O... OOOH... OOOEEENDAAAN!!!! Best import DS game for nearly all tastes.
So that's the premise but how does it all actually play you might be asking yourself? Well, the same dudes responsible for the PS2 sleeper hit guitaroo man created this game. Both titles share a few ideas, Oendan features 15 liscensed japanese songs, which you tap the screen when prompted to the beat of the music. There are 3 different tapping methods, you have a series of buttons basically numbered in the order which they need to be tapped, they flow to the songs beat but if you have a hard time matching the song you can also do it visually, each button has a white ring which slowly shrinks into the buttons center, when this ring is matched with the buttons edge perfectly and you tap that button it gives you the high score, let the ring go to small and you only get 50 points, tap it a tad early and you get 100 points. Miss it completly and your current hit combo is lost. When you miss a cheer bar on the screens top will start to deplete- in easy mode you can miss about 6 notes , normal allows for only 2-3 mistakes. if the cheer bar runs empty you lose the level much like past rythm games such as parrappa or the aformentioned guitaroo man. The other 2 types of buttons include a slider bar where a beachball bounces from left to right or follows a curve, you basically hold the stylus touching this ball and following it until prompted to stop, the final button is a giant spinner you basically draw circles inside of the spinner , as many as the game requires. If you screwup following the ball or fail to make the requested number of circles it counts as a miss.
Levels are split into 3 or 4 chunks, so long as you make it to the end of the stage without running out of enthusiasm as shown by the top bar you beat the stage. Each chunk of a level though has a quirky storyline associated with it , so if you get through that chunk and keep the enthusiasm in the upper 25% (it's colored yellow to differentiate) the person you are cheering on succeeds in his task, fail to keep the bar in the yellow and the often humerous consequences will be shown on the top screen and you'll get an big fat red X instead of a positive O. At the end of each stage you are graded based on your preformance, from S down to F.
Something unique to imports is the language barrier, some of you may be wondering, can I play this game with no understanding of the japanese language ? Yes, you can, I know very little japanese and next to nothing of japanese text and I've basically finished the game. So rest easy in that regard, there are bits and pieces of english in the game but mostly the menu stuff has pictures next to the kanji and it's pretty obvious what most of this stuff does. I will say that in single player mode- Tanaka, the bald guy with glasses is the games easy mode, start with that to get the hang of it.
Sounds like a pretty fantastic game yes ? I happen to love it myself, but if I had to nitpick I could find some things that may turn even import fans off. The game has a decent co-op/Vs multiplayer mode but it's not single cart unfortunatly, so if you want to play this 2P you need 2 copies of the game. The other minor complaint that I don't have but some may is the choice used for this titles music- instead of 100% happy happy super super Jpop there is mostly J-rock and some classic J- music in this, going along with that there are 15 songs compared to say the 30 or so you may find in a DDR game. I think it's plenty given this games setup but if you want faults there you are. I suppose if you really really hate rythm games this won't change your mind but to anyone else with a DS , I reccommend this wholeheartadly.