It has been six months since my first steps into Beat Saber. I cleared Campaign mode within three months of getting the game, including all the extra levels. The three main obstacles, in ascending order of difficulty, I rank as follows.
- 20B: Legend, One-Saber, 1 Life. Even slowed down, the double underhand in “I’ll be going ape like Congo” is a real pain in the neck.
- 29: Rum n’ Bass, Expert, upper limit of misses. As much as I love this song for its atmosphere and punny name (in fact, I’d even go as far as to say that it’s my favorite Campaign song), this level is a veritable proving ground for aspiring Expert players. At the alternation bit in the second buildup, I found as an amateur that it helped to count the number of red swings out loud: one, two, three, four, five.
- 28B: Angel Voices, Expert, Arm movement lower limit. All told, the hard part is passing the song, and the lower limit of points is virtually (no pun intended) nonexistent. In particular, the five-minute mark is the one and only part of the entire Campaign that I’ve ever had to take into Practice. (RD, LD RU, LU RD, LD, RU LU, RD LD, RU, LU RD, LD RU, LU, RD LD, RU LU, and so on while shifting left or right every five swings) Because of its relative difficulty and six-minute total duration, I like to compare Angel Voices to Through the Fire and Flames in Guitar Hero 3 (as I do $100 Bills and Slow Ride because of how early they’re listed despite not being the easiest songs in their respective games (although the former case is due to alphabetical order)).
Then came the rest of the achievements, starting with the 15 full combos (FCs) on each of Hard and Expert. Conveniently, 15 is exactly the combined total of Volume 1 songs and Volume 2 songs. Some of the other packs also have easy songs, including Reason for Living in Volume 3, Magic in Volume 5, and One Hope in Extras. (One Hope on Expert is similar to Breezer, but with off beats and polyrhythms.) I say this as cautionary advice in case Elixia is too boring to grind out. (Trust me; I’ve been there.)
Hard FCs: Crab Rave, $100 Bills, Rum n’ Bass, Be There For You, Unlimited Power, Balearic Pumping, Breezer, Legend, Escape, Lvl Insane, Beat Saber, Angel Voices, Country Rounds, Commercial Pumping, Turn Me On, Elixia, Origins (17 total)
First 15 Expert FCs: Breezer, Rum n’ Bass, Balearic Pumping, Legend, Lvl Insane, Escape, Beat Saber, $100 Bills, Commercial Pumping, Country Rounds, Turn Me On, I Need You, Unlimited Power, Be There For You, Elixia
(I was pleasantly surprised to find Crab Rave in this game, as it’s the only song I recognize from outside the game. Admittedly, though, I hadn’t ever listened to the whole thing before playing the game.)
All FCs were S-rank, despite one little oddity: My first Expert FC of Rum n’ Bass was actually A-rank, so even though I had previously done an S-rank non-FC run, the game prioritized the latest run towards the achievement, meaning that I needed to S-rank the song again. Fortunately, I did just that without a hitch, getting another FC in the process. (Also worth noting that One-Saber does not count towards the FC achievement, as I learned the hard way with a pathetic A-rank FC of Beat Saber (the song).)
While going for my first SS on Expert, I narrowed it down to three candidates: Breezer, Beat Saber, and Turn Me On. (I also got 89.5% on Lvl Insane by a total fluke.) Ultimately, through all the pain of grinding, Breezer won out. As part of this ordeal, I learned all about the ranking system through a Google search leading to a Reddit post containing a spreadsheet, although I had to adjust it because apparently the maximum score per note changed from 100 to 115 at some point in time. The adjusted version—including Expert+, One-Saber, and circular (360° and 90°) statistics—is linked below.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TT36ekLiqUC2h8QX9Prj6ih9OVyolm6FcVmzFwO2yj4/edit?usp=sharing
Speaking of circular, I haven’t dabbled much into those maps, largely due to the limited space in my room, but I can say for sure that Crab Rave has the most clever mapping. At the start of each drop, the downward diagonal cuts and arrangement of obstacles give off the impression of dancing like the flagship crab in the music video (in a similar vein to how Pop/Stars is mapped, except I hadn’t ever watched that music video until early this year).
