Haven't looked at the files myself, but someone posted a song-by-song review of about half the Expert charts in that thread which line up with your comment.  His most common (and most positive) comment was basically "this is really good until halfway, then it spams weird timing/bpm changes/other gimmicks that don't seem to follow anything".  Another common point he made is "this is a terrible remix/cut of a decent song," so general quality control may be lacking.  I also remember seeing reviews of some of the preview charts released months ago that were along the lines of "these better not be the final charts".

That said, I haven't seen the charts myself - I'll download them at some point, but so far, I'm just not hearing good things and the song list doesn't really interest me, so I'm not inclined to invest my time into it.  Unless I play it and find that it's actually a good pack, I'll only add it to the Acme machine if multiple people ask me to after playing through themselves.

I'm about halfway through the Expert charts, & I gotta say this pack is making me afraid of 12-footers again XD

Totally laughed when I realized that I was playing a ParanoiaSurvivorMax/Disconnected remix.



Biggest personal disappointment thus far was that the KittyCat background isn't nearly as kawaii as it is on the PIUpro2 machine.

Don't get me wrong, I think Rebirth 2 is pretty cool. I wish the ITG community had more semi-official packs like Rebirth and ITG3, so this is a step in the right direction. But like most sequels, I don't think it will be as good as Rebirth 1.

Unfortunately, the song selection doesn't grab me nearly as much as Rebirth or ITG3 did. There's only a handful of songs I can say I actually 'like' at the moment. And so far the stepcharts are.................interesting. Many of the charts seem to be trying to introduce 'new' step concepts like intentional switchfooting, 16th note roll-runs, and complex hand patterns. Unfortunately, I do feel that some of the rhythm in the charts gets clusterfucked at times, but I'm also not a high-end player, so this could be my limitations and not a problem with the actual chart.

I'm still putting this pack on my machine because at least it's thorough and has all difficulties and doubles charts, so all players can enjoy the songs equally. I have no doubt it'll likely become a new "standard" to have on any hacked dedicabs out there once it's refined a bit.

Honestly a lot of the better charts in here are the 12's and 13's. I've played through all of it in the last two days (autoplay on PC, my offset is set weird on purpose)

You can see were most people step now-a-days, and it's in the 11's and up range. A lot of these 9's feel like 10's. That or all of a sudden the difficulty just drops off halfway through for the sake of "it's gotta be easy now cuz it's a 9"

Phoning to Mecury is my favorite song and chart by far. It's the most purply song in the pack, but it deserves it.

Lets be honest here guys, the song list this time around is inconsistent and not that best. Their cuts are awful in some songs, and it feels like they just slapped some songs in there because of their history with "ITG". The disconnected remixed are not the strongest IMO. Oscillator X just feels thrown in for shits and giggles, same with some of Kyle's older songs.
I guess what I mean is the song list doesn't seem unified. It feels like half of it should be in separate all together.

Lets not forget about spamming crossovers everywhere :/

I noticed this but decided against mentioning it since there're only a handful in this community who can't/don't really play 11+ (me being one of them). It's hard for me to judge a song that is at the upper limits of my playing capacity.

But you're right, Keby. Just scrolling through the pack (on expert) you see much fewer 9's and many more 11's and 12's than there were in Rebirth 1 or the ITG3 songpacks.

Well mute 1-6, Rhapsody of Fire, Dragonforce, Speedcore Pack, Subluminal, Tachyon A/B/G, Zim 3 and 4 and TLOES are all now groovestats tracked, I'd say as the foremost (perhaps the only used) ITG ranking site that would make these semi-official. Maybe not as fine tuned as Rebirth and ITG3 but many good songs, including many 9s and 10s I've come to recently appreciate.

I dunno maybe I'll check out this new pack as well, but you guys aren't making it sound very good... Not that all of the above listed packs are all amazing packs either

I would give it a shot Allan. There is some good stuff here and there, but it is much less refined than Rebirth 1. 24ths EVERYWHERE.

"Official" to me means the songs have charts for all difficulties and doubles charts as well. I can't think of any other packs (with more than 50 songs) except ITG3, Rebirth 1 and Rebirth 2 that offer this.

These guys have weird tastes in music. Only some of the songs (song+chart) are good imo. Also the singers in alot of these songs are terrible.

"Official" to me means it was commercially released and SOLD.

Some observations in no particular order:

• They got the name wrong on the Tell Me a Story remix.  The version in Rebirth 2 is a cut of TMaS (Prolixity Mix), not Compendium Mix.  It's great that someone's finally stepping a different mix of the song, but the chart/cut is awkward.
• There are some truly awful charts in there that try to do "clever" things with rolls, foot switching, and bpm gimmicks.  Take Ninja Boy expert for example: just because you can do those kinds of things with rolls doesn't mean you should.
• Standing out from most of the other charts I looked at, Marrakech expert looks REALLY fun.
• Owl city?  wot?

pretty much what I thought...

F*ck you all, I like Owl City!

I guess someone has to. 

Bump. Didn't feel like making a new topic just because of the date, honestly.


So, Beta 2 is out and on the machine in Acme and may be on your computers, but I would in more detail like to talk about the pack now that I have much more than a cursory glance at it.

