Beatmania IIDX

What is this game?

This is a series of DJ simulation music game released by Konami. They released the 1st game back in 1999. I started to dig into this game around early 2002.

and yes, this is another "OMG, WTF" game when it comes to hard difficulty.
"IIDX 16 Empress" is the latest installment of the IIDX series. Even though the series have 16 games already, the main game mechanic never changed.

Mechanic and Dynamic:

The game is rather quite simple: Player starts with 20% of the gauge at the beginning of the song. As the music plays along, notes will come down from top of the screen. Player will press the corresponding keys on the controller when notes reach the red line. The more accurate the timing is, the faster the gauge charges up. Player must keep the gauge stay more than or equal to 80% in order to pass the song.

Sounds simple enough; but it's the number of the notes that makes the song hard.

Starting from "IIDX 12 Happy Sky", the game difficulty scale extended from maximum level 8 to 12.

Again, words are useless when it comes to describing a dynamic-heavy game. This is the video of a level 9 song:

"Votum Stellarum"

If I only use 1 song saying that every other level 9 songs are somehow similar, it would be kinda unfair for other song genre such as techno, drum&bass, or dance pop.

"Tizona d'El Cid"

I rate myself level 8 going to level 9. I may be really good for the people who never played this game. But IIDX and all other music game is all about challenge; and there is no guide or anything like that. Even if the challenging part is way too hard, people still get to enjoy the music.