The gameplay is exactly the same. Also, no US company would pay for all that licensed Japanese music. Also, Reggie mentioned his disappointment with the EBA sales in that interview.

Ouendan/EBA is okay, but I hate it because it's getting in the way of a new Gitaroo-Man game.

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The gameplay was almost identical, with one awesome difference--the spinners in EBA are much more forgiving than in Ouendan. That's a pretty big problem solved. So better gameplay, plus (I will argue) a better soundtrack, means that Elite Beat Agents is certainly a better game.

And I am super excited about a sequel. I've composed a tracklist in iTunes for everything I want to see in it, I'm so excited. They seriously need It's The End Of The World As We Know It and Hardware Store this time around.

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David:

Speaking for the general American audience, EBA has a better song list than Ouenden, only because the majority of people would prefer to understand what the lyrics are about. Also I'm confused how you can say the gameplay is better in Ouenden than EBA. Look, I love Ouenden as much as the next guy, but I seriously hated having to watch the same song intro over and over everytime I attempted a song/level. When the difficulty heats up, by the time you completed a song, you've watched that intro at least 10 times. Especially the last song since that intro is nearly a minute long, I might as well be sitting through load times on a PSP. Of course I'm referring to the ability to skip the intro and get right into the gameplay on EBA. Other than that, the gameplay is the same, if not better because you can understand the lyrics which also happens to be what the beat is based off of.

Sieg_15:

Referencing to what I just said to David, I believe you are wrong when you said niether is superior in gameplay, because EBA is in fact superior to Ouenden gameplay wise. Quarkyness and lost in translation fun feeling is a whole other arguement however.

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Personally, I would like a sequel for both games (or game with an option to play either the Ouendan boys and Agents) but if I had to choose one, it would a sequel to EBA. I'm somewhat suprised that anyone would say the gameplay in Ouendan was superior to EBA since it was basically the same gameplay. Neither is superior to the other gameplay wise. Song selection...No comment.

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@juicebytim

I actually only refering to the actual gameplay and not features, hitting the beats and wheel spinning beating gameplay and skipping the intro being a feature. That being said, both neither have superior gameplay, only superior features.

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Banana Kid, I'd like to add another awesome difference - the ability to skip past the introduction of a song and right into the gameplay.

Anybody who has failed "Ready Steady Go" more than a few times knows what I speak of.

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Enough of you Japanophiles. EBA is better. The gameplay is exactly the same. The game is cleaner thanks to simpler markers, the spinners are better, the graphics are better, EBA has so many more features including features that make so many parts of the game better (including something that could have made RSG a whole lot more fun).

The soundtrack is not better. People look at the worst songs on the list and say "this represents what EBA is". Ouendan's soundtrack is vastly overrated. Linda Linda? Almost as bad as La La (hmm... take out the ind... OMG), and yet people overlook that because the game is "wacky jappy".

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Uh, what Japanophiles? Everyone in this thread agrees.

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For the record, I actually liked "Linda Linda," as I've always enjoyed The Blue Hearts' style (it's as if The Ramones and The Clash were mixed in the blender and came up with lyrics in a foreign tongue). That being said, both soundtracks have their highs and lows.



20XX, I was going to say the same, except that David's original post says that he finds the original to be superior in both gameplay (?) and music selection.

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When I first got EBA, I felt a little lukewarm to it. The songs didn't seem to catch on as well as they did with Ouendan.

But after beating it on all difficulties, I have to say that I love EBA and have trouble going back to Ouendan. I mean, I still love both games, but if I had to pick a game to play, it'd be EBA. Seems like the developers had more fun with the stories in EBA. There are more hilarious sequences. And EBA is just all around more polished and refined, naturally.

Bring on the sequel!

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I wasn't referring to any of the commenters, just the creator of this article and those like him who try to create reasons to like Ouendan better that don't exist (gameplay, for instance). Even worse is that they go to the extreme and say "Ouendan = wacky and awesome, EBA = generic and boring", when this is clearly NOT the case. Just like Ouendan, it stereotypes various people and ideas in American culture - football players, oil tycoons, baseball players, taxi drivers, Duke Nukem (the peanut guy was more or less Duke), Tom (of Tom & Jerry; the plot felt very much like a plot from that), bad dancers/singers striving to be good ones, etc. And pretty much every single level with the slight exception of Material Girl.

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Not only that, but there shouldn't be an Ouendan 2 over an EBA 2 because the Japanese didn't appreciate it - it sold 80,000 at best, with more than 10,000 of those sales being from outside of Japan. EBA, however, has doubled the last recorded sales for the game (60,000) and will do so much more than it, likely breaking 400k at least.

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Forgot to mention that the other day, Nintendo had me fill out a survey on EBA. They asked if I would buy a sequel to EBA. Hell yes, I clicked. But I also filled out one of these questionnaires for New Mario Bros, so I don't know if they really mean anything.

This is very much a word of mouth game. I think it should do even better in the coming months.

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Ouendan was a great intro to EBA, which finally allowed me to fully understand what was going on in the stories. Ya, the Jap version has that "quirk" value to it, but if EBA had come out first, I don't know if I'd have played through O!T!O. I also found the agents to be much more active on screen than the Ouendan ever were, even doing the Y M C A along to the music. The Ouendan kinda did the same thing over and over. Overall, I had a great experience with Ouendan, and an even better one with EBA.

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The writers at this site are obvious weeaboos. It's kind of sick.

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Well, I'd definately have to agree with wanting an Ouendan sequal before an EBA sequal. I find the songs generally better, especially when EBA has songs like Sk8er Boi and Lala (blech).
I had a thought of Ouendan vs EBA cross my mind once..

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