That just left the 24-hour playtime and 100 million points, which just came naturally over the course of my uphill climb to improve at the game. I started by pursuing more Expert FCs including Crab Rave, One Hope, Origins, Give a Little Love, Angel Voices, Reason for Living, Bernie Sanders Burning Sands, Pop/Stars, and Immortal. (I also dabbled a bit more into One-Saber, which noticeably helped with my coordination.) Consequently, Burning Sands became my favorite song in the game: atmospheric like Rum n’ Bass, and such a blast to play. (I pursued that before Pop/Stars because I wasn’t all too interested in the latter song, and I found the halfway point of its chorus disorienting while I was accustomed to the refrain of Burning Sands.) On a more vexing note, my first FC of One Hope was a SS, such a slap in the face considering how long it took me to get the Breezer SS.
Then I started branching out to Expert+, intending to pass as many songs as I could while also working towards Volume 4 and the Camellia pack, along with Spooky Beat and FitBeat, on Expert. I also scooped up Full Charge, the one song in the game that I absolutely dislike (because it was a pain to pass on Expert, and I’m just not a fan of the melody, in no small part due to the audio samples), with another slap-in-the-face SS. And speaking of passes, I have passed every freely available song as of Version 1.20 (as I have no interest in DLC or mods), and what a coincidence that Volume 5 dropped the day after I passed Ghost, the last remaining song after Light it up, Crystallized, EXiT This Earth’s Atomosphere [sic], WHAT THE CAT!?, Spin Eternally, and Cycle Hit in reverse chronological order. As for Volume 5 itself, I actually found $1.78 harder to pass than Final-Boss-Chan; even though the former is significantly shorter, it’s utter cacophony mapped as note vomit, whereas the latter has easily taken the place of Spin Eternally as the best Camellia song in the game.
Among the songs that I had FC’d on Expert, the real dastards to pass on Expert+ were Beat Saber, Lvl Insane, and Angel Voices. The former two do not belong in Volume 1 whatsoever, and the latter intensifies in 4.5 minutes instead of 5 (and boy does it intensify). (Also, guess what? Full Charge was a breeze.) Unlimited Power and Burning Sands are notable runners-up, although the latter is just as fun for its difficulty as the Expert map.* (Balearic Pumping was also a doozy, but nowadays I consider it a lesser version of Angel Voices.)
*That said, I’m disappointed that the triplets in the refrain are mapped as mere sixteenths.
My efforts produced seven Expert+ FCs:
- Rum n’ Bass. I just did a run one day and somehow FC’d everything but the intro, ending up with a -3 and a note streak greater than 800. Even more surprisingly, it was the first time I had ever gotten a SS without FCing. That’s when I knew that this song had to be my first Expert+ FC…although, in reality, the grind was more painful than I could have imagined. The intro is still the hardest part, but that didn’t stop me from missing after it, especially in the drop. Even after the drop, specifically the outward horizontal double at the end of it, I had an FC up to there and the red note just whizzed by. That’s gotta be one of the most painful chokes I’ve ever experienced.
- One Hope. I knew I had it in me before long; it was just a matter of putting the pieces together. (Goes to show, as I like to say, a tech FC is not an FC.) I fortunately didn’t have any chokes in the outro, just the second chorus.
- Crab Rave. Second try of the day, and my first time ever past the second buildup. Admittedly, my method for the second buildup is one that would slice off my right arm if the game allowed it: keeping my right hand out with the wrist moving down and up, while making clockwise circles with my left arm.
- Be There For You. Practically a micro-grind, mostly on account of the second drop.
- Breezer. The run before the FC was a reverse choke, where I straight-up missed in the intro, although I can’t remember where exactly. Thankfully, the runback was a cinch.
- Elixia. Also second try, whereas the first try involved an annoyingly usual whiff of the first red in the second set of sixteenths. (Strangely enough, the day before that, I had a run where I thought I needed to practice some part of the outro, but it turns out I didn’t have to practice a thing.)
- Country Rounds. I got -4 SS twice in a row and a third time the day after, followed by a -1 later on and eventually the FC. It’s a straightforward map, but with a few weird bits.
(As far as passes go, I only have Volume 4, every Camellia song, Curtains, Firestarter, and $1.78 left.)
The cases of Country Rounds and Rum n’ Bass, as well as a few Expert SS runs, are proof that my first SS grind has irrevocably affected the way I cut blocks, allowing my SS runs to easily precede FCs instead of being an extra mile that I can’t be bothered to go. Thus, as part of the improvement process, I redid a whole bunch of Expert songs to ensure that all of my FCs were SS-rank, for the sake of consistency to deprive Full Charge of its undeserved entitlement.
