Well I got it last night. Lots of fun, with lots of opinions. I can do a fair ammount of songs up through 5 stars (not including). “Holic” would have to have been the most “difficult” song that I passed… on light 7. I played L7 first for about 30 min. Then I played on Beginner as I was not passing any L7 songs that were over a 2 star difficulty. This whole time I was sitting down. Beginner was REALLY easy. I was just gliding through the song list and then said “f” it and just went back to L7 mode. After a few more runs I was beating 3 star songs then some fours. Then I was just having problems with stuff, it was not so easy. So I stood up and made a makeshift stand for the thing. WOW! I just was a passing fool.

With in 3 hours of starting I was passing 4 star songs. That was a really cool thing. I did not expect that. The only problem is that I feel like I am cheating since the buttons are so close together (as opposed to a Pop’n ASC). Some of the stuff is really easy to skate through on and others it is hard. I don’t know, it seems more easy to not “miss” a beat in this, yet much harder to pass. It almost feels like I get penalised for “good” hits on songs.

Problems: 1) I miss the buttons. To me they are small. If I move too far away from one when I come back to it I either a) hit the edge of it, b) hit between two buttons, or c) hit the wrong button. I think this will improve my scoreing greatly. The difference between me passing and failing a song high depends on this #1, but I do not think it will last long.

2) Scratching is weird. My hands are pretty quick after trinaing for some of those button hits in Pop’n, so I am trying this for as long as I can. My left hand can hit buttons (up to two) and still make the scratch with all getting “Great” or “Just Great”. I am not sure if this is pinky scratching, but just having my pinky move would be impossible, my hand has to leave those keys right now. So this is unfortunatly not the only problem with scratching. I will also “scratch” but nothing happens. I realised after a while that either a) i was getting too close to the center of the circle and it was not spinning when I was trying or b) I was hitting it like a button :\ . Yea this will improve with time.

3) The Music: The problem is that when it is good music it is good, but when it is bad music… it is really bad. I still think Pop’n has better cumulative music, but the great stuff in B:IIDX is on the same calibur if not higher than Pop’n.

Now I just bought 4th and 5th style today and they should be in the mail right now (hopefully I will get them by Sat! ) and I am bidding on 7th style to see if I can get it cheap. If not, then I will go though play-asia with a $5 off cupon. Yay!