I'd been trying to set up a good way to play keyboardmania for days - tried the PS2 version with a midi converter and it wouldn't boot, downloaded the PC version with a patch and it straight up wouldn't boot, even downloaded doremimania and got it mostly working but couldnt make audio work whatsoever.

And then I had the lucky chance to play keyboardmania at an event today, and it's cool, but like, damn it's no wonder it died, it's just shittier beatmania.

Like, the appeal of a piano rhythm game should be taking on the role of a pianist and playing consistent, key-accurate melodies as a backing or lead to music. But they constantly break shit up making keys trigger different instruments, or sometimes the note it plays flat out doesn't correlate to the chromatic tone it should be. It feels wrong to hit a B note and hear a G, man, you cant do that.

Song list isn't so hot either, it very frequently sounds like a bad midi PC game soundtrack. There's a reason the only tracks here that escaped to other bemani games are frozen ray and pink rose.

It's still novel, it's still a cool vibe, and it was fun when it worked, but at its core it just felt like beatmania with more notes. And like, I already don't like IIDX's 7 key format, so I'm not exactly dropping my pants at the sound of 24.