Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan

I picked this up yesterday. So far, I'm loving it. The basic premise is that you are a three-man "cheer" team, and you go around your city trying to pump up people who are having various problems. You are presented with a map screen, which you can drag around to see the various people who need help. You pick somebody, their story starts, and as you play, how well you do determines how the character deals with their problem.

I haven't seen the videos, so you might already know this, but there are two basics to gameplay. First, the usual thing is a number inside a circle, with a ring that shrinks into the circle. When the ring matches the circle, you have to tap it. If there are multiple circles onscreen at the same time, you have to do them in numeric order. The other thing is a circled number with a track. When you hit the number, a ball will roll along the track, and you have to follow it with the stylus. During play, your life meter is constantly going down, and hitting the points with better timing raises it back up a little. There are two main options, Easy and Hard. There's also a multi-player mode, but I've had no chance to try it out yet. It seems like true multi-player requires multiple carts.

So far, the challenge is pretty decent. I'm three songs in so far, and I'm already feeling a bit of pressure. The game is pretty strict on your hits, so you won't be acing the songs the first time through. I'd say that if you like rhythm games, and want something new for the DS, absolutely pick it up. You'll miss out a bit on the storylines if you know no Japanese, but so far I think anybody could figure out the main idea behind each character's story without much problem.

Okay, seriously... this is just nuts. I can't imagine even playing this.

Waring: Unlockable + final stage spoilers
Video

Gitaroo Man developers you say?

I think I'll watch the videos now.

I picked up this game--it's really great. It's the most fun I've had with music/rhythm games probably ever. The songs are really catchy (and I even recognize a few from a Japanese music video show my girlfriend watches) and the challenges ramps up at a good pace. I just recently finished normal difficulty and am getting started on hard.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Opaque

Gitaroo Man developers you say?

I think I'll watch the videos now.

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Purchase +1. The videos had me at hello, but finding out the Gitaroo Man team made this makes me want it that much more.

My roommate bought this game a couple weeks ago and I just recently finished it. I do not think it is as good as the praise in this thread (and elsewhere online) indiciates, but it is still a solid game nevertheless.

-The final couple of stages (on expert or whatever it is called, the one after hard) are absolute bullshit. Not in the typical "OMFG too much shit to hit" sense that IIDX/ITG/PIU get to (not to say that is not the case initially). The problem stems from just how strict (and arbiritray) the pass/fail system is. On the last stage, I failed near the end one time with single digit greats and a full combo -- WTF? It is due to the way the game handles meter, and how you get bonus meter depending on the final tap of a sequence, which is just silly. Since the meter is constantly draining, you can be in situtations where you will fail due to a miss 200+ taps after the miss, because you did not have enough meter to survive a dead second or two in the song.

-If you converted the patterns into a DDR stepchart or a IIDX notechart, people would complain about 'k-steps' -- on hard, the patterns tend to mainly follow the vocals, which quickly becomes uninteresting. Some more involved and intricate rhythms would have been nice, but I think the fact that they were limited to one input at a time (plus the phsyical limitations of people and the screen) restricted what they could do.

-The fact that you can not skip the song intros gets annoying very quickly. This is at its absolute worst on the last stage, where the intro is twice as long (and you are highly likely to fail the stage very quickly the first few times you play it).

It's not all bad, though. The control scheme is interesting, the presentation is rock-solid, and the music is surprisingly good (would not have figured to get something like that out of the DS -- although the only real hurdle would seem to be getting real-time audio decompression working on the platform).

-Dippy

Got this coming in the mail from Play-Asia. We'll have to see how it is. I'm not a huge huge fan of rhythm games. About the only ones I like are Taiko Drum Master and Technic Beat. Never played Gitarro Man.

I've been playing a whole lot of this the past few weeks. I never really got into the rhythm game subgenre at all, and I never cared about j-pop, so it's difficult to say why I like Ouendan as much as I do. I never played Gitaroo Man either.

I guess I like touchscreen shit. This game is fun. Dipstick's complaints are valid, though.

Just got it in the mail today. The gameplay approach reminds me of Technic Beat with the circle closing in you have to tap. I can't get better than "C"s on easy. Tried Normal and got my ass handed to me in the first stage.

I've gotten all S Ranks on Insane mode. Easier than Gitaroo Master Mode, I only wish it got harder. Though Best DS game imo. If you like Gitaroo-Man, this game is a MUST.