Dang I can't believe no one has reviewed this game yet- Anyways I feel Dance Maniax is easier for people to get into than games like Beatmania, Pop'n Music, and DDR games after 3rd Mix since you just wave your hands around and the lights track your motion. (Hitting your hand on the machine is gonna happen a lot) I think it has a pretty solid tracklist and I'm glad it isn't dominated by a lot of DDR or Beatmania songs that's not a bad thing but I like having variety, also this is the only game where you can hear "Dr. Love" without having the sfx blaring over the vocals. The visuals are fine but some of the background videos in the songs make my eyes strain, (I'm looking at you "Jane Jana," fun song to play on DDR but not here!) the scoring system is neat it uses a pi chart instead of just telling you how many "Perfects" or "Goods" you got.
It's a just a neat game, 2nd Mix is probably better though.

Feels like a step above a tech demo for a possibly amazing game. A sequel that improved upon everything and added more depth had the potential to be a very good game. As is, this doesn't really do anything above subpar, but I DO like the leveling system quite a bit. It starts out somewhat hard but you can get overpowered fairly quickly.

I think this game's only real transgression is carrying the weight of a genre on its shoulders for a system from a company thats previous system had some of the greatest JRPGs ever made on it, a lot of which still hold up pretty well today. I see the potential tho.

The minimalist approach to practically everything in this game could easily be mistaken as a conscious design choice.

Edit: Finished. That was one of the longest 11 hour games I've ever played. Don't even necessarily mean that as an insult, it certainly felt like a "quest."

Part of me wants to try the "upgraded" Japanese version to see if it improves the overall feel. It's not like there's much story to follow anyway.

I haven't actually read the Dracula novel but I feel like this is trying to capture that feeling. This is a bit of an odd game. You walk around and talk to people during the day, then you go "vampire mode" at night and can attack certain NPCs and morph into animals. There's probably more to it than that, but the first NPC I attacked killed me. Then I walked around as a ghost with zero HP. Also the OST is A+ fantastic.

Artdink is such a cool little company, I compare them somewhat to early From Soft in the level of experimentation on their titles and this is no exception. We only got a handful of their titles in the west and I hope we get some fan translations eventually, this one in particular and maybe one of the Lunatic Dawn titles.