There aren’t that many Japanese titles that make it over to Western shores, especially ones that had poor sales. However, there are exceptions and thanks to the support of many import fans, “Osu Tatakae Ouendan” was given a Western makeover as “Elite Beat Agents” before the rhythm game was brought over. Now with a whole new selection of songs, wacky Manga stories and the improvements from EBA, the iNiS team brings us the sequel “Burn it up! Hot-Blooded Rhythm Spirits! Go Fight, Cheerleaders 2”!

The game starts off the same way as with the prequel, offering a tutorial that you can skip when you first start out. You’re then free to pick the easy or normal difficulty level before you can start tapping away. Not much has changed in terms of gameplay since the first Ouendan. You still tap, slide and spin circles to songs but those who have played EBA will notice a lot of its features and improvements have been brought over. The main improvement that I’m sure a lot of people like is being able to skip to the tapping right away. Great for those hard songs with long intros that you have to retry! Not only that, you can even skip the outro Manga scenes too if you’re just replaying the songs to beat your score.


The gameplay’s the same but lots of improvements from EBA.
I’m sure those who have played the prequel through every difficulty level will want to jump straight to very hard mode but unfortunately, you’ll just have to beat normal mode again first. On the bright side, normal and hard mode should just take you under 6 hours to beat unless you’re out of touch. I didn’t really find any of the songs challenging until I reached towards the middle of hard mode but even then, it only took one or two retries. Easy mode has been made much more easier allowing players to restart at the part of a song they failed at with a partly replenished energy part. A little too overdone since it’s hard enough for the spirit bar to drop to zero.

Stages are spread out across a map as before but in 3D this time just like EBA. Searching for the ones in distress is just as easy by dragging with the stylus. Our original Ouendan team from Sunset Town now has rivals, a much more elegant looking team from the town of Sunrise across the river. However, even though they’re referred to as “rivals”, you don’t actually have much of a role to play in their rivalry because all that happens is you pick a stage, beat it with one of the teams and their flag is held by characters where the stage is. You don’t get to pick which team to play as nor do you compete with the other team. Which team is responsible for what stage is all preset.


Meet the new rival team from Sunrise Town.
On the other hand, you do get to select which member of either team you want to play as in wireless link mode. As with the previous games, the same songs from the main mode are used but with completely different stories based on sport. Each player competes for best timing and the better it is, the quicker flames are lit up. Once all the flames are lit, the other player’s circles all shrink to make them harder to tap. Whoever manages to fill up their gauge the highest during each stage of the song wins. It’s fun for a while but with only three stories to choose from, no recorded stats or unlockable content, the fun doesn’t last long. This is also the case with the new co-op mode where players take turns tapping parts of a song.


Not much incentive to play VS mode.
The original Ouendan had no unlockable content apart from new difficulty levels. While scoring high and S ranking the songs was great for replayability, something else was needed to increase the longevity of the game. That something came in the form of hidden songs in the EBA game and is a new welcome addition to this Japanese sequel. As before, your total score from every song you play in the game earns you a title but that’s not all because the better title you have, the more new songs you’ll unlock. There are 3 hidden songs to unlock so it’s not much but it’s still a great incentive to keep playing the game while steadily rewarding you with new content!