Also played World, here be my Kiwi report.
Like I said before, "refreshing" is how I would describe World in one word. I feel some of the complaints about Groove Radar removed or dancers removed or BGA small are just excuses to complain about konmai bad. Like I don't think anyone has taken Groove Radar seriously lately except for the memes where boss songs' Stream value would literally overlap the difficulty select, and people complaining "waaaah the BG looks all the same now" don't remember how all the characters and stages have been the same since fucking DDR X from 2008 (they've never added any new character designs either since DDR A iirc). Of course I can understand the "incomplete"-ness and there are improvements to be made on the UI font choices and placement, but at least they appear to be easily fixable. I've seen some people throw "this should've had a location test" around, but imo I think those days are over (given how AAA gaming companies are run nowadays and arcades are dying) and I don't think DDR really has the community size compared to IIDX and SDVX to justify it. The weekly teaser previews I think were sufficient enough fwiw.
I agree with most of
@Tanner Glass pros/cons. One other big pro is that the shock arrow windows aren't total ass now, so those charts are now actually playable. People seem to really like the new CONSTANT option too, though I haven't tried it yet. Indeed, there are some quirks having to do everything on the eamuse keypad, but tbf given the button limitations plus no touch screen like IIDX's Lightning Models and SDVX's Valkyrie Models (which have all but replaced their old models) it'll probably take a lot of trial and error until they make some like Gold 2.0 model w/ a touch screen and force everyone to use it like with IIDX and SDVX...it's true CRT support was sunset, but there's still 3 actively supported models of DDR machines (X, white, gold) and US players still adore white cabs to death, so I don't see that happening any time soon.
The default songlist is small but I'm okay with it. It does seem they're trying to aim towards casuals more (given the preset "categories" at the beginning with "All Music" at the very very end) without breaking the bank (2nd-tier/budget vocaloid, the loli requiem Hololive song, one Oshi no Ko song that isn't "Idol"), and the contest songs beat most of what BEMANI Sound Team shits out nowadays.
Overall I think it's a fine upgrade from the A series, has the potential "if" certain UI/UX stuff gets addressed, and also some people in the RGC really need to chill and not overreact to and nitpick the stupidest shit on the first day. At least with online OTA updates these QoL things can be addressed over time, it's not like the pre-eAmuse days where's it's like yep you're pretty much stuck with this until the next mix.
