It is a great game that has way more pros than cons. Read the full details to see the pros and cons!
*New Interface which is nice makes it very user friendly once you use it for a day or two. You come to find out lots of the things you "wish" rock band 2 had.
*New tour system somewhat different from the old you still select the tour you want to do but its more open to what you want to play rather than just making it a set in stone list. It will give you options to choose from like Option 1: two pre-selected songs Option 2: 2 user selected 90's songs option 3: 2 user selected punk songs. That is just an example of one I had to do. Every time you complete a set you change venues and you get another set of 3 options to choose from.
*New Stars & Spades system. In addition to getting stars for doing well on a song you now get Spades for completing goals in the song. Examples: Deploy your Overdrive as much as possible through the song. Deploy your overdrive when at max multiplier, High Note streaks, 100% sections of songs, Duration of Overdrives ect... The spades help you out in completing a tour. At the end of the tour they total up your stars and spades and that is how well you did throughout the tour. The number you get determines if you silver, gold, or platinum the tour the better you do the more stuff you unlock. So far I have only seen this in the tour aspect of the game and not in the quick play.
*Player Customization is pretty deep. They give you a ton more options to add to your character now.
*Scoring at the end of songs is pretty cool now not only do you see the stars that your band got but you see your individual stars and score you would have got if you were to be playing solo. They also added if you press down how well you did in different parts in the song what was your longest streak total and all kinds of other stats specific to you as well as where you stand on the overall online leader boards and how your scores compare to your friends. All on one page and you never have to leave the current page.
*No more restarting songs to change difficulty because someone is not doing well. Two things here people can pause the game and changes it on the spot without having to leave the song or if someone fails out in your band and you fail the song you still have the option to keep playing in no fail mode till you finish the current song. You will not receive a score on that song but it will allow you to get through the song so you can get to the next song on your set list. Yes you will receive a score on the following son just not the song you failed.
*Joining has never been so easy. You can hop in and out mid song now on any instrument this is a very nice feature to have if you have people over and someone has to leave or go use the restroom.
*Song selection was massively improved you can use way better filters now to find songs that you want to play. They also added a how well have you done page that you can check how you have done on the song in the past and at what difficulty ect.
*load times vastly improved. If you have a ton of DLC like me it may take about a min or two for your game to load at the start because it caches your songs into memory and when you are selecting songs to play once a song has been selected it starts to load for everyone in the background making for almost instantaneous load times you see a quick little movie of your band getting ready to play takes like 5 secs then you are in game ready to play.
*Stats if you like statistics this game has them it keeps track of a gambit of stuff on how well you do on each and every song. Most of this stuff can be looked at via the options menu.
*Pro Instruments this game can now be used as a tool to help aid you in really playing real versions of the instruments. If you have the want to learn how to play drums, guitar, bass, or keyboard this game will definitely get you on the right track with the pro mode. Cons:
*The shop they changed from earning money to everything in the shop being unlocked via some sort of in game achievement. For example 5 star every song on expert in Rock Band 3. Will unlock the shirt I currently want. Rather than making it an amount of money you could earn to purchase the item. What is also the suck about this system is that some of them require you do have a keyboard or a pro instrument...
*Random Online play sucks too I think mainly because people do not understand how to use it right and I think there is a lack of people who have the game at this given moment.
*This is a presonal thing and It may not matter to most but you can not get 100% of the trophies in this game unless you have every pro instrument and that my friend is bull crap.