Well then, if that's the case then I imagine this game will win a bunch of "easiest to learn, toughest to master" awards .  The gameplay is simple enough, but there's SO much to do that it's honestly overwhelming even to a dude who loves his rhythm games (Rock Band and Guitar Hero remain mainstays here, I loved amplitude and frequency, DDR was even awesome for a while, never played Ouendan though)

I just passed The Decisive Battle on the Ultimate difficulty with a C. lol

I noticed something about this game. I've been doing the Chaos Shrine a lot recently, and I got to my 30th dark note. I am starting to see that the Chaos Shrine is becoming harder than "Ultimate" difficulty.

I have to say, this game has made a believer out of me! when I first saw it, I thought it looked dumb, then I watched gameplay and thought it sounded dumb, and I felt that adding RPG elements was a dumb idea.

then I actually played it at E3!

I just finished my 60'th Dark Note, I've got all the songs unlocked in challenge mode save the encore songs, I've done about half the game in expert mode and have played some of my favorites in ultimate mode (getting S-rank in some of them) and I have to say I'm in love with it! Can't wait to write the review. If anyone has any input, I'd love to hear it!

Just be sure to mention how opaque the game can be about its processes.

Have you come across any dark notes where the notes move faster than ultimate mode with spinning notes?  That's how my 30th dark note was and I failed it many times before I passed it.

what do you mean by that? 

Spinning notes?  no.  I'm up to 60 on the dark notes, and I haven't encountered any spinning notes. 

Remember how hard it was to figure out how the RPG elements worked, what dark notes were, etc?

Oh yeah, I'm not sure if you guys already knew this but you can get a stoic bonus for having no items or abilities equipped when you clear a stage. The bonus is 2,000,000 points and that's how you achieve scores like SS and SSS.