I really do wonder how people love it so much. Let's go over this.
Graphics: Graphically, the game is only so-so. In actual cinema, the game is beautiful. Gorgeous even. Outside of that, characters' mouths move like robots, hands are made of four giant polygons and textures are bland.
Sound: Shimomura's done some great work. This isn't part of that. Low quality resamplings of Disney songs are not fun for everyone. Atlantica has one of the worst songs in gaming history. Voice acting is good and some places and godawful in others. Aeris and Cloud are particularly bad.
Story: Bland and short overall. Making something question what "me" means is not good story. It does nothing. I spent 30 hours reliving a bunch of Disney scenes that acted as fluff and did absolutely zero to further character development, mostly because you can't develop Disney characters. So in the end, you get a bunch of bad guys with absolutely zero motivation for anything (oh man, we're NOBODIES LET'S FIGHT) and they die and nothing is said about them. Who cares? They don't have hearts. The endings do nothing to make up for any of it.
Gameplay: I played through the game on the default difficulty and I never died once. I just jumped at enemies and mashed either x or triangle until they were dead. Later on, I didn't even have to move towards the enemies because they give you skills that do this for you. Oh boy! The camera still goes extremely erratic and is very touchy if you so much as twitch the right stick down or up. Drive forms quickly become overpowered and Limits mean you don't take any damage at all while the bosses/enemies take a ton. Of course, this only affects 5 hours of the actual game because that's all you really play. You usually spend your time fighting 6 enemies and then walking into the next room and listening to 10 minutes of cutscenes. Then you walk out of that room for more cutscenes. Then you fight and then you watch more cutscenes. People call Xenosaga bad on cutscenes? KH2 beats it by a LOT in terms of sheer talking and very little of it is actually relevant to the main story. The reaction commands in the game aren't even that cool. Just like in God of War, they're good the first two times but then you realize that it's the exact same scripted attack as the last one and it becomes no different than mashing x, except the triangle commands do a TON of damage.
So yeah, you guys tell me, why is this game good? I'm really not seeing it. I spent $8 and 40 hours getting through it and what I got out of it was a generic action-rpg with a bunch of characters I didn't care about and a bunch of bad guys with zero personality. Got it memorized?
Ugh. Axel's the only one out of the entire group that gets some sort of development and he just ends up bland and lifeless like the rest of them. OH man...you...make me feel like I have a heart. So why did he do anything? I dunno. He never said and there's no clue left to think about to figure that out.
I'd have given the game a 6 at the most.
The problem with Keyboardmania came with how the keyboard controller could only be purchased with Keyboardmania 1st Mix. Importers paid $110 at least for this (those who play other Bemani games notice that this is actually a fairly low price for an import music game + controller) and the game had a low production run because it wasn't very popular in the arcades. KBM2nd+3rd Mix came out and had many many more songs but alas, the game still wasn't popular and Konami scrapped the ideas for more home versions.
The arcade machine was a very finicky thing. Singular keys could be broken off and sensors could die and it's actually cheaper to buy entirely new keyboards than it is to replace the individual sensors. Aside from that, they have a great sound system and need little cleaning. I know of very few machines in the US but they usually have a key broken off on either side or are out of order and no one plays it because the game itself goes from being really really easy to WGHAT difficult at a certain point. It really wasn't very beginner-friendly in the least.
Actually, Guitar Freaks USA was released in arcades here a long time ago. It had a couple of songs for the US but no one played it. They stopped trying after that.
Guitar Freaks itself has started to get much more Americanized with some of the songs. It's been going into Metal quite a bit more (including some stuff by Dillinger Escape Plan and Mastodon). The series recently got a new release on JPS2 after...a really long time of there being no home releases for it.
I would say that the other thing Guitar Hero has that Guitar Freaks doesn't is a lower learning curve. Guitar Freaks gets absolutely insane at the higher levels, despite it having only 3 fret buttons. It sounds easier but it really isn't.
It doesn't especially matter to me either way though because I love my Drummania more than either of the Guitar games (though Beatmania IIDX and Pop'n Music win overall).
