Do not pull the trigger. Beat the battle song.

from joyous gold to tactical green, IIDX enters operator mode. walls of blocky binary drawings from DistorteD morph into suffocating digital camo, with our usual DJ heroes and heroines transforming into gun-toting geardos. emboldened by the aggressive theme, the konami sound team eagerly leaned into gabber, breaks, and pumemling "digi-rock." nothing indicates this better than TROOPERS, the eponymous boss track for this game. the pummeling drum machine, harsh scratching, and gang vocals conjure the violent, metal-infused beatdown hardcore that had risen to the top of the punk scene during this time such as trapped under ice and no retreat.

I'm gassing it up a little too much; listen to TROOPERS for more than a couple seconds and it'll quickly become obvious how corny the tinny guitar and garbled english ("I want to flag on your mind", "we just can't be side on you!") are. don't take this as a slight against japanese hardcore as a whole, there's some truly excellent music in that scene, but the IIDX regulars are hard dance enthusiasts, so it's a bit of a step into left field. the theming as a whole really deviates out of the usual IIDX wheelhouse of glassy science/tech themes and cosmopolitan travelogues. it would fall in with other out-of-place iidx themes like spada (dark fantasy?) and sinobuz (ninjas??) if not for the focus on a vague, hi-tech military locale that calls to mind similarly inoffensive war games such as star fox's famous hangar intro or iron gate from sonic adventure 2. it's buoyed by one of the best opening themes (THE FANG) in the series, which would later be given vocals and a notable tempo increase in Empress's CaptivAte2 ~覚醒~. if you got some shmup vibes from the opening video, you're thinking along the same line as the developers; DJ Troopers' boss songs all style some of the most famous IIDX producers as animal-themed shmup bosses complete with health bars and shot animations that map to the player's performance.

this is still golden-era IIDX so I don't have a true distaste for this style, but it certainly feels weird to me that most of the stuff I like in this game is not really in line with the theme. I'm a trance guy so I'm obviously biased towards the IIDX styles that center around that, and while DJ Troopers delivers the goods in a few places, its overall eclectic tracklist and heightened "serious" tone lends itself most to either joyless rhythmic exercises or orchestral "renaissance" tracks, both of which I often enjoy playing but not listening to. doesn't really help that long-time sound producer dj TAKA dropped probably his most cloying trance track Freeway Shuffle here and then fucked off to do mostly piano shit (blue rain honestly makes up for it though...). still, I would probably take this setlist over the relatively limp DistorteD, and the overall QoL that comes with being a late-era ps2 title makes it a worthwhile play, especially with solid returning songs such as spiral galaxy and Rise'n Beauty (which gets new charts!).

I don't remember what my original goal for this one was before reviewing it; I think it was five 10*s done, and I surpassed that months ago. I couldn't get over the goofiness and it took me a while to come up with a good way to represent it lol. by this point I'm reaching the end of intermediate-level play having finally beat an 11* (love & eternity from 10th style), so I'd like to do a larger write-up with a more in-depth mechanical analysis... but that'll definitely be for Empress, which is the best of the ps2 titles by a long shot imo. it'll also be a fitting time for me to say goodbye to primarily practicing on ps2, as my local arcade purchased a IIDX cabinet out of nowhere, and playing on a RESIDENT fan server with all of the bells and whistles that entails (all songs unlocked! layout customization you can't do on official stateside cabinets!) is way more attractive than on my decaying, burned DVD-Rs. there's only one thing that arcade IIDX is missing that this game has: this absolutely ludicrous black another chart for mendes, which presumably is so bullshit that they just didn't even bother porting it forward.

favorite tracks:
good-cool ft. Florence - Be OK (EUROBEAT)
dj TAKA VS Ryu☆ - Blue Rain (TRANCE)
HHH - Dazzlin' Darlin (HANDZ UP)
猫叉Master+ - end of world (FRENZY HOUSE)
kors k - evergreen (PROG)
Eagle - ICARUS (NU-SKOOL BREAKBEATS HARDCORE)
StripE vs MUNETICA feat.ARISA - Now and Forever (ENERGETIC TRANCE)
kors k feat.Rie - Rising in the Sun(original mix) (UK HARDCORE)
RAM - satfinal (RAVE)
Fracus - Shades of Grey (HARD TRANCE)
NISH - Around The Galaxy (UPLIFTING TRANCE)
DJ SWAN - BEAUTIFUL ANGEL (DRUM'N'BASS)
Hardcore United Tokyo(teranoid & DJ TECHNORCH) - BRAINSTORM (TRANCECORE MEETS GABBA)
L.E.D. vs TOMOSUKE fw.crimm - Cookie Bouquets (BREAK CORE)