DanceDanceRevolution A (AC)

Yeah, I'll admit that I forgot about Marisa Stole the Precious Thing mostly because it's also completely unmemorable; the new 18's are the first truly memorable terrible charts of DDR A.

Also, do you have a video of the Double Challenge for New Century? I can't find one.

New Century's chart looked pretty interesting to me, mainly due to the fact that the shock arrows start about halfway through the song as opposed to the start. A bit different from what Konami normally does. Regarding the chart itself it looks alright, but I think the expert chart had way more effort put into it.
RISING FIRE HAWK's chart is undoubtfully my favorite of this bunch. A bit easy for a 17, but it looks like a lot of fun to play.
I probably don't hate Astrogazer's chart as much as I should. It's incredibly overstepped but still looks fun purely for the ironic enjoyment factor.

In all honesty, while I'll fully admit Astrogazer CSP is not a /good/ chart, I give it a much better overview than most bad charts because unlike most bad charts the foot motions aren't horribly random and jarring; it's bad-ness is almost entirely due to being overstepped.

It, unlike say, NGO, is entirely meant to be played plausibly on dance pad.

Compare this to more notoriously bad charts like DEGRS (low-hanging fruit, I know), where the patterns made pretty much no sense whatsoever and really Astrogazer's merely meh in the grand scheme of things.

If you look at it that way, none of the 18s outside of SN2 are really that awful. Except Pluto The First ... maybe...

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PTF is absolutely garbage on a Dance Pad; the is generally a messy chart in places (some jumps are really badly placed); shock arrows being randomly placed does not help in the slightest; in fact it makes it an order of magnitude less playable due to the way you have to constantly move both feet back to the center.

A lot of other 18's have some questionable parts too; Trigger has some parts that are leg-unfriendly, and let's not forget our good friend MAX. (Period)'s 300 BPM sections (which I'll admit I find the spins at 300 worse than the 12ths at 600). Or another example, POSSESSION's notorious combination of crossovers and jumps (how this has been PFC'd I will never understand).

Another part is that really, at 150 BPM (about where Astrogazer lies), crossovers are much much easier to deal with; the ones Astrogazer has are almost entirely readable and have reasonable footings. On the other hand, crossovers at ~200 BPM are completely silly if you're not a DDR robot (no chris, you don't count as human anymore).

All those Extra Exclusive songs were still limited to play on Final & Extra Stages except for Astrogazer and New Century if you participated in KAC Qualifiers.

All Extra Exclusives that are not Level 1 or 2 became playable only on Final Stage and Extra Stage with no way to play them any other time until now.

New Century, Rising Fire Hawk, and Astrogazer, after unlocking them, become playable in any stage. You don't simply just unlock the Challenge for it, but you get the whole package.

And just like Baby-Lon, just getting the song unlocks it for both singles and doubles. You don't need to do the whole thing twice to unlock for each mode like you do for Extra Savior unlocks.

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ZIV complains about lack of charts
ZIV then complains about the charts
Meanwhile, all but maybe three people who post on ZIV aren't at a skill/level to actually play and/or critique the challenge charts.

And y'all are also expecting there not to be a new song by the end too?

Are you sure? I don't think this is true.

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That part I was being a little bit of a jerkbutt. But I do believe there is a very very small percentage that hasn't actually given the content a fair and educated (in terms of actually understanding the chart) assessment.

Like, literally four minutes ago I had an interesting explanation of the shock arrows in New Century that turned that chart from "shock arrow garbage" to something actually clever and technical (edit: Probably one of most deliberate uses of shock arrows in a unique way introduced in DDR up to this point as far as I can tell). After watching the chart again I realize it's nowhere nearly as bad as people here are making it out to be.

Am I the only one who really IS thrilled by the new s? Sure, they might not be the most well-crafted (was that a 24th cluster-turn in the end of Astrogazer??), but that's not what we should expect from a hard chart. This definitely gave the first three Extra Exclusive songs more boss-like character, and I hope that more 's will show up later on for the newer songs. (Especially looking at you, Ishtar!)

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Okay, new charts, I'm okay with this (Seriously, ZIv, chill). Now, my thoughts for each!

New Century - What the fuck is going on in this one? A lot of those rhythms, especially in the second half, don't make any sense at all. Refer to my chart for this song in BemaniBeats 5 to see how it's correctly done. :^)
RISING FIRE HAWK - I actually dig those Tell jumps. Seems like an easy 17, but a fun one.
Astrogazer - Konami wanted to take an ITG approach. Enough said.

Here's to more content in the future.

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Lmao I was waiting for this, the typical "ask for something but complain when you get it" post. I know it's subjective, but asking for things doesn't mean allowing yourself to be spoonfed something bad. Obviously you want something well done, not just SOMETHING, let alone something bad.

Turns out, there ARE more than just challenge charts announced today. Two hinabita songs it seems.

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I think it's more all but maybe three people who post on ZIv aren't at that level.

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We knew this, we just didn't care to post anything because hinabitter

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I guess I'll drop the videos over on the DDR A Work Thread

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I'll give each chart a rating, I guess.

New Century: 4/10
Rising Fire Hawk: 8/10
Astrogazer: 9.5/10

Really love Astrogazer's chart, not surprised in the slightest to see people hating on it because lmaoitg. Rising Fire Hawk also looks pretty good. New Century is... a chart.

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The complaints about Astrogazer being overstepped is pretty laughable when Possession and Princess Kneesocks of Glass do the exact same thing, just not as extreme.

It's almost as if they made a chart to fit the song rather than what instrument is playing. Who'd ever guess that would happen in DDR!?

(New Century Challenge is good. It's just extremely crossover heavy, which is what the previous charts did anyway. Might need to play it two or three more times to finally get it on singles, but on doubles I immediately caught on.)

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I'm 1 out of 3 here. And I didn't really do a critique, I just kinda stated the obvious...