I really do love the tracklist in this game. Even with Empress + Premium Best, I find myself going back to this one a lot. It got me more seriously into the series, so maybe there's a little bit of bias there?

This game (this series, really) is fucking impossible to recommend to people though, so I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to rank this... May not be perfect in execution in an "objective" standpoint, but objectivity in game design is kinda bullshit anyway so for me it may as well be perfect at what it does.

All I know is that I love the Virtual Insanity and Toxic mixes wayyyyyy too much. Hitting keys is fun. It's a very surface level thing to enjoy, but feeling challenged and wanting to overcome seemingly insurmountable tasks only adds to that.

Of any Beatmania entry, this is one that I have a very focused intent to finish one day. I don't think the other ones are within my realistic skill level, but this one never beat me down so hard that I felt like I couldn't recover.... so I don't care how long it takes. This is the one for me. Having seperate tracklists in 5key and 7key modes is also a very nice treat that I wish more entries would've had.

Getting my first AAA rank in this was probably the most accomplished I've ever felt in a rhythm game. Guitar Hero could never.

The US version of beatmania did have some good ideas here and there. Replay mode, Beginner being a difficulty rather than a separate mode, a decent tutorial, some respect for the 5key games by having a mode dedicated to it, and a pretty good cover of Virtual Insanity that ended up being exclusive to this game. Unfortunately, the rather ugly theme, the really easy licensed songs, and the small song selection that had to be split into two different modes make this one lackluster compared to any of the imports. At least it came with a decent controller.