Z-I-v Freestyle Showcase 2020

1st. (9.75/10) elemental bender feat. Kanae Asaba (Gameoson)
2nd. (9.67/10) Online (Gameoson)
3rd. (9.56/10) Herbarium (talkion)
4th. (9.50/10) Laplace (Daffa212162)
5th. (9.19/10) macaron moon (talkion)
6th. (9.08/10) hypnotheque (TonyAkita)
7th. (9.06/10) 恋するレインガール (FoRCeDNaTuRe)
8th. (9.00/10) VIRTUAL MIND (TonyAkita)
9th. (8.88/10) Twilight (Akira)
10th. (8.67/10) GETCHA (ddrstepper)
11th. (8.50/10) Cold Pulse (FoRCeDNaTuRe)
12th. (8.31/10) A Little Respect (Astroman129)
13th. (8.17/10) Cleopatra (tsugaru7reveng)
T-14th. (8.00/10) Buzzin' (hooky)
T-14th. (8.00/10) THAT'S A NO NO (ddrstepper)
16th. (7.70/10) Show Me (hooky)
17th. (7.69/10) 紅蓮華 (Daffa212162)
18th. (7.67/10) Pretty Savage (tsugaru7reveng)
19th. (6.42/10) LUV CAN SAVE U (Lampshade)

Grading Criteria (roughly)
Repetition: Similar parts of the song are stepped similarly (but with variation to prevent deja vu or subconscious repetitiveness).
Pattern Variety: I don't want to be facing forward the whole time. I also don't want to be doing spins the whole time. Or any (insert specific motif here) the whole time.
Movement Comfort: Don't throw me around the pad like a sack of beef, or make my center of mass stop-and-go.
Density-to-Intensity: More exciting parts of the music get more exciting parts of the chart.


Grading Scale (roughly)
10: Absolutely blew me away. (Exception: I award this to Beginner charts with no glaring flaws.)
9: Really good - I would consider it a standout.
8: Solid chart. May have a few taste nitpicks but mechanically sound.
7: Good, but wouldn't take much to push it up to "great". I would tweak it here and there.
6: It's fine. Maybe boring, incohesive, or directionless. Maybe suffering from mechanical mistakes.
5: I didn't hate it but I won't play it again.
4: A few redeeming qualities, but serious issues. Would consider scrapping the chart and starting over.
3: I'm not feeling this at all. Needs a re-do.
2: I sense effort, as if a slight odor of simfile permeates the room, but cannot pinpoint its origin.
1: Didn't read the assignment.
0: Not actually a simfile. Might be three da-dons in a trenchcoat.

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A Little Respect
ESP: The song choice and length are killing me but the chart does it as much justice as it can. Feels like a MAX2 reject. Can't argue with it.
CSP: Not too much different from the Expert and feels a bit artificially inflated. Song isn't any more complex or interesting the second chart around.
DSP: Again...you did what you could. Rhythms were pretty consistent. Patterning was varied enough to keep me from falling asleep.
BSP: See, here's the level of chart this song deserves. I can tell that even the charter started to lose focus by the end of it though, there's a goofy doublestep at the "work so hard" line a bit over halfway through, and the patterning gets more repetitive as well.
BEG: Nothing in it is noticeably awful.


Buzzin'
ESP: Not sure about a loooooot of these rhythm choices - and some jarring pattern choices, such as a corner jump that changes facing direction suddenly. Good progressive difficulty build to hold the player's interest.
CSP: Just feels like a harder, more scatterbrained version of the Expert chart. Lots of jackhammer-ridden patterns that arrest the player's movement.
DSP: Good spread of patterns, albeit somewhat randomly chosen. Eighth notes often felt like they were in the wrong place. Foot placement following freezes was a little suspect.
BSP: The clearest chart of the bunch when it came to tying freezes and rhythms to the song. The patterns in the plain quarter note sections seemed autogenerated...
BEG: n/a


Cleopatra
ESP: Way more notes than I expected to see in the beginning compared to the music itself. Well-chosen gimmicks, very memorable. Interesting (and slightly dangerous) patterning.
CSP: n/a
DSP: Alright, this chart really makes the song shine - I even preferred it to the ESP. Great use of patterning to match the song's intensity.
BSP: Great complement to the DSP.
BEG: Slightly confused by some of the rhythm choices but seems solid overall.


