YMMV / Gitadora

• Americans Hate Tingle: This trope kicked in in the West after Guitar Hero was released. Detractors dislike the reduced number of fret buttons (alhtough XG addresses this), the differences in guitar chart design, the lack of Western songs (then again, when the series is primarily Asia-only, this is inevitable), and songs being cut down to 2 1/4 minutes or less (due to the game offering 3-5 stages per credit).
• Contested Sequel: GITADORA (2013) due to the removal of the second guitar, making the GuitarFreaks side of the game single-player only.
  • This is only on new cabinets though. Upgrade kits for XG cabinets exist, and still allow 2 guitar players.
• Difficulty Spike: The first GuitarFreaks had a relatively noticeable one for beginners by nature of not having many songs, and also not allowing players to play a song more than once per credit. After most likely playing "Cutie pie" and "Chicago Blue", the player had to select from the much tougher and faster remaining four songs as their final stage.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Guitar Hero when that first came out, unsurprisingly. This has largely died down as fans have come to the conclusion that both games are meant to serve not only different geographical demographics but also different types of players (Guitar Hero is designed more around simulating The Rockstar experience and for relatively casual fun, while GITADORA better suits competitive/score-minded players), and because Guitar Hero as well as its Creator-Driven Successor Rock Band ended up fading out of mainstream attention anyway, while GITADORA continues to have a thriving player base in Japan.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • Its not as bad as Beatmania's difficulty curve, but songs have been getting harder as time goes by, especially on drums (and especially drums on XG).
  • XG introduces two additional fret buttons a la Guitar Hero and Rock Band, two more drums, and one more bass pedal, resulting in a more difficult experience all across the board.
• That One Boss:
  • "DAY DREAM", no, check that, anything with "MODEL DD(number)" in its title.
  • Downplayed with "Through The Fire And Flames". While it is quite hard on all instruments, so are many other songs in the game, so it loses some of its crap-your-pants factor.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Initial reaction to the changes to guitar play on XG, because no matter how dissimilar it is (they still don't have hammer-ons and pull-offs, and they did not change to an angled note track either), any guitar game with five buttons is a Guitar Hero rip-off.
  • And then XG 3 toyed around with having a 3D stage and customizable (but still chibi) avatars. They promptly vanished on the next version.
• Underused Game Mechanic: If GuitarFreaks 5th MIX and drummania 4th MIX are linked up with Keyboardmania 3rd MIX, or GF 6th and dm 5th with that same Keyboardmania game, players can enjoy a Super Session game with up to 5 players (2 on GF, 1 on dm, 2 on KBM). Unfortunately, this ends up being Awesome, but Impractical because only 11 songs are available for this mode.

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