[Xythar]

I had this done yesterday but then Bemanistyle went down (boo). So here it is now, in a separate post of course because it wouldn't fit into the original, heh.

PUMP UP THE JAM

Steps: 3/6 Sorry, not great. I liked the start, but it went downhill from there (barring one part in the middle which was decent). Your main problem is poorly executed karaoke steps. In a song like this, you cannot afford to only follow the vocals closely because it leads to huge blank spaces where there are no vocals and therefore no steps alternating with bouts of awkward steps riddled with yellow-arrow syndrome. In a song like this, you should really be making more of an effort to follow the beat. You also used a lot of freeze arrows that didn't really go to anything and mainly seemed to be employed as a means to fill space (not to mention that the ones where one arrow starts a 16th later than the other look kind of ugly). Much like Little Little Princess before, this chart is just all over the place and has awful flow as a result, plus some double stepping later on (although you seemed to mostly avoid it until then).

Everything Else: 2.5/4 Graphics weren't particularly amazing, I thought the outline around the text looked a little ugly and didn't much like that lime green colour for the artist text. Song was also really quiet for some reason and didn't seem to have that much going on besides. It does include videos, tho, which is nice.

5.5/10 You need to work on your step rhythms a lot. Concentrate on making your steps more even throughout the music and avoid leaving in large gaps or following the vocals too closely.

RIGHT NOW (DANCEMAN REMIX)

Man, 10 perfects...

Steps: 4.5/6 Much like Days Dreamer hard, these would be really good if they weren't so double steppy. I had to double step a ridiculous number of times to get through this, you should really work on your steps a bit more and test them out on pad so that this doesn't happen. Other than that I thought they were pretty cool disco steps, I was thinking they should be a 6 early on but I guess those runs in the middle make it a 7. Probably.

Everything Else: 3/4 Pretty good choice of song, but lacking in extras. The graphics were so-so - I don't understand why you had to make the title and artist so ridiculously small on the banner considering that you had plenty of empty space to work with.

7.5/10 Double steps! Aurgh! They're what's holding you back here, so please work on eliminating them in the future.

SAKURA KADZUKI

Oh man, nostalgia value! Back when the closest I had to Beatmania of any kind was BMDX and my computer keyboard, I had a bunch of Akito BMSes that I used to play constantly, and this was one of them. I never actually knew its full name, since all I had was some unreadable shift-JIS in the title field and the directory name "sakura_k". It was awesome hearing this song again unexpectedly like this, so thanks for entering it. (And incidentally, your readme is wrong for this reason, as it originated as that BMS far before DJMAX)

Steps: 4/6 Where do you keep hearing 16ths in this song?! The first part was alright except for the 16th triplets that went to nothing, the bit after the freeze with the gallops etc had seemingly nothing at all to do with the music whatsoever, the bit after that with the 5-note runs was alright if repetitive, and then after that there are parts in the music where there would be an actual 16th triplet followed by 8ths but you'd put in two 16th triplets for no apparent reason (this part was also fairly repetitive in terms of steps and step placement, too.) Please don't just invent 16ths to make the song harder like you seem to be doing. There were a bunch of freezes, but they weren't too bad and I didn't even mind the short ones too much since it seemed like you were trying to emphasise that crossover for some reason. Double stepping was also kept to a minimum although that one part where you had to crossover LDR and then jump LD immediately after was pushing it a bit. I just wish the steps had more to do with the song in this case, and less random 16th triplets everywhere.

Everything Else: 3.5/4 The graphics were pretty beautiful, although I'm guessing you just took them straight out of DJMAX with minimal modification. I really, really love this song, as I may have mentioned already.

7.5/10 Honestly, I'd love to see better steps for this song that do a better job of following the music, but these are okay I guess... you might be mostly on riding the coattails of your song choice, however.

Maybe I should go step one of the other Akito songs... >_>

SAMBA BRAZIL

Steps: 5.5/6 I thought the two 16th gallops in a row were a little overused (or maybe I just don't like it when they both go the same way, and yes I'm a hypocrite) and I thought the cluster of 16ths near the start was probably a little out of place with the rest of the song. Your usage of 8ths and 12ths however (as well as that good old red-yellow-blue rhythm) was excellent and these steps were pretty enjoyable all round if a little repetitive (yep, huge hypocrite, right here)

Everything Else: 3.75/4 Can't go wrong with Captain Jack! Graphics were quite good as well, I think. But, this is another file lacking in extras, I'd have liked to see a lyrics file or such before giving the full score in this category.

