I know I should have gotten to doing 5Street a while back but unfortunately I haven't gotten around to it. So instead I decided to do a more recent one. This one is called STEPS and for some reason they like to use it in all capitals. To dumb it down as much as I can, its an updated version of Audition with improved graphics. I had half completed my 5Street review a while back but decided to scrap it because it was just me ranting on about how much it sucked for 3 pages rather than providing a good review and never got around to doing a proper one. Just to show how lazy cubizone is, all their games use the same launcher with a different skin.

NOTE: I hate cubizone. All of their freaking games revolve around large item mall transactions and its basically impossible to survive the game without them. Its like playing Perfect World without auto potions. You can do it but it'll take much longer and be pointless because you can't do much of the game without them. Item mall currency in STEPS is called R Coin.

NOTE2: DDR = Dance Dance Revolution

Story:

N/A – No story. You just get in and start dancing.

Graphics:

The graphics is an improved version of Audition. It tries to maintain that cartoon feel while providing a more detailed character model with a large variety of clothes. The clothes unfortunately have a clipping problem for some sets so the pants might stick out through your shirt some times. For a new game, it has a nice selection of clothes, unfortunately, most of them are item mall and all non item mall clothing is only on a 30 day rent basis. Character customization is also impossible unless you pay 100 item mall coin currency every 30 days to maintain it. Otherwise you are generic like every one else. Unless you spend real money, expect to see clones. Lots and lots of clones.

Gameplay:

The simplest way to sum it up would be to just say its almost like Audition with different graphics. If you've played Audition you can expect the same for this game. If you haven't its like a few of the other dance games out there such as 5Street and Audition.

Character customization is impossible without item mall. When you create your character, your character proportions are fixed. All you can pretty much change is 1 or 2 basic clothing choices and hair color. The rest is pretty much restricted and can only be modified with the purchase of item mall currency and renting the new proportions through the in game store. If you can't afford to get the item mall stuff, don't expect to be able to change your looks much. About 20% to 30% of the items can be bought with in game currency. The rest are item mall. To taunt you more, you can preview all the items in the store which is a nice feature in knowing that you can at least see the things you cannot obtain.

There is a diverse selection of clothing available. Oddly enough, they bothered to put Yuna's FFX-2 Gunslinger outfit in the game. Unfortunately, they're restricted to the item mall. For non item mall players you have several sets of clothes that you can mix and match. They look like a mess if you don't have a matching set because often the top part interferes with the lower part of the clothing. The mash up causes various clipping problems. Its distracting at times but fortunately, only a few sets of mash ups have this problem.

See this?

You'll never be able to afford it cause its item mall only just like 80%+ of the items in the game.

One of the best things about the game is that there is a huge variety of dance moves. You can register your character with any combination of the different sets and your character will only use the moves from that set. This way you can have your character dance to your liking. There are HUNDREDS of moves to go through so it can take some time for you to preview and go through all of them. A lot of them are very interesting and the animation looks great. The transitions still have problems some times and the flow between the dance moves needs some improvements.

There are various dance modes but the main distinction can be made between 4Key and 8Key. 8Key uses more keys and is much more difficult. Its like a hard mode to the game. New players should stick to 4Key and it isn't as difficult. Unlike 5Street, it isn't player selected but rather game selected. This makes it unfortunate because players can't choose a style to their own liking. They will be forced to interact with players who only play on their own style.

Also why can I only take 1 quest at a time?

At higher levels you also begin to earn Points. Points are another form of currency that I don't know why they even bothered with. Some items in game are restricted to points only but they aren't permanent. These are relatively few in number though and most items are still restricted to item mall currency. Unfortunately, these are rental only too and it is not possible to buy them permanently.

The number one problem in the game is a lack of permanent clothing options. You can get permanent clothing only through item mall at this point. Quest clothing are 30 days and you can buy items for in game gold for 7 or 30 days. This unfortunately causes the greatest problem any MMO experience. Even greater than the fatigue and stamina systems that limit gameplay. This problem is better known as the lack of a sense of achievement. All MMOs need something for players to establish a sense of achievement so that they at least know what they're doing matters to someone. Unfortunately, the inability to obtain permanent items for normal players completely erases this. It makes it impossible to achieve anything but levels and in a dance game, levels mean nothing but how much you have played. Without a sense of achievement there isn't much to encourage you to keep going.

Guilds:

There are guilds, but they don't do anything outside of events. You can chat with them as if you were in a large room with all of them. Other than that there's nothing. A buddy list can handle most of what you need. After that, its pointless.

Overall:

STEPS is just another dance MMO out there on the market. If you like Dance Online graphics but didn't like the DDR style and prefer the gameplay of Audition then STEPS is more for you. If you like 5Street style graphics well then stick to 5Street. This is just another dancing MMO on the market for a small population. With Nurien around the corner in South Korea, it may be what is just necessary to stop other developers from making these non sense item mall focused dance games. Otherwise, this is just the same as many of the other dance games. If you didn't like the other ones, you won't like this one.

Final Score:

5/10 – We've seen this before, make something new already that doesn't rely on the item mall. If you want a dance game, just stick to 5Street, its probably the best one out there for now unless you like DDR style in which case Dance Online is the only option I know of thats like that.