Post Your Controversial Bemani Opinions

It would be if Konami hadn't nuked what few western licences were in Dancerush Stardom.

As for DDR, I don't think they need to re-rate any charts to level 20 just yet, since there are still so few 19s at the moment.

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I can’t believe Reflec Beat, Dance Evolution and Otocadoll are all shut down. They’re much better than Polaris Chord (aka “We got Project Sekai at home”)

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I hate what DDR became after EXTREME (a few SuperNOVA songs were still ok, to be fair). The game lost its soul, its essence, its identity. All of a sudden there was no more Dancemania, no more Captain Jack, no more variety (hip-hop, R&B, reggae, dance, pop, bubblegum, rock, jungle, ska, disco, etc.), no more unforgettable soundtracks anymore, not even more NAOKI. No more people stomping their feet to the beat and no actual dancing either! It seems like nowadays is all about making the pads as slippery as possible, grab the bar and never let go, and slide your feet up and down as fast as possible over and over again, while listening to the same anime/HatsuneMiku/vocaloid-wannabe 90 % of the time. The arrows look hideous now, the background videos are almost completely gone, even the static backgrounds for each song seem to be gone. And the play area with the dark filter and ugly lines (markers) reminds me of the god damn Stepmania editor instead of DDR. What the hell happened here?

It wouldn't piss me off this much if it was just one of those "spinoff" mixes like Disney Rave or Mario Mix because with those, you know in advance what you're getting into. They could have called it Dance Dance Revolution ~Vocaloid Mix~ or Anime Anime Revolution and it would have been totally fine. But no, DDR 2014, A, A20, A20 Plus, A3 and now even WORLD, same thing over and over again.

Now don't get me wrong: I love japanese music and I have no problem with EDM at all. In fact, I remember we all DDR players used to get so excited when a new japanese song was introduced in the arcade, like Sana Mollete Ne Ente, Aoi Shoudou, BRE∀K DOWN! or hell, I even love Chikara from SuperNOVA!, and it was so fun to have them because they were part of something bigger, something good, something with a very clear and defined identity, which has now been lost.

Sorry about the rant, I know there will be some people who will probably disagree with me. It's nothing personal, I just needed to let it all out.

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I think the kind of music being made in japan has shifted massively since the early 2000s so that's gonna be reflected in new mixes. I don't even think Vocaloid made it into DDR until 2013/14, MANY years after it got popular.

The biggest music shift in DDR has been the shift from dance-pop to EDM. But I'm pretty sure early DDR was basically just an product tie in for Dancemania.

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It's another nostalgia rant, but that doesn't mean it's invalid.

I feel like DDR kept it's classic identity up until about X3. There's slowly been a shift from the game featuring "DDR music" to featuring "rhythm game music". Like, all rhythm games have the same style of music now and too much of it does seem a bit obnoxious. I am a fan of both styles though. I find older DDR's variety in music genres appealing, but I also love the new hard EDM styles despite the sacrifice in diversity. A majority of the anime / vocaloid / touhou music is a big turn off for me, though, and it did used to feel like the Japanese songs were "part of something bigger". Sadly, those of us who grew up playing the PS2 games aren't the target audience anymore.

But you can play how you want to play. The older songs still exist on newer machines. The newer songs still have easier charts on lower difficulties. For my tastes, there's a venn diagram where one circle represents fun, and the other represents high difficulty, and I find the sweet spot in the middle to be charts in the 13-15 range (with a few 16s), where I can swap between bar or no bar, and feel like a beast for passing harder songs.

Beatmania IIDX is easy

Something about the phrasing here bothers me. It feels like willful ignorance to lump all the modern songlists together under "anime" and "vocaloid wannabe" and other such terms. Granted, I'm someone who does love Vocaloid, and Touhou, and all the other things they put in modern rhythm games, so my bias here is pretty obvious. You don't have to like it, I can 100% see why someone wouldn't care for what they're putting in nowadays, but to dismiss it entirely just for being a different style of music feels extremely unfair.

There is a point to be made about a loss in identity, though. I wouldn't go so far as to say it happened in SuperNOVA, I'd probably put it somewhere around DDR '13/'14. Plus, it's not even that the DDR games blend together, its that DDR's songlist now blends in with all the other rhythm games around it. I do wish they kept up a gimmick like Dancemania to help it stand out, especially in the modern rhythm game sphere.

Anyways, for my own opinion, I think Hottest Party was the worst thing to happen to the series visually and musically. Absolutely no soul anywhere to be seen, and we still have to deal with the fallout of all the originals they threw into it.

I've always felt like different Bemani games have had different styles of music, mostly. I could be oversimplifying this but:

Jubeat/Reflec were interchangable but had great variety in all genres

Gitadora and Nostalgia are self explanatory

Pop'n has more childish music and world genres

IIDX leans into EDM subgenres more

SDVX is denpa, dubstep, happy hardcore, and literally every vocaloid song

Dancerush is beat heavy EDM and shuffle music

Dance aROUND is garbage watered down Dancerush rejects

And with DDR, I agree that it's the one game that doesn't have it's own unique personality anymore. It could lean WAY more into disco and funk, songs that are danceable. But instead it's as Burtzman put it "rhythm game music".

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DDR SuperNova 1 and 2 US CS and DDR X US CS are good and my personal favorites X being my most favorite

A larger songlist is not always better. Especially for a public game, having a songlist of 30 strong titles is preferable to a songlist of 40 with 10 being complete stinkers. Likewise, including too many songs of a specific genre or artist can pigeonhole your game or series into a certain public perception. Song choices need to be measured to keep the high ratio of hits-to-misses, similar to full albums, which are reviewed in terms of both their peaks and average quality.

Cold take: DANCE aROUND is just "We have Dance Evolution at home" and Polaris Chord is just "We have Project Sekai at home"

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I've got a similar attitude when putting together Stepmania mixes. While it can be fun to have a giant installation with over a thousand songs from every mix in history, I also have separate installations themed after specific titles, as well as a special 50-song "mini-mix" in which every song is something that is fun to play and meshes well with the next song. I can fire that mix up and play through every song with no hesitation.

It's also why the famous Japanese Extreme isn't my favorite home version. While it has a whole pile of good songs, I don't feel like its overall ratio is as good as, say, Max US.

DDR X wasn't bad, I actually enjoyed it. The licenses were nice

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Reflec Beat got killed because everyone rejected Konami's attempt to mimic Chunithm with Reflesia and it wouldn't surprise me if Polaris Chord will suffer a similar fate. DanEvo never really had a chance given how memorization heavy it was and its lack of licenses.

I doubt Reflec Beat would have survived without the big budget licenses Konami no longer is interested in paying.

It's kinda sad since Reflec Beat always looked super fun and beautiful, also very unique. It sucks that they keep trying to copy Chunithm. With New Pop'n Music, Reflec Beat, Rizminance, Otoiroha, yeesh! And now with Polaris Chord where they're trying to mimic Project Sekai. They should just do their own thing. Sorry if this sounds rude or if it sounds like the stupidest idea, but why didn't they listen to the feedback instead of discontinuing it, was it really necessary?

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