(Incidentally, I tried your challenge chart and thought it was pretty good, kinda reminded me of a lot of the 10s from ITG2, although you overused the jumps a bit. Yeah, so I said ITG and not DDR, but that doesn't mean you should take it out, I think there will be people who enjoy it all the same. In any case, the challenge chart isn't a factor in determining your score by my system)

9.25/10 A quality file! Well done.

SEASONS OF LOVE

Steps: 5.25/6 Pretty good, but there seemed to be a few double steps in parts (not too many, tho) which are made worse by the presence of freeze arrows. However, I think without the double steps the freeze arrow usage is good - normally I'd be suspicious of a song with this many (possibly to the point of including a recommendation that the step author submit their resumé to Konami of Hawaii) but in this case, it goes well with the music. There are also a few points where the steps feel overly sparse, however.

Everything Else: 3.5/4 Decent graphics and nice choice of song (it's got a nice beat to it, and I like the lyrics). Could use a lyrics file or other extras, tho.

8.75/10 Not bad. Could use a touching up with regards to step placement tho.

SPHERE

Steps: 3.25/6 Well, it's not rainbow soup at least, so that's one plus. However, they're not very interesting either and make little effort to follow the music much if at all - especially in a song like this which begs for specific 8th streams that you seemed to ignore entirely. Furthermore, the steps tend towards annoying doublesteps quite often and the stepjumps are overused and annoying at 160 bpm, especially when most of them have two steps and then a jump on the other two arrows (as opposed to sharing an arrow with one of the previous two steps) and some patterns tend to repeat too much, again with little regard for how the music is actually doing. It's better than Speedy Cat, but it's still not very fun.

Everything Else: 2/4 Firstly, the speedup was completely unwarranted in my opinion and made it really hard to hit the last few notes. The graphics are okay, but what do they have to do with a medieval choir or a sphere or the song in any way? The banner looks like Metroid or something and I have no idea what the background is even meant to be. DDR backgrounds also don't generally have the genre or BPM. I realise you used a game version for this because you made it way back before the RED OST was out but you could have taken the time to replace it with the OST version in the meantime, I think - especially considering that 'meantime' is well over a year now I believe...?

5.25/10 It's a step in the right direction, but you still need to work on making steps that suit the music better, paying more attention to what patterns work on feet and varying things up a bit more.

THIS IS LOVE

Steps: 5.75/6 Nice! They're a little too twisty I think, but the rhythm is fun and you use freeze arrows well (except when they are combined with the aforementioned twisting). Still, these were pretty cool, although relatively hard for a 7, perhaps.

Everything Else: 3.75/4 Pretty song and nice graphics, and lyric file! The only problem is that the BG has information too close to the top and bottom, which tends to get covered up in the default Stepmania theme... it does look really nice out of Stepmania, tho. The song and graphics together kind of remind me of Kingdom Hearts.

9.5/10 A solid, well-made stepfile! Not much to complain about here.

TOGETHER

Steps: 5.5/6 Not bad! I wasn't sure of the rhythms in a few places, you tended to switch between red-yellow-blue and red-blue-red too frequently and I couldn't usually work out why, so I'd do one red-yellow-blue bit and expect the next part to follow that as well, but it'd be red-blue-red and I'd end up getting a great. There was also the part near the end with more 16ths that I didn't really get. Overall however this was pretty good.

Everything Else: 3.75/4 Great song choice, good graphics, lyrics file and video script - the only problem with this is the fadeout at the end which is a bit fast and early for my liking. I'd have preferred it if it started a little later and was slightly more drawn out, I think. Also, your CD title is way too big and it's just a square image - it'd be better if it had just the album logo on a transparent background. Other than that, nice work!

9.25/10 Well done, this feels pretty DDR-authentic except for a few minor issues.

