Thank you Ubisoft for sending us a review code!

We’ve been blessed with the opportunity to review the Just Dance games all the way back to the Wii era. Most of our reviews are on the Nintendo platform with the exception of our PS4 review of Just Dance 2015. Just Dance 2023 is the first time I’ve played the series on the Xbox platform.

Upon launching the game, you’ll be prompted to choose your avatar. There’s a wide variety of inclusive options, including flamboyant and overweight ones. As you complete songs and level up, you’ll unlock more avatars, emojis, backgrounds, and catch phrases. Your progress is also tracked on Ubisoft Connect if your account is linked to it.

The gameplay remains the same where you have to mimic the moves of the dancer on the screen. Some of the songs have multiple dancers to choose from, so make sure you’re following the correct one! Depending on how accurate you are, your movements will be rated as ok, good, perfect, or not counted at all. As you dance through the song, you can earn up to five stars.

Just Dance 2023 comes with forty songs and remixes that are new to the series. A full song list can be seen here. There are many popular artists, including Justin Beiber, Harry Styles, Linkin Park, Imagine Dragons, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Brittany Spears, and more. By default, the forty songs included in Just Dance 2023 are NOT downloaded to your console. You can download them for faster performance, but you’ll need 10GB of free space on your console’s hard drive.

I like how you can sort through the songs with filters by choreo style, music genre, decade (50s to 2020’s), moods (happy, calm, romantic), and accessibility. It was neat to see one of the dancers in a wheel chair.

There are some themed playlists available that indicate the number of songs and how long it will take to complete them. For example, there is a Kid’s Faves playlist that has five songs and will keep them entertained for ten and a half minutes.

When selecting a song, you’ll see information like difficulty (easy, medium, hard, extreme), how much effort is needed and the number of coaches to mimic. While the song is loading/downloading, you’ll get to see the world record and the score of your online friends, if available.

If you want access to songs from previous entries, you’ll need a Just Dance+ membership. You get a thirty day trial with the game and if you want to extend your access, it will cost $3.99 for one month, $9.99 for three months, or $24.99 annually. Along with access to hundreds of songs, you’ll also get to partake in timed competitions.

The Lover Coaster event has an interesting collection of songs that isn’t all sappy surprisingly. There are some break-up songs in the collection, such as P!nk’s So What and the nicer version of Gayle’s ABC. Other songs like Wet Tennis has innuendos that go beyond describing the sport. If you have a membership to Just Dance+, you can play questionable songs like Billie Eilish’s all the good girls go to hell. Granted, it has all the songs from the previous titles, but you get many questionable ones along with it. Even the base songs have moral concerns like Bruno Mars’ Locked Out Of Heaven refers to sex outside of marriage.

Other issues worth noting include some potty humor and cartoon violence. Some of the female dancers have very low V-cut shirts, have their midriff exposed, or are wearing tight and/or skimpy clothing. Songs from the previous games have references to drinking and drug use. Last but not least, there’s a song called Witch that is in another language. The translated lyrics indicate that it deals with necromancy and a dead god.

I ran into a couple of technical issues while playing this game. I had an issue with songs not loading or properly downloading from the internet despite having connectivity. To resolve this issue I restarted the game and was able to continue playing. Another issue was my phone not being about to pair with the game despite typing in the correct pin number. To resolve this issue I rebooted my phone and restarted the game to generate a new pairing code.

If you enjoyed the previous Just Dance games and want to play with friends online, Just Dance 2023 is worth looking into. There’s only a handful of kid appropriate songs so you’ll want to consider joining their Just Dance+ program and filtering it for songs appropriate for younger audiences. If you’re looking for a fun way to burn calories, Just Dance 2023 won’t disappoint.