In that case, you haven't played enough of it and you've only seen the earlier stuff. The very early 5key stuff is mostly very bad but the later games has an incredible assortment of music. I don't even know where you're getting the throwaway J-pop stuff. There are maybe 1 or 2 songs like that in each mix (sometimes zero). It just shows that you don't know what you're talking about.
And how is the music is Beatmania superlative? You're the one playing it. You don't play along because you're the one actually creating every track, as it happens within the song, as opposed to the laying down of each track separately as Amplitude/Frequency does.
And it doesn't stand out? Check out Bemanistyle.com or perhaps www.vjarmy.com/iidx and try to tell me that it doesn't stand out. It was one of the 10 top ranked arcade games in Japan. It has a HUGE following.
I didn't even see that line in the article and I have to say, it makes me laugh. Parappa came out in Japan in December of 96 but aside from that, no music games were released until DDR/Beatmania in 98 and Pop'n Music in 99. Not only that, but music games increased in popularity since that point until DDR kinda died out in Japan, though the Beatmania IIDX/Pop'n Music/Guitar Freaks/Drummania series are all still wildly popular and are still getting arcade and home releases (Beatmania's being released here in March-April). Yeah, they did some in-depth research there.
I'm absolutely confounded as to why Beatmania IIDX isn't listed in there. Boasting amazing music, unbelievably challenging gameplay (telling me that it's easy would mean that you're a total liar) and it's hitting its 13th release in Japan in March. Not only that, but it hardly concentrates on "dance-friendly music" as it says in the article. Can't say I've ever seen anyone dance to Gabba or any sort of Click House. There's zero reason for it to not be on the list, especially when you have something like Samba de Amigo in there (which had very little music and almost no variation to the gameplay). Vib Ribbon doesn't deserve to be on there either. There just wasn't anything to the game to put it that far up the list.
Ouendan certainly deserves recognition though. The game is amazing, with a great list of songs and great replay with its 4 different difficulties.
And I'm almost offended that they'd say that early Guitar Freaks sounds better than the later installments. The earlier stuff doesn't even sound professional in comparison to some of the greater and later works in the series, not to mention how further spread the genres of music got by the 9th game (8th for Drummania).
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Please excuse the giant paragraph. I'm really tired but I was at least able to get all that out.
I really do wonder how people love it so much. Let's go over this. Graphics: Graphically, the game is only so-so. In actual cinema, the game is beautiful. Gorgeous even. Outside of that, characters' mouths move like robots, hands are made of four giant polygons and textures are bland. Sound: Shimomura's done some great work. This isn't part of that. Low quality resamplings of Disney songs are not fun for everyone. Atlantica has one of the worst songs in gaming history. Voice acting is good and some places and godawful in others. Aeris and Cloud are particularly bad. Story: Bland and short overall. Making something question what "me" means is not good story. It does nothing. I spent 30 hours reliving a bunch of Disney scenes that acted as fluff and did absolutely zero to further character development, mostly because you can't develop Disney characters. So in the end, you get a bunch of bad guys with absolutely zero motivation for anything (oh man, we're NOBODIES LET'S FIGHT) and they die and nothing is said about them. Who cares? They don't have hearts. The endings do nothing to make up for any of it. Gameplay: I played through the game on the default difficulty and I never died once. I just jumped at enemies and mashed either x or triangle until they were dead. Later on, I didn't even have to move towards the enemies because they give you skills that do this for you. Oh boy! The camera still goes extremely erratic and is very touchy if you so much as twitch the right stick down or up. Drive forms quickly become overpowered and Limits mean you don't take any damage at all while the bosses/enemies take a ton. Of course, this only affects 5 hours of the actual game because that's all you really play. You usually spend your time fighting 6 enemies and then walking into the next room and listening to 10 minutes of cutscenes. Then you walk out of that room for more cutscenes. Then you fight and then you watch more cutscenes. People call Xenosaga bad on cutscenes? KH2 beats it by a LOT in terms of sheer talking and very little of it is actually relevant to the main story. The reaction commands in the game aren't even that cool. Just like in God of War, they're good the first two times but then you realize that it's the exact same scripted attack as the last one and it becomes no different than mashing x, except the triangle commands do a TON of damage. So yeah, you guys tell me, why is this game good? I'm really not seeing it. I spent $8 and 40 hours getting through it and what I got out of it was a generic action-rpg with a bunch of characters I didn't care about and a bunch of bad guys with zero personality. Got it memorized? Ugh. Axel's the only one out of the entire group that gets some sort of development and he just ends up bland and lifeless like the rest of them. OH man...you...make me feel like I have a heart. So why did he do anything? I dunno. He never said and there's no clue left to think about to figure that out. I'd have given the game a 6 at the most.
