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Old 02-26-2018, 02:02 AM   #15
11brendon
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Join Date: Apr 2017
Age: 24
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Default Re: XingRen's Megapack Vol.1

i have a lot to say about this pack, and i will try to be as formal, concise, and as critical as i can possibly be in this review. i will try to format it so that it has continuity and makes sense.


song choice
completely subjective, but i thought that just everything being electronic was fairly boring from my perspective. a lot of the songs felt like they were suited to be stepped though, which is good.


charting style
i feel like most of the charts had very similar patterns, and this made the charts all blend together rather than each one having their own charm and personality. most of the charts being jumpstream/handstream can really take away from the amount you can do with a song, but it felt as if there wasn't even much variation in the patterns of the jumpstream/handstream. it all felt very vanilla and stuck with the same format for every file of this style (jumpstream/handstream to buildup, 32nd rolls and bursts that are just jumptrills, then break then chorus again).

this brings me to my next point, which is cutting files. a lot of the files in this pack could have greatly benefited from being cut down in length. this could potentially just be a personal opinion, but having a chorus with what feels like a copy&pasted pattern several times to extend the chart time does not work well with it.

the last thing i would like to touch on is the dump aspect of some of your charts. a lot of the dumps felt very, very out of place and didnt feel like it went with the music at all. when you are stepping a dump or dumping a section, it should feel like it goes with the music rather than just being random placement of notes. this was most notable on the files "shin jigoku" and "road of resistance".

to wrap up this section, i would recommend trying to feel out what works better for charts, and step a wider variety of skill sets to keep things more interesting.

smaller details/general tips
i have covered the meat of things, now i will try to cover the "smaller" details of what i felt was not the best about the pack


the first thing i want to touch on is the resteps.

there were 5 notable resteps in this pack that i noticed (end time, love & justice, heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa, road of resistance, and thinking of you). when you make a restep, you should aim for either charting it in a different way/style, or improving upon the other version(s). each of these charts were notably worse than their original version(s), and were all stepped in the same style as their originals. if you feel like the original chart is fine how it is, you shouldnt bother restepping it if it brings nothing new to the table.


the second subject i will cover is quality over quantity.

this pack felt like quantity over quality, with a lot of what i felt were "filler" charts, with very few and far between good charts. you should focus more on making a single really good file rather than 10 mediocre or average files. it reduces the amount of files people will have to sift through to find one they like and improve your ability as a step artist. a pack doesn't have to have, say, 40 average/below average files and 10 good files. it can just have 10 really high quality files. having a lot of average or below average or even bad charts can make the really good charts in a pack look worse because they are surrounded by mediocre charts.


the final thing i will touch on is just wrapping up my review.

overall, this pack for me has little to no replayable files, as i thought they were mostly mediocre and didn't have any character or charm to them. they mostly felt very emotionless and weightless. there were a couple charts i enjoyed, but far too few to make the pack worth keeping for me.

i hope my review helps you in future stepping, and maybe others can elaborate further or word my sentences better than i can.


sightread scores on the charts i could complete: https://imgur.com/a/hnMN9

individual reviews of the files i had directly after playing them: https://pastebin.com/JNPghVgP
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