I have a lot of love for Chunithum. Sega has continued to make some of the most innovative and delightful rhythm game controllers to wrap your head around. Hitting an Air-Justice feels cool as hell and nothing Bemani has done will compare. Unfortunately Sega is not letting their team actually design the whole game. In maimai and Chuni both, there's just a bunch of songs and they hope you figure it out on your own nerd.

Where the Bemani sound team can effortlessly compose your climb through the ranks to more or less equip you for next big jump in difficulty, Chuni displays some of the weirdest gaps in patterns and general hand placement expectations I've ever had to stumble though. You'd think by the twelfth entry they'd work master notes in earlier but I guess not! The gatcha style character and skill system further muddles any attempt the game could make at describing your progress. In what feels like full combo-ing in Bandori with a C clear, I hopped into this game immediately getting AAA-S on sight read for 10-12s, but I'll still fail maybe every 2 in 3 songs while trying to experiment with skills.

I can't understate how joyous it is to use this controller, but the feedback of the game as a system beyond slipping and sliding and smacking the air creates so many deeply unpleasant moments.