Be careful, spoilers, play the game before you read this
Gitaroo Man has a point system that awards more points (and health) based on how precise you press each note, that allows the game to measure by difficulty how attached are you to the rhythm and melodies of the song, every note counts, but in rhythm games where there are combo multipliers and the priority is making long combos, they play more like a glorified Geometry Dash with various live hits per attempt.
I'm gonna jam way more playing this song on beatmania IIDX https://youtu.be/BRBiyYbPxRw but this is natural, I've already played that game for a long time and I've paid a lot for a good controller, and on top of that IIDX is stupid good, it is the predecessor of the precision system Gitaroo Man comes with, and a lot of other things that allows it to have an understanding and feeling of the songs greater that anything I have ever played... when investing hundreds and thousands of hours to master it... Gitaroo Man is only like 1-3 hours long to complete the story for the first time, and it delivers sooo much of that feel I have with IIDX in only few hours, why?
For example let's talk about the simplest and clearest track in the game, "The Legendary (Acoustic)", not only you make the strings each time you press and hold Circle, small turns when holding circle means changes in the middle of the strings (https://youtu.be/TcRn-V0I3po&t=60), and of course if one string is facing one direction and the next one is a big change, that's also a reflection of the song itself, so having an A or an S is really satisfying, and you know what else is awesome about this song? now lets talk about cool of a turn point that song was to the story and characters.
Boy getting it's own confidence back, to face the bully and get the girl. After some "PUMA WHAT DO I DO??", a hard as balls level where you escape a space shark, all GUARD, face buttons, and a non expected reggae level, which was easy but you can fuck it up if you are not focused; you are sitting in a campfire, wet and getting a cold, but here comes the reflection of the girl you like, who heard you playing the guitar and sits by your side, under the stars, ATTACK, an easy song to nail, the complete opposite of the shark, captivate the girl and start getting your confidence back, like we can see right on the next level with the skeletons, OH YEAH, this is easily one of my favorite levels of any videogame I've ever played, how the elements of gameplay, song, story, characters and presentation are all so good and important.
There are also other fantastic parts like the one right before the final level, where U-1 and the bad guy exchange words and it's full of quick shots "I CAN DO IT BECAUSE IM GITAROO MAN", Flyin' to Your Heart in Japanese slaps hard and of course, The Legendary Theme.
if i have to nitpick something is the fight with Gregorio III on the cathedral, if you die you have to wait for Gregorio to make the same comment, press the restart button and do an entire section, which is 1:45 minutes long (an entire fucking IIDX song), and consists of 2 easy charge stages right at the start of the level, where in almost all your attempts you are leaving with full health, aka, useless filler; I wouldn't have a problem if leaving those charge stages with full health meant that I had to be really precise and nail that part, but it wasn't the case, I didn't need to get better at that first section, so It was just 1:45 minutes of waiting for the actual difficult and interesting parts where I was struggling. For example in Resurrection, the final song, there are charge stages for more than half of the song and right before the start of the 2 last sections, and in no way you are gonna leave the last charge stage at full health in your first playthrough of the game, no way, so even if i'm failing at the end of the song, those parts before the end can help me deal with the hard parts because I can approach them with more health if i get better at the initial sections.
Either way, this is a fantastic, fantastic game.
Sorry for talking so much about IIDX but that's basically the only rhythm game I've ever truly enjoyed (until now) and I honestly couldn't imagine that some of its perks could be translated so well into a way shorter, more story based game; of course IIDX (or any other game) isn't "my gold standard" or anything like that, simply because every individual game in existence wants to achieve its own set of experiences and objectives within its own format, I wont criticize a game for not being like another one, of course not.
Gitaroo Man has a point system that awards more points (and health) based on how precise you press each note, that allows the game to measure by difficulty how attached are you to the rhythm and melodies of the song, every note counts, but in rhythm games where there are combo multipliers and the priority is making long combos, they play more like a glorified Geometry Dash with various live hits per attempt.
I'm gonna jam way more playing this song on beatmania IIDX https://youtu.be/BRBiyYbPxRw but this is natural, I've already played that game for a long time and I've paid a lot for a good controller, and on top of that IIDX is stupid good, it is the predecessor of the precision system Gitaroo Man comes with, and a lot of other things that allows it to have an understanding and feeling of the songs greater that anything I have ever played... when investing hundreds and thousands of hours to master it... Gitaroo Man is only like 1-3 hours long to complete the story for the first time, and it delivers sooo much of that feel I have with IIDX in only few hours, why?
For example let's talk about the simplest and clearest track in the game, "The Legendary (Acoustic)", not only you make the strings each time you press and hold Circle, small turns when holding circle means changes in the middle of the strings (https://youtu.be/TcRn-V0I3po&t=60), and of course if one string is facing one direction and the next one is a big change, that's also a reflection of the song itself, so having an A or an S is really satisfying, and you know what else is awesome about this song? now lets talk about cool of a turn point that song was to the story and characters.
Boy getting it's own confidence back, to face the bully and get the girl. After some "PUMA WHAT DO I DO??", a hard as balls level where you escape a space shark, all GUARD, face buttons, and a non expected reggae level, which was easy but you can fuck it up if you are not focused; you are sitting in a campfire, wet and getting a cold, but here comes the reflection of the girl you like, who heard you playing the guitar and sits by your side, under the stars, ATTACK, an easy song to nail, the complete opposite of the shark, captivate the girl and start getting your confidence back, like we can see right on the next level with the skeletons, OH YEAH, this is easily one of my favorite levels of any videogame I've ever played, how the elements of gameplay, song, story, characters and presentation are all so good and important.
There are also other fantastic parts like the one right before the final level, where U-1 and the bad guy exchange words and it's full of quick shots "I CAN DO IT BECAUSE IM GITAROO MAN", Flyin' to Your Heart in Japanese slaps hard and of course, The Legendary Theme.
if i have to nitpick something is the fight with Gregorio III on the cathedral, if you die you have to wait for Gregorio to make the same comment, press the restart button and do an entire section, which is 1:45 minutes long (an entire fucking IIDX song), and consists of 2 easy charge stages right at the start of the level, where in almost all your attempts you are leaving with full health, aka, useless filler; I wouldn't have a problem if leaving those charge stages with full health meant that I had to be really precise and nail that part, but it wasn't the case, I didn't need to get better at that first section, so It was just 1:45 minutes of waiting for the actual difficult and interesting parts where I was struggling. For example in Resurrection, the final song, there are charge stages for more than half of the song and right before the start of the 2 last sections, and in no way you are gonna leave the last charge stage at full health in your first playthrough of the game, no way, so even if i'm failing at the end of the song, those parts before the end can help me deal with the hard parts because I can approach them with more health if i get better at the initial sections.
Either way, this is a fantastic, fantastic game.
Sorry for talking so much about IIDX but that's basically the only rhythm game I've ever truly enjoyed (until now) and I honestly couldn't imagine that some of its perks could be translated so well into a way shorter, more story based game; of course IIDX (or any other game) isn't "my gold standard" or anything like that, simply because every individual game in existence wants to achieve its own set of experiences and objectives within its own format, I wont criticize a game for not being like another one, of course not.