レビュー

This might be my best achievement across all music games I play in year 2025. 3 days, 6 hours per day trying, my best was MAX-2 and I was about to give up then finally I got my 1.05M! At the date of this song's release, this game got 4 triplet swing songs : "Bibbidiba" (12+), "Laugh to Laugh to Love" (12+), "CapSule" (13) and "Bunny Land" (14). The level might be behind Bunny Land, but Bunny Land is hard because camera and BPM is fast. On the other hand, I think the difficulty of nailing all the swing beats correctly this one is harder. (I've also compiled a bonus clip of me failing at various points for fun : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0paiQXHECEQ )

Song is fire and background animation is of the classic black wireframe style. It has minimal flash, subdued colors, and very smooth camera movements. This is perfect, because what's left will be solely a battle between you and their rap. There is nothing else to blame but yourself when you misread something. Moreover there are very low amount of Special Note in this song, so almost nothing get a free pass. This song is very technical and rewarding to master, and I'll try my best to explain what problems I encountered so this might be quite long.

As a DDR player that had played a lot of such green arrow swing charts (search for "Go Down DDR" or "Crazy Shuffle DDR" for samples) I thought I was ready, but turns out all my triplet swing experience from DDR was only half real! I think half of the skill I thought I had depends on the fact that notes can be seen and are coming linearly. I observe this phenomenon where very good music gamer was given a real instrument or drum kit and can't even keep consistent 4th beats, it's because they have no visual to rely on. Here in Groove Coaster, you'd mildly get this effect because it's a game where reading position is dynamic, moreover the rail shape is dynamic, so this get closer to that mentioned situation where you are asked to perform the swings from your heart but you relied on visual too much in your music game career and suddenly you are very bad at it in this game despite gotten good scores in other games. (Respect to the performer of this song able to sing accurately on such a beat!)

Here's a quick rundown of what's triplet swing. Triplet grid means song is still on 4/4 time signature (you clap 4 times and you bop to the song normally) but each beat is divided into multiple of 3 (mostly 6) instead of 4 (called straight), so you got some new beats and new length of interval to learn. In those 6 positions, the 4th and 8th notes are shared with the regular straight beat song. (Because 2/4 is the same as 3/6, and 4/4 is the same as 6/6) What's gone is the 16th beat (1/4 can't be the same as any/6), instead there are 2 other positions that are close but not quite the same near it. (The 1/6, 2/6, 4/6, 5/6 are not equivalent to anything/4)

Or picture a chocolate bar if you want to divide into 4 pieces you would cut 3 times, but to divide into 6 pieces you would cut 5 times. In both ways of cutting, the center cut line lands on the same spot, that's the shared 8th beat, but not the other cut lines. The start and the end of the chocolate bar are the shared 4th beats where you clap to.

Now if the song simply use triplet grid I'd not quite call that a "swing". A triplet swing song not only use the triplet grid and lay down 6 notes per bar all over the place. Instead, it has high tendency to have the new triplet note CLOSE to the same-old 4th or 8th beat, either before or after, and very often come in a pair of 2 notes like that. In this song every swings are BEFORE the 4th or 8th beat. When you listen to it doing this enough time you feel like swinging or want to do a shuffle dance. This is the key observation to allow you to score it, because you already had the shared 4th and 8th beat in your heart from 95% other songs. Pressing hard on the 2nd note of each swing allow you to anchor yourself on a familliar beat, even though the first press you have to do it some amount of time before.

Most of the mistake come from you playing the first note of each swing pair, which should have been a swing, instead quantized into the 16th beat that you are more used to. In this song I've made a special cheat sheet to make it clearer what I'm talking about in the chorus section. It use colors that is used in DDR game, the familliar 4th and 8th beats are red and blue. The green notes are all new positions from triplet grid. And you can see clearly that each bar is divided into 6 cells. And therefore the 1st and 4th cell would be always red and blue. All other 4 cells are green.