The problem with Keyboardmania came with how the keyboard controller could only be purchased with Keyboardmania 1st Mix. Importers paid $110 at least for this (those who play other Bemani games notice that this is actually a fairly low price for an import music game + controller) and the game had a low production run because it wasn't very popular in the arcades. KBM2nd+3rd Mix came out and had many many more songs but alas, the game still wasn't popular and Konami scrapped the ideas for more home versions. The arcade machine was a very finicky thing. Singular keys could be broken off and sensors could die and it's actually cheaper to buy entirely new keyboards than it is to replace the individual sensors. Aside from that, they have a great sound system and need little cleaning. I know of very few machines in the US but they usually have a key broken off on either side or are out of order and no one plays it because the game itself goes from being really really easy to WGHAT difficult at a certain point. It really wasn't very beginner-friendly in the least.
Actually, Guitar Freaks USA was released in arcades here a long time ago. It had a couple of songs for the US but no one played it. They stopped trying after that. Guitar Freaks itself has started to get much more Americanized with some of the songs. It's been going into Metal quite a bit more (including some stuff by Dillinger Escape Plan and Mastodon). The series recently got a new release on JPS2 after...a really long time of there being no home releases for it. I would say that the other thing Guitar Hero has that Guitar Freaks doesn't is a lower learning curve. Guitar Freaks gets absolutely insane at the higher levels, despite it having only 3 fret buttons. It sounds easier but it really isn't. It doesn't especially matter to me either way though because I love my Drummania more than either of the Guitar games (though Beatmania IIDX and Pop'n Music win overall).
In that case, you haven't played enough of it and you've only seen the earlier stuff. The very early 5key stuff is mostly very bad but the later games has an incredible assortment of music. I don't even know where you're getting the throwaway J-pop stuff. There are maybe 1 or 2 songs like that in each mix (sometimes zero). It just shows that you don't know what you're talking about.
And how is the music is Beatmania superlative? You're the one playing it. You don't play along because you're the one actually creating every track, as it happens within the song, as opposed to the laying down of each track separately as Amplitude/Frequency does.
And it doesn't stand out? Check out Bemanistyle.com or perhaps www.vjarmy.com/iidx and try to tell me that it doesn't stand out. It was one of the 10 top ranked arcade games in Japan. It has a HUGE following.
I didn't even see that line in the article and I have to say, it makes me laugh. Parappa came out in Japan in December of 96 but aside from that, no music games were released until DDR/Beatmania in 98 and Pop'n Music in 99. Not only that, but music games increased in popularity since that point until DDR kinda died out in Japan, though the Beatmania IIDX/Pop'n Music/Guitar Freaks/Drummania series are all still wildly popular and are still getting arcade and home releases (Beatmania's being released here in March-April). Yeah, they did some in-depth research there.
I'm absolutely confounded as to why Beatmania IIDX isn't listed in there. Boasting amazing music, unbelievably challenging gameplay (telling me that it's easy would mean that you're a total liar) and it's hitting its 13th release in Japan in March. Not only that, but it hardly concentrates on "dance-friendly music" as it says in the article. Can't say I've ever seen anyone dance to Gabba or any sort of Click House. There's zero reason for it to not be on the list, especially when you have something like Samba de Amigo in there (which had very little music and almost no variation to the gameplay). Vib Ribbon doesn't deserve to be on there either. There just wasn't anything to the game to put it that far up the list. Ouendan certainly deserves recognition though. The game is amazing, with a great list of songs and great replay with its 4 different difficulties. And I'm almost offended that they'd say that early Guitar Freaks sounds better than the later installments. The earlier stuff doesn't even sound professional in comparison to some of the greater and later works in the series, not to mention how further spread the genres of music got by the 9th game (8th for Drummania).