Ouendan First Impressions

May 5, 2006

Originally posted on GAF

So I bought this game through our own Buy/Sell/Trade thread. Very cool, though I'm not too far in. Currently working on the "pottery" and "track" levels on normal difficulty.

Such a great example of rhythm gaming on DS done right. Don't just try to replicate the existing weird rhtyhm controllers with the DS screen, but do something more suited to DS's abilities. You might have to tap anywhere, or roll along a line, or spin something around.

As a man whose knowledge of Japanese doesn't go much farther than the words Seiken and Densetsu, this game is so easy to get into. A few simple guesses on the menus, like "Pick the option with one silhouette for one player?" and I'm in. How you're supposed to play is very quickly obvious, and with the drawings you don't need to know that text to understand the gist of the story.

From my brief playing I got the impression that it would best be done either lightly localized (translate the text, keep the songs and settings) to appeal to the wacky jappy fans without a lot of work, or replace most everything but the play system to give it a broader western appeal. Since it seems it's already been mentioned the songs are being changed, I guess it's closer to the latter.