DanceDanceRevolution A (AC)

Yeah, for something that seemed like it would be more of a reboot than 'just another mix', the amount of new songs is disappointing, but if you just treat it as the next mix, it's not TOO low.

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I thought the new charts for the most part are pretty nice. Just a couple of things that struck me the first time around:



I wanted to see 12th notes toward the end. Oh well.



That slowdown at 1:19 was a bit unexpected. I'm not really sure why it's there.

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The eyecatch on the website is :

"DDR X EDM"
"DDR X TOHOU"
"DDR X BEMANI"

I think that sums up the entire game pretty well : It's a huge content patch designed to bring DDR in-line with the two most popular trends in music games right now, and an interface that makes it look a little more familiar to people who currently only play the more popular Bemani games.

If they'd held off on adding Poochie and the EDM Extreme songs to the last game, and launched with those as new songs, the songlist would probably look a lot more exciting, but it's pretty fucking awesome, song-wise, and looks to be heading in a direction I much prefer to the last game.

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It's 24 songs, by the way. That's less than half of 3rd Mix, and actually less than 2nd Mix. I think it seems a lot smaller, because Konami had showed us almost half of those songs during the last two months of the previous game.

Jubeat Qubell also launched today with with 22 new songs by default and 13 new songs as unlocks (so far). That sorta puts it in perspective, given how much you'd expect Konami to prioritize Jubeat over DDR.

Thanks for the help and patience everyone.

Before I crash and sleep for like a day, I'll try to organize all the pros and cons I see so far.


Pros
+Loading times are cut down by quite a bit. Less stuff to deal with when starting and ending rounds.
+If using fast/slow, the total # of each one will be displayed at end of the song. (Premium feature though)
+Picking options from the menu screen by pressing 9. (You can still enter the normal way)
+Combining the Select menu time with the option menu time, a VERY nice touch. So if you save time picking your song, you keep that time in your option menu.
+If it is your first time playing a song rivaling against yourself, it knows we don't want to see the score difference in this case.
+Goods giving you some score now is nice and overall I'm ok with the score value changes. It'll just take time for everyone to get used to.

Cons (I'll try to go in order at first. I'll concede some of these may be related to SD cabs)

Setup
-Right off the bat I noticed how sluggish the overall menu interactions are.
a. You must hold your card a few seconds on reader until it reads, and even then they is a large delay.
b. Coins, Wow. The is a huge delay with putting coin in to the audible sound it makes when you do.
c. You CAN'T undo a Number. If you input the wrong number at sign in menu, you're screwed. On other mixes a simple left on the yellow arrow will delete recent number.
d. The are no fading on different modes (Premium VS Normal). Before, both are grayed out until the amount of coins is available. For instance, if I had zero coins in then I put 3 (normal round) the normal round will light up as an easy way to know you have enough for that while not enough Premium. I know this one is small, but the fact that they changed it for no reason bothers me.

Song Selection
-Personally... I do not like the new menu.
a. All the font is too small for important info. (BPM, Song Records, Eamuse Records
-Combining all difficulties in the sort by Difficulty menu. I guess you could call me picky, but I will still fight this. I think it is well known Expert players just play on Expert/Challenge, even known by konami. So adding Standard (Difficult) 15s into the 15 folder mixed with challenge and Expert ones just doesn't seem right. They could easily make this right by have an option to check which difficulties should be mixed but we know they won't do that.
-They REALLY rip us off this time. Mind you, this doesn't effect me since I pay for the online services, but for everyone else it must suck. Some of the following you can't change without paying extra. Either way you must go online to access all of the following.
a. Darkest
b. Fast/Slow
c. Font appearing behind arrows.
d. border... (are you freaking kidding me? it is forced on!!!)
All of this is a money grab and does nothing but hurt the experience of casual players who just want to play the game how they like.
-Unusable options for SD cabs. They gave us Hidden and Sudden +, Yeah!... Wait, there is no way to use it on SD cabs...
This would be a good place to mention I think the version I played was tailored for white/black cabs. Not other because of that.


Game Play
Overall, it feels buggy and needs polishing
-Dark filter is no longer helpful in beginning. This one bugs the crap out of me... Before the song only shows dark screen when first note is 1 measure away. I LOVE THAT. It is great for tapping out the timing and preparing for the first note.
-The combo counter and judgement font are way too big... really. Also, personally I find them very ugly. In fact most of this reminds me of DDR X.
-Something feels off... This one is quite serious and I may have to play more and explain more in future. Most of it feels and plays like I'm used to on 2014, but quite a few songs change sync depending on which time you play. But more alarming, in some cases, it feels even easier to MA sometimes. Like times when I know I should be getting perfects but the screen is flashing marvelouses.... This is serious. Note: In most cases things feel fine or just off sync. I need more time to explore this.

I have more but I have no more time at the moment, I'll revisit it soon.

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it was staff's mistake, they added them again.

Is someone going to make a DDR A theme for StepMania 5? Im hyped because of this game being released!

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Ouch. Yeah, this particular thing is, quite frankly, complete bullshit. Especially disabling the option to put the combo/judgement BEHIND the arrows. Sort of feels like this is only going to get worse in future mixes.

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Oh thank God, I thought they were goners!


I also noticed something that bugged me, and it was that the Groove Radar eats into the numbers...

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There's been a symbol since X2

Wow, thanks for the really detailed write-up Dr.D! It almost sounds like the team has taken a step or two forward but several backward in some ways :/ Fortunately, things can be patched and updated. I'm looking at the results screen and wondering whether that fast-moving sky background will get annoying or be distracting in in some way when viewing scores, hopefully it doesn't make photos of scores turn out blurry because of the clouds moving in the background lol.

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Why have I never noticed? I'll edit that out.

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So, basically, Konmai found a way to fuck it up once again?

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It's not a colossal fuck up, but it's definately a pile of minor problems that are probably going to add up for players.

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You had a easier time getting marvelous?

The white cabinets over here in japan have been horrendous, timing is completely off, the great attach has been so real today.

Black cabs feel ok, pretty much with the same issues you were describing, but the white cabinets have been a disaster.

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Scratch that it has ALWAYS been there. It used to be small and hard to notice, but in 2014, they made it bigger and thus easy to notice.

Okay, thanks for letting me know!

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No problem

Just a correction there, the two things behind the paywall are:

Judgment Display Priority (under or over arrows)
Slow/Fast Display

Rest of the other options can be freely changed without a subscription.

Source: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ceyp2TMWEAAtNqZ.jpg:large

Sorry bout that. I assumed since it is only changeable online it meant it was lumped with the other online mods that always require a subscription to change. Either way, forcing you to go online to take off borders and make the background darkest are completely unnecessary huddles for the casual player.

Luckily a lot of the main issues I have can be ironed out with some future updates that I hope it gets. This is a good reminder that next time they should try a location test when overhauling the game. (Ex X2->X3 not 2013->2014)

The overall experience leaves me feeling like this is a home release, haha. That could be good news though if they do release a home edition like this one

Edit: An edit to say I edited the other post I made haha. Most was for wording/grammar (damn typing on phones), and other was to add and clarify some things.

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Fast/Slow and font over/under arrows were subscription course features even in X3 and 2013... so DDR A didn't change with regard to those two features.