I agree with the main points but I have a few additional thoughts:
A) All charts started to change significantly in structure starting with Pop'n 8. Four, five, and six button chords became the backbone of almost all difficult charts (this is especially obvious in Pop'n 10, 11, and 12), and stacking a ton of these chords on top of each other in rapid succession replaced jackhammers, awkward trills, and other unique sequences as the characteristic that defined a chart's difficulty. This is not to say that the latter things have fully disappeared even in the most current versions or that the difficulty of chords and the degree to which they are featured are the only things that make certain modern charts harder than others, but it is to say that these changes had become obvious and uniform by Pop'n 12. For better or worse, these changes effectively made perfect scores infinitely more achievable on charts from later games with the same numeric ranking as charts from earlier games. If you don't believe me, play Enka Remix or Classic 6 and then follow it with a generic 39 or 40 from Pop'n 12 or after like April Fool's Song or Flow Beat; the songs are all passable at around the same time for a player with the necessary amount of skill (hence their similar difficulty rankings), but charts are like night and day thanks to the aforementioned phenomenon. For me, this is both good and bad; some of the bizarre button functions from the early Pop'n games feel stupid, uninspired, and excessively difficult for no reason, but others are carefully engineered, creative, and wonderful in a beautifully frustrating way. I guess what I mean is that jackhammers and elbow presses aren't intrinsically good or bad, but can be a great and defining feature of a chart if a designer employs them correctly. In this respect, then, I do miss them, albeit with plenty of exceptions and reservations.
B) The generous uniform timing window present on the recent games has also attributed to the increased ease of achieving perfect scores. I am not entirely sure this is a good thing for two reasons. First, I think it builds an unhealthy obsession with perfect scores, and second, unique timing windows played a large roll in making a lot of charts we now consider to be classics truly great. Anime Hero R and Oi Punk 0 are excellent examples of this; the Hyper and EX charts themselves are good, but the notoriously irritating timing windows on both songs definitely added something for me. S-Challenge mode does a decent job of filling this void, though. It's not used too widely here, but I know that Nick (a top US player) swears by it and he has told me that it is used almost exclusively among the elite in Japan.
C) Charts will continue to evolve in the future. While a relative of chords themselves, double scales seem to have played the same roll in Pop'n 13 and 14 that huge chords did in Pop'n 11 and 12, and while I haven't looked at any of the charts from 15 or 16 yet (hell, I haven't even seen most of the charts from 13 or 14), I'd imagine there are unifying themes among charts in those games as well. I may not be the best person to speak on this, though, seeing as I had effectively stopped playing by the time AI upgraded from Pop'n 12. With that said, am I right about 13 and 14? Has anyone played enough of 15 to speak on it? |