General
- The diffs themselves are fine mostly, but there is one really huge problem with this set: The Difficulty Gap between Hard and Insane is enormous. Insane includes some fairly long 210-BPM streams, while Hard doesn't include any 1/4-tapping at all. Hard doesn't even contain a lot of 1/2-tapping, as most 1/2-patterns consistent of mainly sliders. You cannot make the Hard more difficult though, since the gap to Normal would be too high then. In my opinion, it is essential for this mapset to create a difficulty between Hard and Insane, which contains some 1/4-Triplets and maybe some 5-long streams, as well as more 1/2-tapping than the Hard. Btw, you can also tell the gap is too huge from the star rating: 3,16 -> 5,22 - Over 2 stars of difference o: I won't explain this further now, we can talk about this ingame again if you want.
- You could set the HP-settings for the Normal to HP 2, because you know that the Normal is a bit too difficult and it will atleast prevent some newbies from failing.
Normal
- 00:05:035 (2,1) - I don't think a jump is a good idea for a Normal diff.
- 00:33:986 (1) - Why the sudden spacing change o: Is it on purpose? I don't really see a reason for this here.
- 01:29:112 (4,5) - I'm unsure if this stack reads good for newbies, and also it makes more sense unstacked because 01:29:398 (5) is very emphasized beat.
- 01:52:255 (4) - NC for consistency with Hard.
- I don't like some of your rhythm choices. For example 00:12:530 (2) - I know you choose this rhythm because it follows the strings, but 00:12:530 is only a build-up to 00:12:668, which is the louder and higher-pitched (and therefore more emphasized) sound. So in my opinion, this sound should have been mapped instead of the one where your slider actually starts. In the kiai, you continued this rhythm, although the new high-pitched strings make my version even more obvious. Then, at 00:20:272 (1,2), you suddenly started to use the "correct" rhythm. So, it is also really inconsistent.
- Some of your placement is also really questionable. You know that the rhythm is pretty complex here, but I'd have expected you try to make the placement as clean / smooth as possible, to avoid even more confusion. But patterns like this 00:38:272 (1,2,1,2) don't play really smooth and together with the red tick rhythms here they could confuse players. All of these could easily be avoided, for example with this one 00:39:986 (2) could be placed more to the right so that it doesn't overlap with previous sliders and is just more clean. I mean something like this: http://puu.sh/aECAF/4e0e7ce3e8.jpg Another example are patterns like this 00:53:408 (3,1) - When the player is done with (3), the tail of (1) is much more close to his current cursor position, so he might mistake head and tail or even click earlier because the distance between the objects seems low to him.
- Otherwise the Normal is pretty nice for what the song offers.
Hard
- 00:05:540 (3) - I'd add a NC here. At the moment, this combo covers a really big time. It would also be consistent with Normal.
- 01:00:262 (5) - Same.
- 01:29:469 (1) - End it at 01:31:541, because the violin stops playing there?
- The Hard itself is really good. I would have prefered to see a consistent spacing for 1/1-gaps, atleast in a single pattern, for example 00:35:130 (5,6,1) could be equal spacing, just to make it look more tidy and less random. But otherwise, no problems.
Insane
- 00:05:540 (3) - Same as Hard.
- 01:29:469 (1) - Same as Hard. Or atleast make it consistent with Hard.
- Really good Insane!
Well. I don't know what to think of this mapset. Of course, the Insane is perfect and really fun to play! The Hard is also quite good. I don't really like the Normal, for reasons stated above. What is really worrysome is the diff spread though, I don't think it is rankable like it currently is.
Good luck
