sure that all the notes in the game are perfect but they seem pretty close. The visuals definitely help me when my musical ear is lacking. But I think it is improving bit by bit by practicing with Rocksmith.

Do I have almost 700 hours in this game? Yes I do. Can I play leads? No I can't! But that's not the games fault, I just suck at it.

But boy has this game made me fall in love with guitar. For context, I have tried a million times over the course of my life to get into it. I always wanted to, because I always liked guitarists the most when growing up, jumping around playing air guitar over Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Nirvana and Metallica. ONLY when I discovered this game, have I started to get into it.

I hate tabs, I can't read them. This game makes it easy to understand what you're supposed to play. I do recommend to set it on the highest difficulty though, because I struggled with this "less notes" approach. You then later on need to relearn the song with all notes basically. Just go with the full thing and learn in your own tempo. You will hit the notes eventually.

Do I recommend this game! Yes, i really do. Do I recommend Ubisoft? No, I don't. I've had high hopes for the successor of this game, but it's just a SaaS scam at this point. Also, did I mention the customforge? It would take too long to explain everything, but it's basically modding, so you can play community created songs (versions of songs not in the catalogues)

hell yaah. learned a simple song in 2 days. im a slow learner but this helped. my only complaint is there's no songs that come with the game anymore. its sad that theres only DLC lesson songs or something. i haven't tried them out.

overall great game. better than rocksmith+ imo

Don't even waste your energy. TLDR; Song library too small, buggy mess, unknown crashes (cant even get it to open anymore). Fun when it works w/ mods

The game is fun w/ mods IF you can get it to work. BIGGG IF... I cant even get the game to stay open anymore, even after trying hours of trouble shooting...but on top of it crashing for virtually any reason under the sun, you'll need an ancient proprietary "real tone cable" to play... Furthermore, getting it to work requires going into files deleting/editing files and installing drivers. If you can get the mods working you can use an audio interface instead, but even that is finicky. Ultimately another game with potential abandoned by this sorry company.

If the game gets fixed I'll edit my review but lets be real...

My experience just trying to play the game was so bad....here is what happened... I had to refund this game and buy rocksmith + instead. It immediately recognized the cable and bass. No it wasn't a realtone cable either. My frustration is that if someone buys rocksmith 2014 nowadays, it doesn't come with a realtone cable. I bought a bunch of songs, plugged in and I was suppose to set it to "microphone", select the input, attach it to an audio interface, download "asio" drivers of some sort, install them somewhere and fix an ini file nd hope for the best? Wayyyyyy too complicated for someone like me. I am bummed out I have to pay a subscription now to rocksmith + but....I can just deactivate it when I get bored I guess. Is there a way to tell the devs to set up Rocksmith 2014 to work like Rocksmith + as far as using any cable adapter? Or.... Make the drivers included with the game and mail a realtone cable to the customer...? I just don't know...My review is a thumbs down for the 2014 version because of how complicated the set up was without a realtone cable.

1,000,000 times better than Rocksmith + in every way shape and form. Buy the cable on ebay, download this game, and master guitar and bass in a 10th of the time that it would take getting lessons from an old guy at a guitar shop.

there's over 1500 songs and having buy each one? and most of the songs are removed due to licensing? time to put on the captain jack sparrow outfit gamers

I honesty am lost for words. Never has there been, since this game, a teaching tool that's as well developed as this game was. and at $10 base price, it's an absolute steal. What could potentially cost you hundreds of dollars in lessons, is all packaged in this this game. (and if you're lucky, you could find it on sale for under $5)

To put things simply, this game basically takes the concept of titles like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, and tweaks it to work with an actual guitar, and brilliantly so.

With that said, it's not easy and will require practice, so you're probably going to have to play the tutorials first before jumping into anything else. And you're going to have to practice and master each lesson. Luckily these tutorials are very well presented. They are simple, easy to understand, and interactive. You're not just watching videos. You're also going to be tested by mimicking what you are taught. They cover everything from how to hold you pick, to advanced techniques like hammer ons, and finger tapping.

