DDR game with the best stepcharts?

This is why asking "what are the best charts?" is a stupid question. Best charts for what style of play? Do you prefer physically taxing charts? Rhythmically taxing? Mentally taxing? Agility charts? Spins? Crossovers? Doublestepping? Jump streams? And what speed do you like to do those things at?
Sorry Shubox, but you asked your question with a really stupid lack of detail. So, you end up with a bunch of answers, some of which might match your own idea of "best" charts, but you have no way of telling which ones those are.

Myself, I actually enjoy the / charts from ITG 1 & 2, because I prefer something physically taxing. Difficult rhythms are fine, as long as they aren't finer than 16ths at 150 or so. Stops suck, unless they're ignorable (stop-runs, which Konami doesn't use, to my knowledge). Agility challenges are fun on doubles as long as it's not abused to the point of requiring memorizing all the ways you get thrown around. Same goes for spins and doublestepping. Crossovers are very fun to me, as long as they're slower than 16ths at 120. Jump streams are painful, but easily dealt with if they're 8ths at 120 or slower.

I'm something of an anomaly in the dancing community though, because I don't stick to a single mix or set of songs for more than a week. I wander like a lost soul through a never ending profusion of custom songs from many different step artists. I forget charts as often as I learn new ones, so I don't necessarily remember how charts go, even if I played them before. Anything below a 9 is so simple it's forgotten instantly, and usually not selected in the first place, unless I'm seriously tired or really like the song.

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For arcades:
3rd Mix, MAX, EXTREME, SuperNOVA2 and DDR X

CS releases (US):
EXTREME 2, SuperNOVA

CS releases (JP):
3rd Mix, MAX, EXTREME, SuperNOVA2 and DDR X

Great DDR stepcharts and always better than ITG!!

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lol, another fool fails to specify WHY they like the charts, what attributes they have or lack that make them fun for that person. Good job at giving a completely useless response.

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Okay, that was negative.

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Alrighty, Ky. From one r21freak member to another, I'll explain why. For the most part I agree with the list presented. I'll give you my particular reasons for them.


Arcades
3rd Mix - This version contained a lot of songs which would be considered classics among the DDR community in the near future. This mix provided us with several fun songs, easily accessible to different levels of play. With songs like Boom Boom Dollar (K.O.G. G3 Mix), Captain Jack (Grandale Mix), and Dam Dariram, where can you go wrong? The charts were simple, straight-forwards, and didn't ask you to twist your nipple, stomp like a hillbilly, and stick a hearing horn up your ear just to hear the rhythm of a song (see ITG's Utopia).

MAX - While this mix didn't provide us with actually step ratings, several good songs spawned from this mix as well that would later appear as just a normal song in later iterations of the game. Candy*, MAX 300, Freckles (KCP Re-Edit)... Just to name a couple of my favorites. Aside from MAX 300 being the obvious boss song, most of the charts in this game were just fun as well. Freckles was a nice 6-footer that provided endless AAAing matches, Candy* was just plain fun, and Flash in the Night just kicked ass. (period)

SuperNOVA2 - If only the timing of this version didn't hold it down, I would have to say it's one of the best arcade releases that's happened in a while. This version, for me, boasted the best boss songs of any DDR game. I have to say that I actually like all the songs (even NGO and Unreal). And a couple of good songs spawned from this version as well. None of them too overly difficult either. Personal favorites from this mix: Bloody Tears (IIDX Version), Venus, and Pluto

I won't give any feedback on X since I haven't tried this mix in the arcades myself (for obvious reasons).

CS US
EXTREME2 - This version just had a lot of revivals. Boom Boom Dollar (K.O.G .G3 Mix), butterfly (upswing mix), Speed Over Beethoven... This version simply had all the right songs chosen for this version.

SuperNOVA - It had a good handful of the SuperNOVA songs from the arcade. While I can't say this is one of my favorites, it's did give us just enough of SuperNOVA to get by. But I hated the Mission Mode thingy in here. AAA on a Boss Song? Are you fucking insane?