As seen in Bibbidiba, in triplet swing song composer often reverted back to the straight beat for some section they want a break from the swings. In this game it will be represented by lines poking from the notes. (In Wai Wai Party, they use differently colored notes.) When they comes, shift your mode back to not-swing and bring back the 16th note timing skills temporarily. This song is composed by DECO*27, the same composer as Monitoring in the Vocaloid DLC. If you go play that and on the "mitai" Miku eyeball section, you will find pair of notes similar to the triplet swing style but that song is on straight beat. Feel the difference of straight beat 16th gallops like that, and real triplet swing pairs in this song.

Tips in specific timestamp continued in the comment below this one.

0:13 : The "haha" have lines on it meaning that you should not swing. (What's funny is that all the "haha" in this song are all run stoppers and it felt like Mori is mocking you.) But until this point it's all 4th or 8th notes, you hadn't swing any yet. Then you will see some real triplet swings, and then "sinners" will again have lines so you shift back to straight. This is essentially a tutorial so you know how to shift back and forth.

0:24 : Since swings comes in 2 notes, you should always start with your dominant hand for maximum accuracy of each pair. Moreover both of your fingers should already be at the correct button in the case of it containing arrows, you want maximum focus on the beat and cannot afford to move between the first and second note of each swing. And I recommend focusing on where it has only one note instead of two, because if you zone out a bit and got caught off guard where it is, it affects your accuracy.

0:28 : The next run killer is this continuous swing section where Suisei start going ham, it is hard because seemingly nothing is ever the same. The same trick, you need to focus on where there is only 1 note instead of two and go at it with confidence that you will NOT swing there. The majority are swings which should come naturally once you get all the 1 note out of the way. The left-right swing should still begin with your dominant hand by the way even for a right hander, use the left arrow on the right side controller. I get it that left button on the left controller is intuitive, but here you need consistency of swinging feel until the end of song and it is only starting! Always starting with dominant hand no matter what will get the feel down better.

0:36 : The following Mori rap section are all pairs without any 1 note except where the red arrows are, so it is more predictable than the previous section. I think I almost never had to restart here. The LL RR LL RR is slightly hard as it makes maximum finger travel distance on both sides.

0:40 : However when it turns the corner to the left here's what truly hard. Focus on the two 1 note that are there to not get tricked. The up arrow being red sometimes doesn't matter if you are right hander because we agreed to always start with dominant hand on every swings and those are always the first one of each pair. Then the run killer are that down arrow and the yellow line note. They feel super hard to hit because it is like the first time since the song's start that you are asked to hit a lone triplet grid note with neither 4th or 8th note "cushion" behind it, so it felt like it is floating on the unfamilliar void that is hard to time. (And yes this is the 2nd "haha" where Mori will mock you after mistiming this dang line note or the down arrow before it.)

0:44 : "Ride on my vibe" are all simple 4th and 8th notes, and then a temporary shift back into straight land doing 16th streams, and ending with hand-switch line notes. I did have to restart on those simple looking 4th and 8th notes, due to being overly happy gotten past the "haha" with golden score and I got sloppy... that was very painful so please stay focused. The fact that they use 3 blue circle notes in a row is mildly taxing because most players are right hander and being forced to keep the beat with only left hand can mess you up. (Yeah, I know they use blue simply because Suisei is singing and not because they want to punish right handers...)

0:52 : You have arrived at the chorus where they take turns singing. It seems like the notes are more sparse than prior sections, yet they are strangely dynamic and felt like there is no same pattern, or when you think you caught the pattern it quickly does something else! For this reason I've made the cheat sheet so you can sort of compare across each 4 bars whether they are the same or different at what spot. And you can see clearly now that all the swing beats (green) are always supported behind it (not in front of it) by the strong 4th or 8th beat. You'll notice that the chorus will go easy on you for 12 bars, then the last 4 bars will issue a challenge to you with more swing beats. The trick is that in the first 12 bars you should use where there are only 4th and 8th notes consecutively (red and blue in the cheat sheet) to resync and do mental reset for the next swing to come.

