9th Style First Impressions

Oogami128 · Trick Member Joined: 01 May 2002 Location: Takayama, Japan

Note: Keep in mind that everything included within applies to the *beta* version of the game only. There might and probably will be some changes and tweaks made to the game prior to the final release, so I don't want to hear anyone griping when they finally do get to play the game that I was wrong about something.

Well, yesterday I spent the big $$$s, took the shinkansen (aka bullet train) down to Tokyo immediately after work, and made my way to the arcade in Ouji that was hosting the 9th Style location test. When I got there (I arrived around 7:40 PM), my face immediately fell when I noticed I would have to wait in a line of about 25 people, and if you realise that the average IIDX game runs around 6-7 minutes (though sometimes the games ran closer to 8 because of awful load times and various entry-card mishaps), I had a long wait in store for me, and I would only have one shot at the game since I had to make an 11:06 train from Ueno station back to Gunma. Also, they had since ran out of entry cards, so I didn't get one, but considering they looked pretty non-descript anyway (no cool art or anything like I was kinda expecting), and would only work on that particular beta version, I got over my initial disappointment rather quickly. I also had hunger working against me, as I had nothing to eat after a light snack of two onigiri at around 4:30, and would have nothing to eat until after midnight, and that probably contributed to my kinda blah performance when it finally WAS my turn.

So, enough about me, what about the game? Well, to put it frankly, 9th Style looks beautiful. Konami obviously took their time to make the game look fantastic, and it shows (unlike 8th Style, it's interface reeking of a last minute throw-together). The title screen, entry card, and song select interfaces look quite cosmic, sporting a nice blue color scheme and neat little "futuristic" touches here and there. Because of the sheer number of songs within the game, the game's GUI defaults to a categorized organizational setting (kinda like DDR Extreme when you hit both select arrows once), where you can select songs by style or by difficulty (if you do it by difficulty, it doesn't list all the songs at once like previous versions, you have to select level 4 for four stars, etc.). The music that plays during the song select screen is okay; it's no Tomorrow Perfume (6th), but it's also thankfully not nearly as irritating as 7th's song select track. The interface one sees once playing a song is quite pleasing to the eyes. To me, it's kind of a hybrid of the earlier styles' (excluding 1st's and 2nd's) darker interfaces and the newer version's more vivid ones. It is quite neat looking, and has some nice touches like a meter which keeps track of your max combo (though I would have preferred EX score, myself), and a turntable icon that spins. It's also to be noted that the font for the judgement display has changed again, and looks even prettier.

The new songs are, unfortunately, quite a mixed bag. There are some songs that are really, really cool, like Fun, Rottel the Mercury, moon_child, Distress, Lion Suki, and one to eight, but most of the others just kinda reek of mediocrity. Some songs are actually quite bad: a notable one being the new e-Motion remix, which just ruins the song (even the new Abyss remix is better than that trash, and I don't even like that too much). Keep in mind I didn't hear them all, as most of the people there just kinda kept playing the same things over and over again (and would sometimes play songs from other styles, those morons!), but I did get to sample a reasonable number of them. The new videos introduced are all good (some REALLY good, like Lion Suki), and I'll bet you that pudgy, sweaty fanboys will really like the video to ACT, featuring an anime chick in a quasi-kitty outfit doing "cute" things. So, the songlist is still not as consistantly good as a number of the styles in the past, but like 8th, still has songs that are good enough to at least redeem the soundtrack.

A couple of things I did notice that I thought were strange may be specific only to the beta, or at least I hope so. Sometimes it seemed as if initializing an entry card wouldn't work the first few tries, and I noticed a number of exasperated Japanese people frantically entering and reentering their codes time and time again until it finally did work. There was one poor guy who could never set his password, and no one seemed to know why that was. The load times were quite long; some songs, like Rottel the Mercury, took about 10 seconds to load! Once, mid-game (thankfully not mine), the game actually hiccupped (music and even the game itself), something I wasn't aware of happening in a IIDX game ever before. Also, during a stage result screen, no artwork would ever appear (even when people got AAs), which would mark the first IIDX since at least 3rd in which that happens. I'm hoping they're just waiting for the final version of the game to include the character art, as it would seem kinda silly to me to introduce new characters if you're never going to see them in-game. I'm not sure if the effectors worked or not: no one ever used them (it was loud enough without them, though), and in the lower part of the screen where you would normally see the word "Effector", "Ver.09" showed up instead. Other than those things, though, the game behaved just like any other IIDX game would, though I was secretly kind of hoping that a reverse modifier would have been added to the game. Oh well.

So when I finally did play the game around 10:30, I played (all on 7 key HS2 Easy) Fun (as the name implies, it was lots of fun) and got a C (120k), Lion Suki and got an A (165k), and Rottel the Mercury and got 135k (dunno the letter grade; I rushed out of there as soon as the song ended to get to my train). I was kinda disappointed at how I did, but at least the person I followed up played on Light 7 and autoscratch, so I didn't feel TOO bad.