Cold Pulse
ESP: The rhythms all match the music but other than that I didn't find much interesting or memorable about the chart. The drills were warranted, but...goofy. For such a quiet, ambient song, it did feel somewhat overdone.
CSP: n/a
DSP: Still feels like it's trying to be too complex for the song. The triplet section simplification is somehow even less groovy than the drills in ESP. The use of freeze lengths to accent here and there was neat.
BSP: Feels like it was yanked from 2ndMIX. Not exciting at all, but not bad.
BEG: The simplification of eighth note stabs doesn't really help the chart, but otherwise it's fine.


elemental bender feat. Kanae Asaba
ESP: Super fun, lots of variety, great sense of movement, tasteful doublesteps even...what can I say! My one nitpick is that the rhythm in the first drop is four yellow notes in a row rather than three yellows and a blue - this really bugged me. But other than that this is a "would gladly play again" chart for me.
CSP: Also really fun! I would be more judicious with the shock arrows - I felt like there were a lot extra, especially in the end, and some that didn't feel tied to any rhythm in the music, so I couldn't decide whether to center-panel or jump high for them.
DSP: Solid chart overall. I did spot a few 8th notes here and there that didn't seem to connect to the music and were just placed to enforce pattern symmetry.
BSP: Nothing wrong here, great standard Basic chart. Good pattern variety.
BEG: No issues. Looks great for routine building as well.


GETCHA
ESP: Some rhythm choices I had to strain to hear, especially in the beginning. Didn't feel like the slowdown was well-telegraphed. Thought it was pretty fun overall though.
CSP: n/a
DSP: Holds together better than the ESP in my opinion. Slowdown fits better as well.
BSP: Good, solid Basic chart.
BEG: Good, solid Beginner chart.


Gurenge (紅蓮華)
ESP: Very comfortable and well-structured with some fun crossovers and a couple accent footswitches. I'm not sure I'm catching the first half of the drum build to the chorus...
CSP: I like a lot of the patterning in this, but it's far too much and overlayered. I don't feel the music in these steps. The ESP was fine...
DSP: My only complaint about this is that it feels extra-repetitive. Everything is in its rightful place though!
BSP: Looks great, as far as I'm able to judge it. Good variety, nice use of freezes at this level.
BEG: Demanding for a 1, don't you think? But a good routine basis.


Herbarium
ESP: Stepjumps that change corners are super jarring - and stepjumps should be used frugally in general, in charts meant for no-bar. Not sure how to handle the footswitches? spin? in the beginning. So much layering. Just feels super-overdone.
CSP: Really cute spin ideas and center-panel patterning...sort of a bother to actually execute. And it's the whole chart.
DSP: Great use of 270s and Frozen Rays. I'd say this should have been the chart in the ESP slot, it's quite complex for DSP.
BSP: Does a great job through patterning of making quarter notes stand out. It is a bit flat in density interest, but for BSP that's not a bad thing.
BEG: Pretty heavy in freezes for a Beginner chart, but the freezes are well-chosen, kind of giving a "lift" feel to the percussion in the song.


hypnotheque
ESP: Great callback to the early era of DDR. The rhythm choices could be more consistent and the echo/mirror pattern was too obvious, but the chart was fun overall.
CSP: n/a
DSP: I honestly preferred this to the ESP. Good flow and movement without the pattern repetitions feeling saccharine.
BSP: Some repeated chart sections that really ought to have been adjusted for changes in the music.
BEG: Jumps that spiked intensity where the music did not. But pretty solid for a Beginner chart.


Koisuru rain girl (恋するレインガール)
ESP: Certainly not unfun but does face left a lot and the rhythms are kind of bland.
CSP: The shock arrows that weren't separating 8th note or every-other-4th-note jumps were much too demanding compared to the rest of the chart. Again, not unfun, but sort of bland.
DSP: Pretty entertaining, good use of spins and blue note jumpsteps.
BSP: Seems very intense for this slot. Not very consistent in the patterning and too much to comfortably prepare a routine for.
BEG: Again, surprisingly complex for this slot, but more routine-friendly.


Laplace
ESP: Good use of slowdowns! but why was the dynamic range of the intro not reflected in the chart... Lots of cases where the "x---x--xx-x-x-x-" rhythm repeated when the music didn't support it, feeling a bit like the music was being ignored on purpose.
CSP: n/a
DSP: Feels a lot more like it's going to the music than the ESP did. Some jumps on quarter notes that should have been placed on eighth notes.
BSP: Solid, safe chart.
BEG: No complaints (except for the missing note at the end of the intro slowdown?).


