This could quite possibly be the best music game of all time
Unfortunately this is also why nintendo is incredibly frustrating as it has yet to recieve an official english release...
Be that as it may, Daigasso Band Bros. DX (henceforth referred to as DBB:DX) is a music rythmn game with a bit of a twist - Rather than you playing a dedicated notechart as mapped out by programmers, you press buttons on your DS according to the note on the sheet music. Let me explain, say you are playing...the ghostbuster's theme song. Now imagine if that was done on guitar hero, you only have 5 fret buttons and a strum bar to try and play the music so the programmers pretty much say "Well we're just going to make a note chart and if you press the buttons right you hear the song". Not in DBB:DX, instead the instruments all follow sheet music embedded in each song. With 8 face buttons and two shoulder buttons you can accurately reflect sheet music. So if the song's note chart were to read A-B-A-Y-Y, pressing that sequence in another song will yield the same tones and, provided you have the same instrument, the same exact sound.
DBB:DX has a short song list of about 30ish songs. Most are classical and a few are anime songs and for the most part this list is unremarkable. However, getting 90 or better on all parts on the ahrdest mode for a classical song unlocks a remixed version. Plus for doing decent in the career...ish story mode you can get a few more, thus bringing the game's total built insong list up to around 70 or 80.
The career mode's text is all in japanese so I can;t help you there but as an avid fan of the first one where you were a band trying to make a record, this one seems to be you are a band who already has a record but is trying to do concerts. When you first fire up the game you are given a short sample of a song to do, depending on how good you do you are given a starting rating. I got 100% on the first bit so I started out with a 4-star rating. When you go to do your first song as part of the mode you try and keep the very visible crowd happy by doing good. You can gauge how well you are doing in the song by how the crowd is acting. Are people looking bored and leaving? Not good. Are people jumping up and down and throwing a giant rave party? Good. Is the crowd so hot they're on fire? Very good. Do good on a song and your rating will increase which will make the game use more and more difficult parts of songs and use the higher difficulties to throw your way.
Now so far this game looks mediocre to bad. That's because the built in features of this game are incredibly basic and boring on the surface. But now that the nitty gritty nuts and bolts have been laid out, it's time for the game's trump card: User-created content.
DBB:DX differs incredibly from most music games because of the nature of its sheet music driven design. This also means the song creator is a true song creator. Fully stocked with over 40 instruments, ability to do chords and background instruments, and support for 8 playable instruments and a karaoke mode, this game trumps everything handheld or console based to ever come before it. Not only that but DBB:DX has over 100 save slots for these songs created by you or shared with friends over locl wireless.
Not good enough? Head online. That's right, this game is online baby! Now rather than just a lame play against people online component this game allows you to share your creations with the world. I'm going to reiterate that last point - Not only can you create songs that sound every bit as good as the stuff provided with the game (and in most cases it will actually be better) but you can share your creations with the whole world online and get other people's creations. No one has ever before done this. There were literally over 2000 songs to choose from last time I checked. The one flaw is you are limited to 100 downloads due to licensing issues in case somoene "creates" a song from an artist that does not give nintendo the right to use their songs. But even so, 100 songs is a lot. So total, maxed out, you can have almost 300 songs to go. And a local wireless feature allows anyone who has a DS to play the full game with you. They don;t even need the game to play an instrument on any difficulty, this alone is worth the price.
Combine this with other neat features and addons like the jam sessions style guitar mode or the radio mode where the game's "host" announces songs, even your downloaded ones, in a radio DJ style voice. The radio feature is an excellent showcase for the sheet music style because the radio mode allows you to hear what these songs sound like if played by different instruments. There are expected styles like rock or jazz, as well as unusual ones like tribal beat and church organs. Only with DBB:DX will you get this.
So to sum it all up (tl;dr summary) - This is what nintendo can do when they want to remind everyone why they have been around for over 20 years in the gaming industry. This is the killer ap for the DS and this should be brought over here at all costs. If you are on the fence for this game, buy it and thank me later when you and your friends are jamming out to the ghostbusters theme in someone's living room. And don;t let the japanese language scare you away, it is very understandable with some trial and error. It won't be long before you are downloading and creating songs like it was all in english.
This game would get a 10 if not for one thing - without an internet connection of somekind, you are missing out on most of what this game has to offer.