TUNAK TUNAK TUN

Steps: 2.75/6 Blargh. Firstly, way too many jumps. The whole start and end and whatever have a ton of jumps in a row where normal arrows would suffice and be far more suitable - jumps are meant for emphasis, you don't just replace a bunch of arrows with them randomly. Most of the yellow jumps were off as well and didn't match the music properly. The rest of the steps weren't too interesting, didn't necessarily follow the music very closely, and had double stepping and one part with pointless random gallops everywhere. Really not much fun at all.

Everything Else: 1.5/4 Banner is stretched and ugly, background is blurry and ugly. CD title is way, way too large and ugly. Your name should not be in the subtitle field of the file, in fact this was explicitly stated in capitals in the official rules so you should probably count yourself lucky you weren't DQed for it. Song is absolutely awful (albeit moderately DDRable, I guess) and I did not enjoy it.

4.25/10 Sorry, not a fan.

WAY OF LIFE

Steps: 4.75/6 I liked how you didn't try to follow everything exactly, but to me it still felt like it was harder than it needed to be - too many 16ths and too many jumps, in my opinion. I think the steps would have been groovier if they were just mostly 8ths with the occasional jump to punctuate the end of a line or something, but maybe that's just me. There was also a small amount of double stepping here and there, although nothing serious.

Everything Else: 3/4 Song was alright, but I didn't really like the graphics that much. Text was a bit ugly & hard to read on the banner, and I didn't really like how much it was spread out on the BG, and the graphics didn't really have anything to do with the video (it would have been better if they did, I think). On the plus side, the video was pretty cool, although the song itself felt like it was cut a little long.

7.75/10 It wasn't too bad, but I didn't really feel like the song warranted the steps that it got.

WILD THING / POOR BOY

Steps: 6/6 Awesome! I loved the 8th runs and jump placement. Really nothing to complain about, great steps!

Everything Else: 3.5/4 Banner is a little plain, BG is alright. That's some pokecapn reasoning as to why you made them like that, tho... :P The video and lyrics were a nice touch, and I guess the song works pretty well (although the falsetto on the "Poor Boy" parts hurts my ears... >_>).

9.5/10 Great file! Although, it probably would have been better if you'd avoided the fadeout.

(just kidding :P)

WOWOWEE

Steps: 5.5/6 I liked everything except the gallops, which I thought were a little overused perhaps (I could see how the first one fit, the others not so well, but they were okay all the same). Especially the jumps, which were cool.

Everything Else: 3.75/4 The graphics are good, although their connection to the song is pretty tenuous... :P Maybe even some kind of generically game-show-like background would be better if you didn't want to use a Wowowee one specifically, I dunno. I guess the song works, although I have no idea where you got the idea to use this, heh. Lyrics and other random extras are cool.

9.25/10 Here's to another well done bracket 2 stepfile!

YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME

Steps: 5.5/6 Pretty good! The 6ths early on took some getting used to and felt a little out of place with the rest of the song, but I can dig them. The rest of the steps were fairly good throughout, although I liked the start of the synth hook a bit better than the later parts and there were also steps during this quiet part that didn't really seem to go to anything. Still, nice job!

Everything Else: 3.5/4 Graphics were okay, but the banner and BG didn't seem to have anything much to do with each other. Excellent song choice however, and nice video.

9/10 This bracket's hardly short on quality entries, that's for sure...

NAGAI YUME (a.k.a. "Akira forgot to enter a romanisation and so this is last in the list instead of being with the Ns like it should..." :P)

Steps: 5.25/6 Yeah, no huge problems, although you were guilty of following the vocals a little too closely at times I think, which led to a lot of freeze arrowry. They didn't stand out to me as fantastic, but they weren't bad.

Everything Else: 3/4 How come you didn't do a decent font effect on your new banner like you did on your old? The text looks nasty on the new one, and the image in the banner looks a bit fuzzy too, same with your 'background' (although black.png is the actual background used, which is kind of annoying because I think a transition from your real BG would be just as good and give you the added bonus of actually having a BG). Anyway, the presence of a video is nice, in any case, and the song's alright, when combined with the video it has a fun kind of marching feel. The lack of a romanisation in the SM file bugs me, tho.

8.25/10 Not stand-out amazing, but not bad either, a decent enough entry.