What it does good resonates far more stronger than the game's many faults. DM ASHURA SUCKS!
First, the framerate is still choppy. The arrows don't scroll up the screen smoothly like in the PS2 DDR games . The menus have a lot of lag in them making your experience very choppy. Its bad enough already that the menu system is still just as clunky as the previous versions.
Second, the game constantly lags. Loading sequences are far too long. Sometimes, the game will skip if the videos begins to lag, thus ruining your precious combo.
Third, the design of the game is generic. The whole game looks like some generic Anime fanboy's custom made Stepmania skin. The V song selection screen looks ugly as well as the banners. For some stupid reason, the developers felt obligated to change just about all the existing banners for their own crappy ones. The new ones also are just as bad. Fourth, a good number of these songs are just plain bad. Budget for this game feels very cheap as the developers filled the song list with way too many boring music. All of the contest songs really suck, DM Ashura is a talentless half-wit with talent no better than that emo loser Tiesto. These people who make the game don't know what real dance music is. For real dance music, please go listen to the dozens of Dancemania CDs out there and you'll wonder why the American developers are far too poor to get nothing but good Dancemania music instead.
Fifth, new to the game are Power Courses, these is the return of the long lost Nonstop Megamixes from the DDR Solo series. These are five minute long dance-a-thons where you'll dance to several songs in a real nonstop form. It's a good idea to bring them back but my God these courses suck. The American developers hired loser no name DJs to make the music and they pick the lousy ones. These Dancemania rejects mixed a sequence of one bad song after another. Listen to Dancemania to hear what a real nonstop megamix should sound like.
In the total opposite, the game's strenghts resonate far more stronger this time around. For example, there are no stupid rock music from loser bands Stay Gold Pony Boy or Boyjazz. Dancemania still has a few (needs to replace all those crap no name music) but good songs like "IT'S RAINING MEN" or "GET UP (BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER)." Headliners Pussycat Dolls and Natasha Bedingfield have their strong singles on hand as well as DHT's popular NRG hit "Listen To Your Heart."
One thing that the American developers do well is pick good music from other Bemani games. Not a lot of choices but they are all good such as. . . Shoichiro Hirata's awesome R&B classic "GIRIGIRI DADDY" from beatmania IIDX 4th Style, "CLASSIC PARTY TRIATHALON" by Hideyuki Ono from GuitarFreaks/DrumMania universe, "Chocolate Philosophy " from Yuu Tokiwa from the GuitarFreaks/DrumMania universe, and more.
Quest Mode is shorter and sweeter this time around. It's much more easier than the last game and this is where you'll unlock most of the new goodies.
The banners now correspond correctly to the song info name. The last game had coherrency flaws that don't match what the banner says.
Almost no website plugs. Only one song has it.
Overall Ultramix 4 does its fair share of good as well as bad. If Konami Tokyo were smart, they would fire all the losers who make the Ultramixes and just send in their own people to develop the games to make them.