If I can think of anything else to add later I will. Cheers.
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Oogami128 · Trick Member Joined: 01 May 2002 Location: Takayama, Japan

Oh yes, forgot to mention:

Rottel-the-Mercury, ACT, Distress, moon_child, and one or eight are all 7+ songs, and I believe there's more, but I forgot which other ones are. 9th Style songs also seem considerably tougher overall than 8th's (thankfully), so those who are looking for a challenge will be quite pleased with the new stuff.
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Lepracon Artist · Trick Member Joined: 26 Jan 2002 Location: Funkytown

Oogami: Was there a unique video to Prelude, the new Naoki Underground song? How about The Biggest Roaster?
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Oogami128 · Trick Member Joined: 01 May 2002 Location: Takayama, Japan

I seem to recall a unique video to Prelude, but I believe the Biggest Roaster used a default video. I wouldn't be surprised if they add videos and songs prior to the final release, though, as even though the songlist was a bit larger than the initial beta's, it still seems awfully slim compared to most of the other styles'.
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Lepracon Artist · Trick Member Joined: 26 Jan 2002 Location: Funkytown

Did you get to see any of the new songs that made it back into 9th Style. I remember hearing that Jive Into the Night and Macho Gang were there, did you see any others that caught your attention?

edit: Any overlays involving the IIDX characters? Somebody told me One or Eight had two people swordfighting, I think.
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DKW · Trick Member Joined: 22 Mar 2002 Location: Pearl City, HI

Oogami - Question. When you say that the song selection for 9th is considerably tougher than for 8th, do you mean for all the modes, or just for, say, Another? Or are you just going by what you've seen so far?

Because you said that those looking for a challenge will be satisfied, which, to me, implies that those NOT looking for a challenge won't be tearing their hair out, not to mention those looking for a moderate challenge, but not an overwheliming one (where have all the 5's and 6's gone?). Now, 8th is supposed to be harder than 7th, so if 9th is harder than 8th (this is all just hearsay, BTW; I don't have access to anything above 6th yet)...particularly in 7-Key...that's a situation where you don't have to look for a challenge, because you're facing mountains of in in nearly the entire songlist.

Oh, and seeing as that this is the biggest songlist in any IIDX game to date, how's the variety? I'm talking difficulty, genres, length, style, mood, tempo, everything. Is it comparable to, say, Pop 'n Music 7 or the latest Beatmania III? (BTW, one of the developments I've noticed is that there are hardly any slow songs anymore.)

Take your time. No pressure.

[Oh, and the reason for this post...my arcade's getting this game in a few months; I'd like to know some of this stuff before I start shovelling tokens in.]

Rancidfish · Posted: Sat May 17, 2003 1:15 am Post subject:

Oogami128 · Trick Member Joined: 01 May 2002 Location: Takayama, Japan

I agree with Rancidfish that 8th Style is considerably easier than 7th was, hence my point that people who were disappointed with 8th's lack of challenge (unless all you played were songs from 7th and below) should find 9th a breath of fresh air. I saw no Anothers played, BTW: most everyone played 7 Key (of course in Light 7 mode just in case they failed their first song), though a COUPLE of people played Light 7, and the light 7 versions of songs I saw seemed reasonable to me. Heck, there's even a new 1 star Light 7 song, something kinda rare in new IIDXs as far as I'm concerned.

Concerning variety, well, let's just say I guarantee you've never played a song like Fun before in any version of IIDX. I didn't see any Eurotrash, which might be good news for a number of you, but who knows what kind of licensed songs might be added at the last minute.

Yes, one or eight has overlays showing two of the AAA characters (the one you see when you AAA a song in 6th and the one in 8th that wields a katana and is from the Real video) engaged in a duel, and the 6th Style guy is going at it Musashi style with two swords.

Aside from Jive into the Night and Macho Gang being put back in, I noticed that Regulus is back in the list, as is empathy and QQQ (yay!). However, I'm kinda pissed that Take It Easy was passed up for a revival. Why, Lord, oh why did that piece die out so quickly?
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EvilGav · Trick Member Joined: 01 Feb 2002 Location: Lakeville, MN

how's the variety of the music? That's most important to me, lots of variety.

...... · Trick Member Joined: 17 Jul 2002

The Safari [Another] Anyone?

Dross · Trick Member Joined: 26 Jan 2002

nothing0011 · Trick Member Joined: 22 Feb 2002

Oogami128 · Trick Member Joined: 01 May 2002 Location: Takayama, Japan

Hurry, hurry, hurry! Try my rice and curry! I dunno, I'd like to play a IIDXed version of that song :-).
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SamplingMasters PongAtari · Trick Member Joined: 31 Oct 2002 Location: Kakogawa, Japan

Werd. There's a whole world of Dr. Bombay goodness that hasn't been explored in the IIDX realm yet!

UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Do not try PongAtari's rice and curry. It will make you hallucinate.
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- · Trick Member Joined: 25 Feb 2002

8th style was pretty hard. The ending of Please Don't Go-A is pretty hard, and so is the second half of Sakura-A. Giudecca-A is kind of hard, too. 8th doesn't have as many hard songs as 7th, but it's got a few...

Rancidfish · Posted: Sun May 18, 2003 5:09 pm Post subject:

SamplingMasters PongAtari · Trick Member Joined: 31 Oct 2002 Location: Kakogawa, Japan

Some of 8th Style's 7 star songs are ridiculously easy. I can pass a good amount of 7s on 8th style, but there are still 6s in 3rd style that kick my buttocks. The Strong Jaeger L7 is harder than a lot of the new 7s (grossly underrated as it may be).
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Boroboro jikozo!

Smbu |LÂ©| · Trick Member Joined: 26 Jan 2002 Location: California

Hmmm....I wonder why some of those ppl would try songs from older styles on the machine? You spend all that time in line, just to play a song that you could play anywhere else.

Rancidfish · Posted: Sun May 18, 2003 8:46 pm Post subject:

Oogami128 · Trick Member Joined: 01 May 2002 Location: Takayama, Japan

I would add Spica to that list. Compare Murmur Twins to Spic-oh, what the hell, don't bother. I can pass and ace Murmur Twins each time I play it, and I can't even pass Spica yet (though I can fail it with a B).
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