After a tokimemo-themed warmup, I am officially awoken from true DDR hibernation for the fall and winter, baby. Getting back into DDR in the fall is always a bit of a slow start due to the fact that its at the peak of cold/flu season so I always feel like crap getting back into this not only from being out of shape but also from fending off disease. True dancing gamers push on through such things. No matter how I'm feeling, all I need to see is footage from ancient japanese freestyle DDR competitions of 20 years ago to motivate me to jump around on the ol pad for an hour before I collapse from exhaustion.
As for the actual game, it's aight. I'd rate the setlist just about as good as 4th or extra mix in that there's a handful of bangers I kept going back to scattered through a pile of eh. Shoutouts to Captain Jack doing an english cover of odoru ponpokorin, that felt like it was made specifically for me lmfao. This game also runs at 60 FPS compared to literally every previous game running at 30 and it feels GOOD. The stepcharts are also really well-developed, compared to other games I found myself popping off HARD after finishing songs way more often just because of how good they felt to step through. It really feels like Konami has been subtly polishing the core DDR gameplay throughout the series so far. Speaking about the series so far, this game also essentially serves as a tribute to what's been done, as not only is there a 200-image gallery of various characters, backgrounds, and merchandise from the series up to this point, but the game also includes a complete archive of the old DDR websites data bank of user-submitted custom charts for all the previous DDR games. There are over 3000 fan-made custom charts of varying quality you can download to your memory card to give a breath of fresh air to your existing DDR game catalog, and that's hella cool. I wonder if anyone has actually played them all.
It's kinda funny that the setlist is really this games weakest quality, as this would absolutely be a top-tier DDR game if it had the setlist of something like 3rdmix. Everything else is top-notch and a solid send-off to the PS1 era of japanese DDR games before the series moves on to the next generation of game hardware.
(And this game marks the debut of Alice!!! I always used the player 2 side so I could play as her, she's the best I hope I can play as her in all the future games)
As for the actual game, it's aight. I'd rate the setlist just about as good as 4th or extra mix in that there's a handful of bangers I kept going back to scattered through a pile of eh. Shoutouts to Captain Jack doing an english cover of odoru ponpokorin, that felt like it was made specifically for me lmfao. This game also runs at 60 FPS compared to literally every previous game running at 30 and it feels GOOD. The stepcharts are also really well-developed, compared to other games I found myself popping off HARD after finishing songs way more often just because of how good they felt to step through. It really feels like Konami has been subtly polishing the core DDR gameplay throughout the series so far. Speaking about the series so far, this game also essentially serves as a tribute to what's been done, as not only is there a 200-image gallery of various characters, backgrounds, and merchandise from the series up to this point, but the game also includes a complete archive of the old DDR websites data bank of user-submitted custom charts for all the previous DDR games. There are over 3000 fan-made custom charts of varying quality you can download to your memory card to give a breath of fresh air to your existing DDR game catalog, and that's hella cool. I wonder if anyone has actually played them all.
It's kinda funny that the setlist is really this games weakest quality, as this would absolutely be a top-tier DDR game if it had the setlist of something like 3rdmix. Everything else is top-notch and a solid send-off to the PS1 era of japanese DDR games before the series moves on to the next generation of game hardware.
(And this game marks the debut of Alice!!! I always used the player 2 side so I could play as her, she's the best I hope I can play as her in all the future games)