Difficulty and the US PS2 Beatmania.

[Anonymous Robot]

So I'm a big fan of DDR, and when I saw Beatmania IIDX retailing in American stores with the controller, I picked it up without hesitation.

However, months have passed and I haven't played it much at all. I'm thinking that the problem is the difficulty. I quickly moved from Beatmania to IIDX mode, finding Beatmania too easy and awkward with the 7-button pad. Even then, though, the difficulty seemed uneven. Some songs were too difficult to complete, others were too easy to be fun. That, and the loss of free-scratch in IIDX mode was disappointing.

I'm not trying to troll. (This may be an unwise choice for first post ) A lot of my friends swear to this game over DDR, and I feel like I'm missing something. Am I not using some feature? Does the US import just not fare well? What is the big draw of IIDX?

[_bloop]

You just have to practice a lot, horribly difficult learning curve.

[Starmony]

Well the us version is easier than the japanese versions and if your just having trouble then what you need to do is just keep at it. IIDX isnt a game where most people pick up and are able to do anything with it. I went from DDR to IIDX and i found that it's completely different and what i needed to do was just keep at it. Ive played IIDx consistantally for about a year now and i still havent passed alot of the songs on another so just practice if you want to get better.

[ANGRY ABOUT ENGLISH]

And the US release has more than one "hitch" you're going to get stuck on, for difficulty. All that can be done, though, is keep playing if you enjoy it, or get out now before this series sucks your wallet dry with imports.

(And I'm a fan. Sad, huh?)

[Monster in a box]

Yeah, if you want to keep playing you're going to have to import. However, and listen good because this somehow always gets ignored, if you're going to import DO NOT GET RED OR 10TH. ALMOST ALL OF THE SONGS IN THEM ARE 7* OR ABOVE ON [7] (OR HYPER AS YOU KNOW IT), AND RED'S [L7] (NORMAL) CHARTS ARE HORRIBLE. And when I say RED has bad [L7] charts, that's not just me talking. It's a fairly universal opinion. Almost all, if not all of them are just the [7] minus half the notes, and they're choppy and awkward.

If you're willing to import, I reccomend 7th, or 8th. 9th is good too. Just DO NOT GET 10th OR RED. I can't stress that enough.

[dog$]

Beatmania US Discussion Thread

No need for a new thread.

[xybur]

Red has great charts and I resent ever reading Monster in a boxes post.

They are much more refined and cleaner than most every chart before it.

Monster just needs to practice, as I will agree that overall the newer the style, the more difficult all of the songs get, but to say the charts are "awkwardly made" is completely wrong. Red (and to a certain extent 10th) have great charts, in the sense that they are written in a uniform and sensical manner. A few charts like scherzo on 10th can be hard to play on l7, but even so, most the charts are great.

[rmz]

Hi, welcome, wave, and so on

This would be great in the BM US sticky like someone already said.