Also this is critical, look at the rail. It has corner on each bar to help you divide and see where is truly the center of each bar which would be 8th notes, what's placed exactly at each corner would be 4th note, and anything else would be swing beats. So now even without the cheat sheet you know that if a pair of note has the 2nd note exactly on a corner, it's the green-red in the cheat sheet. If on the middle of the line instead, it's green-blue. From observation, I think most tends to do better on green-red swings than green-blue since red beats (4th) are stronger. Try to observe where you get fast/slow to see whether this is true and focus on fixing it. And you can see rail decided to bounce only on each last 4 bars of the 16 bars set, where the notes are the most difficult! This is very meaningful, the same thing as in "Laugh to Laugh to Love", they are testing whether if you can perform the swings without relying too much from visual, after they supported you with rather straight lines for a while. It's frustrating, but at the same time when I mess up here while I can see the notes clearly and camera is also moving smoothly. It's nothing but my timing skill issue! I think when I finally could nail the swings on these bouncing rails, I feel like I get a taste of real musician skillset and not just a music gamer. It's very satisfying to see the effort come to fruition here after days of trying. Also the first note on the bouncing rail is "free" because they put a Special there.

1:05 : The second 4 bars bouncing rail challenge has a small gotcha, it has one extra swing note going into the 4th note that starts the bouncing rail that's not there in the first time. In the cheat sheat I mark this with a transparent block, because I want to pair up the green swing note with the 4h note on the next line. In fact there is an in-game hint as well, look at the special circle note. There is a white circle before it, that's the extra swing.

1:12 : After each time Suisei said shitai Mori will rap with beats that I think is easy to make a mistake, it's a lone swing beat with no support (seen as a lone green note on the visual I put there, with neither red nor blue note near it), just like the "haha" line note at 0:43 earlier. They are conveniently marked in the game as dual arrow notes, this help you being more attentive to it. It frequently mess up the upcoming swing even if you hit it perfectly. Also the rail shape will be linear-bouncing, then bouncing-linear. Because it starts with linear line, you can warm up to the beat in that time and go into the bouncing one with confidence where you can no longer eye-aim the avatar.

1:27 : The breakdown section switches back to 16th straight beats as you can see those lines. There's a bit of swings on those Special notes, but since they are special you can be inaccurate on them. Tarinai tarinai are 24ths which would be a combo breaker in other songs, but in a song on triplet swing by default, they likely felt easier than all the swings you have to do in this song. Then at the end you have to repeat a beat which I believe are straight grid but without lines poking out from them. These are strangely hard to time due to the camera angle and only the last 2 dual lines are Special to help you. I think 25% of my runs embarassingly ends here. Even if you survived before you could get into the 2nd chorus you'll have to hit a non-special dual down arrows with no music, camera just cut to a new angle, and the line waves as Mori "haha" at you for the last time. If you could ad-lib 2 times using the residual feeling of beats from the last special dual line, that could help you time it even with the lack of music.

The rest are repeats of the chorus with very slight upgrade, like the 4 bars of bouncing rail being different shape, or arrows trying to swap to opposite side more times. (Stick to start each pair with dominant hand still!) I also put the cheat sheet here as well. I think the hardest thing will be dealing with your heart rate if you are right now on a new highscore pace that you've set. When I arrived at the 2nd chorus for the first time with golden score, I clearly can't handle my own anxiety and mistime the swings or suddenly not looking ahead far enough. I needed to arrive here more times with golden scores so it became more of a normal occurence, then I can maintain composure better. In other words I need some runs to be a sacrifices, it is unlikely that the first time you miraculously got through something for the first time and that will be instantly "the run". Fumbles at the last step is OK, it means you rarely got here but you need more of it. Don't forget that each failure will contributes to turn rare occurences into a more common one. Good luck! (Did you notice the lingering note effect of each syllable corresponds to the singer?)