But I will say:

DDRMAX - Was one of my favorite home versions as well. Ordinary World, Dark Black Forest (Short Trip), My Generation (Fat Beat Mix)... Man, what a great selection of songs they got here. And you can't forget about all the time people blasted into this game JUST for a lousy remixed 7-footer. (fu drop the bomb system s.f. mix~)

CS J
3rd Mix - Contained everything the home version had. Along with having a perfect arcade port (aside from the removal of It Only Takes a Minute, Follow the Sun, and Xanadu), the game provided us with the full SSR mode, and Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Remix where the bulk of your unlocks would appear. Mostly featuring 2nd Mix revivals and the appearance of new songs. (ilu la senorita virutal~).

EXTREME - What more can I say about this mix. Almost every song released in that version ended up in the US release with a couple of songs that previously appeared in a US release. To top it all off, Max. (Period). Most of the charts were straightforward fun in this one.

SuperNOVA2 - Everything from the Arcade release and then some. Not really gonna repeat myself from the last one, but I'm one of those people who actually liked the EternuS chart.

X - This one I can talk about. Kinda sucks adjusting to the new difficulty rating, but most of the stepcharts were pretty fun in this one. Personal Favorites: Koko Soko, PORIRIZUMU, A Geisha's Dream. Easy enough to do on a pad. And seriously what the hell were they thinking with the Paranoia Max (Dirty Mix) [SMM Special]?

Yeah, I really got nowhere in this one. Most of the time, it's the song that makes the stepchart. In most cases, if the song was good, the steps that followed were good as well.

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Freckles isnt a 6 btw its a 7 xD

I agree fully with you on what you say all there and i also agree that sn2 is probably the best mix we have seen in a long time, although some of the boss charts went a bit too far (Ending of pluto relinquish and paranoia hades opposite jumps at 300bpm 8ths for example)

Mainly the reason people didnt get on with ITG is because they never REALLY got a balance right, itg1's 9's were all mainly long 8th streams with 16ths and excessive jumps (See Fly with me and touch me). The 10's were pretty good on ITG 1 some of their gimmicks were fun too although some of them should have been 11's really (tension). The 11's were also pretty good on a whole although you could tell they were new to making difficult charts. 12s are improperly rated due to gimmicks on easier ones such as vertex and delerium, both recognized as the easiest 12's for having one or two difficult parts and nothing really difficult anywhere else (a mini run and a long run on delerium and the ending gradual speedup on vertex) Tell had its excessive jumping which tires you out if you try to do it properly but cheating it *treating it as a 32nd* is generally not tiring. HotN had no faults realistically that was the most solid out of all the hard charts, then there was euphoria, less said the better, whilst it follows the song rhythmically, the slow down didnt need any of its drills as its doubles expert chart was so much more interesting and varied there!

Pandemonium however, its like they tried to make it the boss song by adding all those jumps and the big run in the middle then thought to themselves "Crap we went too far" and turned all the runs into two arrow runs pretty much and removed all the complicated stuff.

Then ITG 2 came out and it all flip flopped, everything was about technique and nothing was about stamina really, all the 9's were now following the rhythm TOO closely and had ridiculous turning patterns, the 10's were again underrated except for cryosleep and all three H songs that were 10's which i admit i have no fault with! ITG 2 had next to no 11's, Monolith which should have really been a 12 for having its excessive turns, infact i still only have like an 80% score on it which makes it my lowest score on anything below a 13! Even my pandemonium and summer have both broke 90% now. Clockwork genesis was rather interesting, it followed a lot of unusual patterns and they tried to make it overly complicated, its a marmite chart, you either appreciate it on a technical level or you hate its guts. 12's - Go 60 Go which really was easy for a 12 just gimmicky, Bloodrush - Lets take hardcore of the norths pure difficulty and see what it would have been like with twists and turns basically. 13's on ITG 2, summer speedy mix had no faults, it was well balanced and followed a large selection of rhythms whilst still being tiring, V^2 i see what they did but i dont enjoy it, it seems to just be a random mishmash of notes smattered against the background noise. A 12 would have been most acceptable here.

