My Gitadora experience

[DKW]

Never let it be said that I'd be afraid to expand my horizons.

I played a little of both Guitar Freaks and Drummania (called Percussion Freaks) in the arcade. Never got into the former because it was just too awkward...that guitar's gotta be the most unwieldly peripheral I've used in my life...and the latter always has sensor problems. Luckily, I was able to score both PS2 titles fairly cheap ($45 each, used). Still debating whether to look for the originals on PSX.

Too much to review in one post, but these are my general impressions:

Sound: Wow. Lot different from anything else I've heard in Bemani, that's for sure. In general, it's far more primal and forceful and...well, LOUD than gentle PnM, melodic KBM, or electronic-y IIDX. There is quite a bit of variety here (cf. Carnival Day, Now I'm Sure, and Machine Man), which is always good.

Controls: It took me a while to find a decent button layout for my joystick for the drum, but it was worth it. I was really annoyed at first by the fact that I could only pick one of three canned button layouts for the guitar. Konami has a pretty good overall track record, but they've been known to make an absolutely moronic blunder once in a while (like uncancellable rapid-fire lockout), and this, unfortunately, was one of them. Thankfully, after lots of trial and error and blundering and frustration, I finally realized that "C" was what you were supposed to use for a joystick, so I settled with that, and I'm finally comfortable with the guitar side. Still, while this setup is more "realistic", there are times when I don't want realism shoved down my throat. Ah well.

BTW, if you have to play this with a, lord forbid, regular gamepad...I feel sorry for you, man.

Difficulty: Okay, here's where it gets interesting. There are nine difficulty settings for both games. The 1 difficulty is a cakewalk. No kidding, a child could clear songs on that level (so if that's what you want to do, go for it). There's even an "autostomp" option for the drum. However, if you set the difficulty on anything other than five, the game won't register high scores. Some songs are really frustrating on 5, since the bar drains really fast, and it only takes a couple of tricky stretches to knock you out. Oh yeah, autofail is on. All the time. Always. So it's a good idea to practice the tougher songs a lot in Free mode, autofail off, before taking them on "for real".

GF has Normal and Expert, both with different songs. They start out super-easy (you have to be asleep not to clear Way To Go, even on 9) but get really crazy at the upper end. Probably the hardest parts are learning to coordinate the button presses with the strum and getting the timing of the rapid-fire strums (the things that always killed me in the arcade). DM has a non-scored Easy level for getting into the game; the first "real" level is Normal, followed by Real and Expert Real. Normal has caused me no problems (although I made a fair amount of blunders while ironing out my button layout). Real, analagous to Another in IIDX, ramps up the challenge, and I've only cleared a few songs so far. Real Expert is like another Another, and it'll be a while before I start playing that regularly. I like this setup; it lets me take on the game one rung at a time without throwing me into a truckload of failures from the get-go.

Songlist: While they could've done a little more with the songlists, overall I think they're fine. I've always believed that variety was more important than quantity, and there's plenty of variety to be had here.

I do kinda miss the old GF songs. I'm hoping I can somehow pick it up cheap.

Look: Nothing like PnM, that's for sure. I'm actually interested in how they came up with this earthy/minimalist/just plain old look. I've never seen so much 60's artwork in any video game in my life.

Overall: I actually considered returning this because of my control problems, but now that I've worked them out, this is definitely a keeper. Not too many players know about this "hidden treasure" (and the Toys 'n Joys guy said PnM was small-time...), which, of course, gives it rebellious ionoclast points, especially with all the other Bemani games I have. Definitely a great buy for what I paid.

And now that I've gotten into Gitadora, I honestly have to wonder why almost nobody ever talks about it. It seems to have EVERYTHING I've seen praised on these boards: Easy to get into, plenty of super-hard songs, lots of effort needed to get top scores (especially since the combo is everything), and of course, no eurobeat or cuteness whatsoever (okay, there's Carnival Day, but that's the minority).

[Rancidfish]

For me, I associate "Normal, Real and Expert Real" (or Basic, Advanced and Expert on some mixes) with... either Basic, Trick and Maniac or Light7, 7-key and Another. If Expert Real seems like another Another, you probably just don't have much practice with the game.

Normal in Drummania drops a lot of the drum sounds... 1/16th note drumrolls are sometimes reduced to 1/8th notes, and some drums just don't get played.

Real you're at least playing most of the drum sounds in the songs, like 7-key in IIDX.

In Expert Real, you're actually playing absolutely everything, like a lot of the Anothers in IIDX.
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[DKW]

Right...keep in mind that I just got the games last Saturday, so I certainly haven't had the time to really explore the levels.

Upon further review...Normal is actually pretty easy for the most part, although Easy, of course, is even easier. Real starts out fairly simple, but gets wild at the bottom of the songlist. So maybe Real is really analagous to the Hard level of Pump It Up. (Yeah, I'm a big Pump It Up fan too, sue me. )

Again, a sound unique to Bemani and a ton of challenge...I really don't understand why this isn't more popular.