Russia vs United Kingdom · Round of 16

I did NOT expect the brass hitsounds LOL but I enjoy them! They put an interesting spin to the song, although volume overall probably needs balancing because at times the hs feel way too strong and overpowering for the song Patterning seems generally solid considering the kinda free-flow style it's going for, although I think some of the rhythm choices are a bit weird (00:43:434 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8) - stood out to me) 01:11:855 (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,1) - very cool unwinding/expansion of the patterning here, matches the song well 02:31:391 (1) - fire slider Very cool entry overall!!

Hmm, I enjoy some of the variety of rhythm displayed here, but the entry in general feels a bit unpolished, especially considering the hitsounds that feel straight up unfinished. Emphasis feels also all over the place, at times it's fine where as in other cases you get jumpscares like 00:59:964 (1,2,1,2,1,2,3) - lol I think the entry plays well otherwise, but it needed some more time in the oven

I really like how fun the custom hitsound samples are in this entry. The cultural theme is clear and really well done. I especially like the different stages of the branch and the sky lanterns. Several rhythm choices seem really strange (e.g. 00:10:802 - 1/3 spam, even if it looks cool; 02:14:486 (3), etc. - applying the hitsound that represents the 1/4 sound on a 1/6 object) or even just wrong (02:07:907 (1,2,3,4,5,6); 01:41:706 (1,2)) which really hurts my impression of the map, but overall I think the map is strong.

There isn't much inherently bad about this entry, but it misses the mark and can't quite meet the standards of quality and creativity that the other entries have set. The visuals are pretty much as simple as they can be. The combo colors are default. The hitsounding is essentially default (which is not necessarily an issue when done in an interesting way, but I mention it because the whole presentation of this entry is default). Some rhythm choices were inconsistent or even incorrectly snapped in a few instances. Based on the few custom hitsounds that are there, I wonder if maybe there were ambitions that didn't get realized, but I respect the mappers for doing what they could.

This one was a tough one for me to judge, on one hand the expertise is clearly there but throughout the whole entry it ends up feeling a bit too safe in comparison to the other one especially in sections like the kiais with patterns like 01:54:091 (3,4,5) - and 01:56:854 (1,2) - feeling like filler in regards to flow and intensity. Also theres quite a lot of unsnapped notes or notes with incorrect snapping such as 01:41:706 (1,2) - 00:56:066 (1) - 00:56:312 (3) - 01:01:789 (2) - , While i believe that these shouldnt affect the result (and usually wouldnt bring it up) with the hitsounding having active click sounds on every object it is notable that these do subtract from the map, just know that this didnt change my decision here its just something that is worth mentioning.

This map was by far the most interesting entry to me (and personally my favourite with how extremely well executed this map is), the flow throughout the whole map feels really creative and unique with climax patterns like 00:27:941 (1,2,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,2) - 02:07:512 (5,1,1,2,1) - really standing out, although 00:40:572 (2,3,4,5) - this feels a bit too much, the section at 01:33:170 (1) - is also a standout as the stop-start motion is done extremely well, the kiai parts are also very interesting with the use of 1/4 patterning and at no point in this map does anything feel uninspired or filler. While this entry does lack things like complex hitsounding i dont think thats a negative in this specific case as it more than makes up for it in how interesting the map design is overall, might be a crazy choice but this one wins for me

Yeah I like this hitsounding style. Also, the map is nice and oddly, the chosen style with the curved shapes works excellently. It added so much variations to the map and also allowed to prepare the kiai as a counterpart to the rest of the map as its being mapped on a more clean and organized style which clearly fits the song. Kudos.

There's not much to say about this one, there's a clear limitation of creativity and experience that doesn't allow for anything special enough to vitalize the map. I wouldn't be surprised if you were running low on time and had to cook something.

No matter how many gimmicks and bells and whistles you add to an ineffective map, the map remains ineffective. Fortunately, this is not an ineffective map. Where other maps of this song have struggled with excessive density and spacing not giving the mappers headroom to make the rest of the map correspond effectively with what's going on in the music, this map has exercised remarkable restraint. This is probably too simplistic of an approach to succeed in later rounds, but here, it delivers a clean, effective victory, winning in much the same style as Luigi.

Visuals here are quite basic, which wouldn't be a big deal at all if the map had much of anything else going for it. As strong as I have no doubt this team is, all that matters is how you show up on the day, and in this case, the team has shown up on the day appearing to have rushed a map that doesn't deliver much of an opportunity for me to speak positively of it.

The map went completely opposite direction of the opposing team in terms of artistry. And I think sacrificed movement a great deal in the process too. While trying out a lot of different patternings throughout the map, I feel the map fails a bit to state some clear identity it is going for. Some sections would use 00:34:750 (1,2,3,4) - very wiggly shapes, then right after in the kiai the shaping becomes more tame. Similarly, 1:33 goes for artistry and tries out different shaping combinations, then main chorus comes back around to mostly simple visual style with a flower shaped slider used here and trere. 2:11 is quite bizarre to me, especially whole 2:14 part because I don't understand why would the visual shift be this drastic, given similar musically section at 1:04 had completely different treatment. Both maps tried to lean into one overall goal and both had a bunch of mistakes on the way, however, while other entry's strange parts are mostly specific pattern notes within an overall consistent experience, this map I think failed in few sections to deliver a theme coherent with rest of the map.

This entry focuses a lot on the movement, opting into simpler visual style to focus on that, which is totally fine and probably what helped the map greatly. Map tries to play around a lot with very quick movement and stops, or coming around to object starts over and over for pattern progression. And at times it does so very well 00:27:645 (1,1,2,3,1,1,1,1,1,1) - 00:46:592 (1,2,1,2,3,4,5,6,1,1,2,3,4,1,2,1) - 00:57:941 (5,6,7,8,1,1) - 01:05:539 (1,2,3,4,5,6,1) - 01:35:538 (1,2,3,4,5,1) - 02:04:551 (1,2,3,4). But the execution at times also feels quite messy, like 01:37:249 (1,2,3) - if following every other same part of the song, 3 should have been a slider here, making it a circle messes up with the emphasis quite a lot and I think misplaces it. 00:20:934 (1,2,1,2,1) - while I understand the intent, think when you got sounds this strong this pattern does little to highlight them. 01:11:855 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) - this seems to be attempting similar emphasis to the other patterns, but I think movement is too boring making it not feel nearly as impactful. 01:55:275 (1,2) - given that 2 was hsed as a finish I assume emphasis was also supposed to fall there, but as the slider overlaps directly over the previous this just doesn't really do anything for emphasis, at least because rest of kiai uses rapid movement for it. While the map has a bunch of little things I want to note, the overall experience is still there and it delivers *enough* compared to the other entry, making this my pick by the slightest of margins.

nice hs samples, map definitely has more complex visual style and is very expressive, think it reflects the song just as fine and has some fun sv usage too, tho overal feels slightly less polished, 00:43:434 - cool repeating cloud patterns; think this map is more memorable due to having more unique visuals and some repeating elements so i'd go with it

map follows the song pretty faithfully but with a more simple visual style, could say tho it handles movement and manipulates sv for extra song expression very well, nice atmospheric sound effects but why is it all on 100% volume, overall it does feel more like a very good-on-mapping-skill map of an older style that u'd see in ranked