There's also something called "Guitarcade". This is a collection of minigames designed to help you practice certain techniques. For example, one where you have to shoot ducks by playing on the correct frett. These games are a fun change of pace from the main gameplay and helps make things feel a little less mundane.

When it comes to playing actual music, the base game does leave a little to be desired. There are only a few songs. none of which are anything anyone wants to play. However, there are hundreds of DLC tracks, with tons of well known classics. And then there's the CDLC mod (Custom DLC). It's a very easy mod to impliment, and once you do, it opens up a whole new world of completely free community created charts that you can download and play. You'll find pretty much everything there. although since it's community driven, the quality can be hit or miss, but that's a small caveat in the grand scheme of things.

The game doesn't come without a few small issues. The note recognition can be a bit iffy at times. It sometimes registers a correct note even though I clearly hit the wrong note It's not a huge issue but it is one to note. The game can be played with both a microphone, or the required cable. I've used both, and while the cable is better, it still has this issue.

Regardless If you're interested in playing guitar, or you're already a master, this game is an easy buy. It's a great fun way to practice and learn. Don't even play Guitar Hero. Just play this and learn an actual skill.

Turned on game. using proper controller. notes don't register half of the time when i hit the note. I INTONATED THIS GUITAR LIKE 2 TIMES TO MAKE SURE THAT EVERYTHING IS ACCEPTABLE. EVEN CONSULTED SOMEONE MORE EXPERIENCED THAN I. GUY MAKES A LIVING PLAYING GUITAR. WHAT IS WRONG, AM I OFF TEMPO, OFF TUNE? TURNS OUT NO. game sucks. songs sound bad. you can just barely hear you guitar with default settings.
...
great now game doesn't even turn on at all and it disappeared from my library somehow.
now once again. money gone. review is still being checked by some automated content check system.
if this message gets to you guys. learn from my mistakes. decide what is best for you.

great game for learning guitar and playing pretty much any song you want

This used to be good, but now they have stripped it bare trying to turn RS into a subscription service.

ive learned many songs by watching you tube but 99 percent of the songs on this platform are not anything im remotely interested in playing . im a classic rock guitarist think lynerd skynerd era being the latest id be interested in and chuck berry the oldest bob segar etc new music of today mostly sucks imho. had i known this was such a lame product i would never have bought it plus its stuck on loading page takes forever hardly worth it

Managed to get this working with my digital mixer and steam deck, which took some time - but didn't have to get any additional equipment like the usb-cable. Decent game to keep you occupied with your instruments. Free downloadable songs also work, so sure worth the 3€ I paid for it.

i used to love the game but not the game wont start up it just crashes unless this problem is fixed i cant recommend the game. the game worked fine till it was uodated not it just crashes

Cant play the game cos mine stuck after choosing profile that linked to uplay. Bad purchase!

Bought this in 2024 and it still works. Used a "USB Guitar Audio Cable Mono Electric Guitar Cable USB Interface to 6.35mm Audio Plug" cable from Ali costing $7 and works fine (remember the cable is a MICROPHONE and not REALTONE in the settings menu). Haven't installed the mods yet (since hard to find the files) but the base software works ok with achievements etc.

In just 39 hours of playtime my bass skill level went from Roger Waters to Chris Squire. I HIGHLY recommend finding custom songs online to get the most out of this game.

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 have been a guitar player for 18 years and been a tutor for 5. After seeing this product I don't understand how beginner level teachers even exist. This product is better than anything else out there. This has got to be the BEST and MOST FUN way of learning. For any level of experience really... If only I had this as a kid. At least I can enjoy it on another level with the skills I have already acquired though. I would highly recommend to any guitar player!!!

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.

lol the DLC packs were all under $1 before the Steam Spring Sale now with that they've been bumped up to $3.99+ with the discount... very scummy.

Should have kept supporting this game instead of moving to a subscription based model with Rocksmith+

I'm thankful for CDLC (custom dlc songs) which for anyone reading you can find more about on the rocksmith subreddit or just google Rocksmith CDLC, its super easy to set up and you don't have to pay for songs or pay for a shitty overpriced subscription service that they'll keep increasing the price on anyway.

suck a fart out of a camels butt 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.