LUV CAN SAVE U
ESP: Good ideas... I like your willingness to use crossovers but they clumped into only a couple phrases, leaving a lot of neutral areas with no movement. Some repetition is OK but I saw lots of duplicated measures. Also a lot of following the
vocals - think of the dancer as more of a percussion instrument, it helps make the movement more natural.
CSP: n/a
DSP: I guess the patterning is "authentic", but to me it just feels like notes were deleted or simplified from the harder chart. Be careful about where you place doublesteps so the player can easily identify them. The feedback I left for ESP mostly applies here too.
BSP: Again, feels like the chart above with deleted notes.
BEG: This feels more like a chart to B.B.K.K.B.K.K. than LUV CAN SAVE U.


macaron moon
ESP: Pretty strenuous but fun and not overdone. The prechorus crossover/spin gallop section is quite memorable.
CSP: Nothing mechanically wrong but doesn't fit the theme of the contest at all lol. Simply too much. The stepjumps are especially uncomfortable and there's a lot of them.
DSP: Alright, I see what you were going for with these semi-spin patterns, but they take so long to resolve that I had to open the editor for them. It's too opaque to get just by playing and they punish you a lot for not doing them as intended - I think it'll turn people off from the chart.
BSP: A lot of really tricky spins (or a lot of doublestepping) for a Basic chart. But it works out, I guess, and fits the rest of the difficulty spread.
BEG: No issues. Good support for a routine, I can easily picture something quite jazzy to this.


Online
ESP: Super fun! Great use of laterals, good handling of the high BPM without overdone intensity, loved the pattern variation with the repeated rhythms. The spins were a bit fast but that's a tiny nitpick. Well done!
CSP: n/a
DSP: Great complement to the ESP. The jumps out of crossovers work really well. Nothing bad to say about this one.
BSP: The jumps in the intro felt unanchored to the music - I would have rather seen freezes, or maybe jacks to the correct rhythm. Otherwise great.
BEG: Good, solid beginner chart.


Pretty Savage
ESP: Started to lose focus a bit in the second half (somehow feels like it's trying to do too much? also I'm confident the "pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty" is 16ths) but the first half was super fun. Perhaps *too* crossovery? although I didn't find that to be a detriment at this level. The stop gimmicks are entertaining and pretty unobtrusive.
CSP: n/a
DSP: Very standard Standard chart. Some really scary foot leading in the bridge...wasn't sure whether I had chosen correctly for more than two measures. Super freezy to the point where it might be confusing.
BSP: Scary foot-leading in the outro this time. A lot of crossovers at a level where players are probably unprepared for them. Solid overall though.
BEG: Some weird gaps (and the stops are a bit unsettling on this chart) but seems ideal for routine crafting.


Show Me
ESP: Confused by a lot of the rhythm choices in this chart (straight 8ths to the "Show me, show me" in the chorus, or the 16ths in the intro, for example) but this holds together pretty well.
CSP: n/a
DSP: The eighth note jacks really confuse me and the chart is sort of uniformly dense. But again, it's not bad. I liked the second part of the chorus a lot.
BSP: This chart fits much better against the music than the other two do! And the patterning has enough variety and fun factor to make it worthwhile.
BEG: n/a


THAT'S A NO NO
ESP: Super fun and great use of the slowdown! There were a few extra 16ths here and there that, when combined with the jumps, made it the difficulty spike a lot where I didn't feel the music warranted it. But otherwise I really enjoyed this!
CSP: n/a
DSP: Good clean chart well-anchored in the music. The stacks of quarter-note jumps in the end kinda made me feel like you were done with the chart before the song ended...
BSP: The first 2/3 was great and the last 1/3 was a bit of a recycle, but no actual demerits from me. Seems good for freestyling as well.
BEG: Having the gimmicks in this chart might be a little disorienting but no complaints otherwise.


Twilight
ESP: Hard to understand what the proper foot usage for the chorus? drop? jump sections would be. Strange pacing overall but still fun.
CSP: Feels hard for the sake of being hard, but not inherently a bad chart by any means - I thought it was fun with bar. Some artistic license in the slowdown rhythms that I didn't jive with.
DSP: Again, not so sure what prompted some of these rhythm choices, I hear plenty going on in the music but nothing that seems to match up. Fun enough though! Also I have got to get on whatever wavelength you use to decide which foot leaves a LR jump for a U/D arrow...I keep guessing wrong.
BSP: Felt like this chart had the best density-to-intensity balance in the file.
BEG: Spends a lot of time locked to U/D only or L/R only - one of the things I would expect a player at this level to "sense" and not enjoy...


VIRTUAL MIND
ESP: Heavily flavored with 5thMIX era, down to the rhythm choices...I'm not sure I agree with them all. The offbeat section halfway through or so was my highlight.
CSP: Similar feedback to the ESP but feels more cohesive. Spins happen very suddenly.
DSP: This is - how do I put it? Any chart for this particular song at this particular level is going to look like this if it's competently done. Not super interesting, but I can't find anything to dock points for either.
BSP: Almost feels randomized. The eighth-note jacks aren't doing it any favors either.
BEG: Firm and toothsome beginner chart. Well boiled.