I've played all of the songs on this pack now (some of the harder difficulties only on keyboard admittedly) and I would like to more or less agree that this is very different than Rebirth 1 in chart style. Many people have said it's purple note madness and they are more or less right. Songs like Phoning to Mercury are almost entirely 24ths, but that one while a formidable 13 due to "purple note dump" actually fits the music. MANY of the purple notes are simple ornamentation such as in Disconnected Exodus, Tike Tike Kardi, and extend the Rave and others are gallops that should probably just be 16ths such as the beginning of Lo-Fi Hi-Fi and Home Alone.

I'm not against purple notes, in fact, I love triplets, but there is a little bit of abuse in this pack, at least in SINGLE mode. Oddly enough, this post isn't just a negative rant about a pack that has more or less been out for a while (even though it's "not out yet" lawl) but this post is about strengths and weaknesses. I don't think many of you here play doubles, but I can honestly tell you that I find the doubles charts FAR more refined than the singles charts and in some ways maybe even a slight improvement over Rebirth 1's doubles charts. I know it's hard to believe, but I'm serious. WAY less stretch gimmicks, which frankly were a dime a dozen in Rebirth 1, and some really fun and creative patterns that don't abuse to many gimmicks.

What I'm wondering is what the hell happened? The step chart artists are more or less the same for both single and double and while there are definitely singles charts I really like in the pack and doubles charts I really don't like, I find that there must have been a drastically different philosophy between single and double in the project, even among the same people doing charts. In singles mode, for whatever reason, they're trying to be "cute" almost by throwing total bullcrap at you because it's "unique" and you can at least admit that you haven't been doing it for the last 10 years. While that may be true, not ALL unique things are good things and you need to balance it out with the tried and true, though at least I appreciate their somewhat failed attempt to not stagnate. It's almost a shame how few people play doubles though, because their ideal their was to test your speed, stamina, and footwork across both pads, not JUST your ability to do 73 awkward hands and a height check to see if your legs are long enough to do all the stretch gimmicks. Doubles mode should NOT be exclusive to people above 6 feet tall, mmkay?

All in all, there are good tracks and bad tracks, good charts and bad charts, easy and hard, and ones that make sense and others that don't. This one pack won't kill ITG (even though 4-panel has been dead for quite some time  =D), but I hope that if there EVER is a Rebirth 3 that they've learned from their mistakes here and not repeat them. Still, don't avoid the pack. I think there are a lot of great charts on here like Chronon Single or Paranormal Double. Peace.

EDIT: Also, in terms of song ratings, 9's have been getting slowly harder for a very long time. I agree with most of the ratings, honestly, but that trend has been true for the last, oh, 10 years. Pin On a Day Like Today against Hypnotic Crisis. Lawl.

Only 2 9's I rerated to 10's  on single were Dynamo and Venetian Spirit. Decent length 16th crossover stream? Not 9 material. For Venetian Spirit, the jacks and implied same-arrow drills are too technical for the average 9 player (though I actually think it's a fun chart once you get over the completely unintuitive nature of it).

On double I rerated Tango Uniform Expert and I Can Rock Hard from 9's to 10's just due to sheer foot speed and stamina. WAY to exhausting and constant (and fast frankly) for 9's.

Nice post there. I've got some things to say, but I probably won't get them all in my first go, so I might be editing this sometimes to update my thoughts and opinions.

I'll start by saying, yay for Rebirth 2. Overall, I can't say I like it as much as Rebirth 1 or ITG3, but I'm giving them full kudos just for making a complete, good-sized pack with all difficulties, doubles modes and the fixin's.

However, I do feel that the music genres aren't very hemogenous. They've got a lot of different music in here and I can't say they all "feel" like they belong together. How did ITG 3 and Rebirth 1 get away with this? I don't really know. Those packs also mashed songs from various genres together, but I can't say it really felt odd to me. However, this is a minor gripe and I can't really get on their case too much for this.

I've been bitching about the overabundance of purple notes in this pack since my first session with Rebirth 2. Sometimes they work, and other times it's appropriate, but often it feels forced...like they had some quota of purple arrows they just HAD to get into this pack.

I have only played a handful of the doubles charts on my machine, and I'm not a 'doubles expert', but what I have played has been enjoyable. I haven't found any charts notable enough for me to gush over, but I've probably only played 10 charts from this pack on doubles, so yeah.

I think it's simply time and evolution changing what player's expect. I remember playing Rebirth 1 as early as 2008. That's 4 years ago. Just think of the difference in DDR charts from 1998's 1st mix to 2001's DDR Max2. The Rebirth 2 guys are trying to innovate and do something "new" while simultaneously trying to avoid the stale and stangnant "standard" chart architypes. 8 Bit Trip and Rock Robotix are great example of this stepchart evolution. These two songs were my first real exposure to Stream Rolls and intentional Switch Footing. I know they've been done in custom charts before this, but IMO they work really well in these examples.

I think one could argue that the off beats and excess of purple notes found in many of the charts is in direct response to this "evolution". Standard 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 note charts are soooooo last decade and I feel they're trying to throw in weird switch beat steps with the purple notes to make the charts feel less bland. However, I feel like they might've pushed this aspect a bit too much and kinda fubared a few charts in the process.

It looks like the guys behind Rebirth 2 lost momentum at the end.

King of Light (the guy who's the face for Rebirth2) essential said that beta 2 is the final release...

"Unfortunately nothing has been done since the Beta 2.0 release, so that beta version can be considered the final release for all intents and purposes. "
http://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/viewthread.php?threadid=4279&page=8#p252086