Hello and Welcome! My name is Fool and I’ll be your guide through this systematic rating of Project Sekai charts.
The system
I have three categories I’ll be rating charts on: Feel, Medium, and Interest
Feel is the flow of the chart. How does it feel to play? Do the notes lead naturally from one moment to the next? Are there any outstanding moments of the chart putting your fingers in the right place? Note that this does not take into consideration the readability of a chart. This can also be thought of as note placement. There are five points for Feel.
Medium is how the chart utilizes the medium of Project Sekai. Are the notes used in an interesting way? Do they do anything fun with the hold notes? How does the chart match the music? Is the sound design interesting? This can also be thought of as texture. There are five points for Medium.
Finally, Interest is simply whether a chart keeps my interest or not. There's not much else to this one. There are three points for Interest.
Alongside these are some categories of bonuses and demerits. These are Flourish, Missed Potential, Overcharting, and Exceptionalism.
Flourish is a bonus awarded if a chart has natural moments that feel cool to play. Things like a particularly extravagant flick note or a hold note that moves in a way where you can kinda jam out along with it.
Missed Potential is a demerit given when there's a moment that could've been better (or a moment from the original song that got cut out that would've been sick as hell to play YY).
Overcharting is a demerit given when the chart has moments that simply do not come from the song. Like there was no reason to put that in besides artificial difficulty inflation.
Exceptionalism is a bonus attached to one of the main categories if a chart is, well, exceptional in that regard. This one can be awarded multiple times if a chart is exceptional in multiple categories.
If you’re curious, you can find the rubric I made for this project here.
The order of operations
I'll be following the release date for the order in which I rate the songs. This way it will be easy for me to know what songs I still need to rate, even as new songs are added. I'll be going off of what songs are on the global (or EN) servers, because that's where I play. Each song will be rated on their Hard, Expert, and Master difficulties, as the Normal and Easy ones are boring and do nothing interesting with the charts. Each difficulty is rated separately and with the conventions of that difficulty taken into account (eg. Master charts almost always have more interesting hold notes and note patterns, Hard charts are more likely to have only one finger used at a time, etc.). I will also be skipping songs that I am incapable of playing the Master chart for, because I cannot judge them fairly at my current skill level. They will be rated as soon as I am capable of playing them. Additionally, I won’t be rating any charts that require more than 2 fingers to play, nor will I rate any append charts when they reach global servers. I will, however, rate the Hard and Expert charts for songs that break the 2 finger limit.
Tagging
I tag songs with the following:
song name and producer
in-game group
sekai ver. singers
original singers
and a few more that are consistent across songs. This is both for reach and to make searching for songs easier. I tag songs with the EN servers name, because I don't want to look up every song to get its original name. I tag singer names with the surname first, because I am nothing if not a weeaboo, so if you are searching by singer search that way (e.g. akiyama mizuki, hinomori shiho, megurine luka, etc.).
GIFs and accessibility
I use gifs in my reviews. If this distresses or upsets you, fear not! I hate gifs as well! To deal with this on desktop, I recommend downloading XKit and turning on AccessKit, which has an option to disable gifs until you hover over them with your mouse. On mobile, tumblr itself has an option to disable gifs until you tap on them! Go to setting -> Account settings -> Media auto-play and select Never auto-play. This also has the nifty benefit of saving mobile data!
If you simply can't stand them no matter what, or if you use a screen reader, I also include IDs in the alt text for every gif. If you notice one missing, please send me a message or an ask! I will fix it posthaste!
Disclaimer:
These ratings are not objective, despite my attempts to be impartial and fair. I play at Master level most of the time, and so my bias may show up in rating the lower level charts. These are my personal opinions. They may contradict with your own. That's okay, because this is all for fun. My ratings cannot hurt you. If you don't like them (or me), please feel free to block me.
That said, I hope you enjoy seeing my thoughts. I've loved the charts for Project Sekai for the entire time I've been playing and want to codify and express that love through this project. Ratings are uploaded every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 3 PM CST.
-Fool



