Unfortunately, I have since fallen into a slump. For the longest time, I could swear that Give a Little Love on Expert+ was within my grasp the moment I started getting consistent at the build-ups, but of course I just kept missing in the second drop, not least at the last freaking note of the final alternation bit. Reason for Living was in a similar boat, with the second chorus being the big choke point. I’ve also been considering Spin Eternally on Expert, especially after getting a 1k note streak and hitting the two hardest parts—the horizontal swipes after the break, and the little burst of sixteenths at the tail end of the multitasking part—on a first try one day. (More recently, I got a streak up to the slew of double hits after the “ファイト! (Fight-o!)” and lost it in the transition into the final spinning part.)
Cutting to the chase, I once decided on a whim to shuffle a playlist containing all five volumes of the official soundtrack (which, for the record, I did purchase through the iTunes Store) on a 20-30 minute drive back home from work, and then play them in-game on difficulties and in modes beyond what I have FC’d so far. (As for the Extras and the Camellia pack, I use random.org and append the results to the setlist.) The catch is to not reset apart from failure or some extenuating circumstance like an early controller clack. In the former case, I go down a level unless I’m on Expert (such as when I painstakingly often fail in the intro of EXiT), in which case I just move on. This has challenged me to use the Faster Notes modifier for some songs on Expert (and to do more One-Saber), namely those that I’ve either already FC’d or haven’t passed on Expert+ (e.g. Rum n’ Bass, It Takes Me), and I enjoyed the practice so much that it inspired me to do the Setlist Shuffle (as I like to call it) regularly. Bottom line: Grinding sucks; the best way to deal with a slump is to break out of one’s comfort zone, and speed-ups work wonders on that front. (As a side note, I have never used any modifiers in Solo play besides the speed-ups and Ghost Notes, nor tweaked any settings apart from the few occasions I have gone lefty for One-Saber (even then to no avail).)
Along with the few candidates mentioned above, I’ve since picked up a few others.
- Pop/Stars, Expert+. Just recently, I got a reverse choke in the rap verse (missed about halfway through, yet hit “I’m the realest in the game, uh,” the one part I normally miss more often than the others), followed by chokes in the first half of Chorus 2 and at the halfway point of Chorus 3. Not as overdue as Give a Little Love, but pretty close.
- Legend, Expert+. In my most recent Setlist Shuffle, I managed to hit just about everything except the bottom-right note in the fifth set of sixteenths into doubles in both of the verses, which I took into Practice mode and handled just fine. I haven’t ground this song too much, but perhaps now is the time to start cracking down on it.
- WHAT THE CAT!?, Expert. The big stinker is the tail end (no pun intended) of the second drop, and I recently managed to hit it in a real run. In an earlier run, I FC’d up to the second buildup. In a more recent run, I can only blame tunnel vision (the perfect term for a rhythm game like this) for whatever the goodness I missed in the second drop. (All I know is that it was on the right side, a few notes after the last set of sixteenths.)
Lastly, here’s a list of FCs that I haven’t mentioned.
- Expert: Into the Dream, Spooky Beat, LUDICROUS+, FitBeat, It Takes Me, Magic, Firestarter, I Wanna Be a Machine, Curtains (Grand total: 34/43)
- Expert+: $100 Bills (Grand total: 8/43)
- Expert, Faster: Breezer, One Hope, Beat Saber, Legend, Elixia, Escape, Reason for Living, Rum n’ Bass, I Need You, $100 Bills, Turn Me On, Lvl Insane, Commercial Pumping, Balearic Pumping, Origins [miraculously first try], Immortal, Country Rounds, Give a Little Love, Be There For You, FitBeat, Pop/Stars (Grand total: 21/43)
- Expert, Super Fast: Elixia (Grand total: 1/43)
- One-Saber: Beat Saber, Breezer, Commercial Pumping, $100 Bills, Legend, Balearic Pumping, Crab Rave, Be There For You, FitBeat, Country Rounds, Escape, Turn Me On, Elixia, Pop/Stars, Lvl Insane, Reason for Living [Expert+] (Grand total: 16/22)
(I would love to put Rum n’ Bass on the One-Saber list, but somehow the stupid freaking last possible bomb broke my combo right before I could hit the last note. Like…how? I also choked Origins X+ by missing the last upward cut.)
Afterword
Beat Saber filled—no, overflowed the void left by my inability to play Guitar Hero. It’s such a unique, fun, and challenging rhythm game, even the bare minimum setlist of 43 songs is perfectly adequate for at least a year’s worth of satisfaction. In other words, it’s my new favorite rhythm game and one of my new favorite games of all time. I might even revive the currently dormant YouTube channel that I had previously dedicated to Guitar Hero, as a means to genuinely prove my prowess.
À la prochaine! (Until next time!)
Vouiv-review 