For the TL;DR. ITG 1 and 2 wasn't as popular with the lower level players because the jump from hard to expert was never perfected, ITG 1 was too tiring to play expert, ITG 2 was too technical to play expert, ITG 3 actually intended on getting the mix right which is even more of a shame why it wasnt released or finished >_>

basically now its split into two groups, those who enjoyed ITG too much and want nothing but harder and harder charts to play for themselves, those who werent quite up to passing 12's with high 90%'s and didnt see the point in nonsensical trance charts with 16th runs all the way through and appreciate DDR so much more for it. those who never got into ITG just fit with the latter simply.


Hopefully that explains why people keep saying they prefer DDR to ITG anyway i admit i left some stuff out but its a general idea.



By the way 3rd mix korean version 2 has the most underrated charts in history, Shock when played without double stepping once is quite possibly the most fun ive had in years on a ddr cabinet

Right, because a bunch of 8's that are really 7's and almost no 9's to bridge the gap to harder-than-ever boss songs is exactly what we need.

It's underrated for two good reasons:
1. Overused jumps
2. No 16ths on Doubles

Even if Caution and Starian have good steps on Singles.

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I would think older games have better step charts. The reason being is that Konami, to celebrate DDR's 10th anniversary, came out with 3 (I believe) new versions of DDR, and to do that in one year, I would've thought they would have to hurry up with the new games and make step charts quickly. But that's just my thoughts.

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The problem with that thought is that Konami has grown since the older years. Each of the 3 games was made by a different team. I haven't watched the credits to see if they share step artists (or if that's even specified), but I expect each game has a different set of step artists. Thus, with the exception of the shock arrow charts, we can assume that the charts in the games had plenty of time and thought put into them.

This is why I don't play DDR to improve my skill at singles anymore. The gap between 9s and 10s is a complete joke. If I pick any of the DDR mixes I have (Max, Ex2, SN1, SN2, X, HP1, HP2), there are ~5 songs that are tiring, but I can still A or AA them, and the boss songs still lie well out of my reach, with a couple exceptions. Being down to 3-4 songs that are challenging makes it get old really fast if you're pushing to pass harder songs. It's like they assume it's not worth their time to provide charts for people that can A or AA 9s, but can't do any ITG 11s (which the 17s and some of the 16s on X would be on ITG). The fact is though, anybody who plays every day for a year can be at that point, so they're failing to provide a reason for those people to buy new games. Who really wants to buy a new game, and have only 1/20 (or less, in the case of HP1-2!) of it be challenging?

Dancefreak: I see the gap between ITG hard and ITG expert somewhat differently, but it really belongs in a different thread. I also don't fit into either of your groups, because I do see the point of trance 16th run charts, but I'm not up to passing 11s.

Now to try to be relevant to the topic. If you want to memorize charts and spin and face away from the screen a lot, with random jumps in places, X is a good mix for you. I was fighting against that with every chart I played the other day. SN2 and X are also good mixes if you want easy AAAs. I can't AAA anything for real, yet I've picked up 4-5 AAAs on X, without even making a dedicated effort.

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Even on X, we returned to steps of realistic difficulty, but still have a crapload of 9s and 10s.

PFCs or just AAAs?

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Just AAAs, though I think a couple of them were only 2-3 greats.

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That empty gap between 9's and 10's would be filled with just a small amount of 14's.

They should make more of them.

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So, I glanced at the game database a bit. Out of Ex2-X, X has the most 9s (old, counting X 12-14 as 9, to be generous) at 22. Most of the other games don't break 15.
From UM4-Uni3, Uni3 has the most 9s, with 27. And all 4 of those games have at least 15 9s.
So, Uni3 might be the best mix if you're looking to leap from 9s to 10s. I haven't played the songs myself though, so I'm not sure.

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i like sn because the charts are good

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I like how you fail to define what you view as good.

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DDR Universe 3.

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good is good

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sup Konoko Expert, how are you today?

Also there are low 10's such as Xepher, Healing-D-Vision and Max 300 Super-Max-Me Expert to get one's teeth into.

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Does it HAVE to be from (PS2)? My favorite US version was DDR Konamix, To me it had a great selection of songs/stepcharts (I'm just Old-Skool that way)...But if I have to choose from the (PS2) selection, I would say DDR SuperNOVA because it forced me to appreciate not just songs in Heavy but all difficulties during the Stellar Master Mode.//

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Extreme2 says : "Oh hai I forced you to play light and standard songs too and had better songs and stepcharts!".