Improving Guide: From Easy to Extreme

A (not so) small guide to help you improve at the game, diving first into the basics and then into technical stuff.

(Quick) introduction

Improving at rhythm games is a long and arduous task, and in Taiko no Tatsujin’s case it’s very common to feel stuck at certain levels. In order to help a bit in this regard I want to talk about this topic in a quite extensive manner (trying to keep this very user friendly) going first into the basics and later diving into more technical stuff.

This guide was originally made for a video I participated on alongside other Taiko creators. Please check the video here (it's also a very good guide to get into the game):

Basics

The game consists of playing different notes to the rhythm of the music, each one associated with a sound made by a Taiko drum. I’ll briefly go into them in a rapid fashion:



This is a DON, it makes a soft and deep sound and you need to hit the center of the drum.



This is a KA, it makes a hard and dry sound and you need to hit the rim of the drum.



This is a DRUMROLL, hit don or ka rapidly to get a ton of points for the duration of the note.



This is a BALLOON, a number pops up and determines how many don it needs in order to explode under a certain amount of time.


These are BIG NOTES, they behave exactly as small notes but if you hit them with both sides of the drum it gives more points.




This is a Mallet, essencially a reskin of the balloon.




There are more types of notes that usually appear in other console games but I don’t think I need to go into detail about them, I just feel the need to mention it so you don't get confused if you play any other game in the franchise and some strange note appear. They are usually a reskin of the balloon or some weird gimmick.

The combination of those notes on a song is called a CHART and the difficulty of said chart is sorted in the game by STARS. The game has four difficulty options, from easiest to hardest: EASY, NORMAL, HARD and EXTREME (KANTAN, FUTSUU, MUZUKASHII and ONI in japanese, last one meaning “demon” in japanese) and a hidden / special one which is a variant of the extreme version, usually harder than the regular one, known as URA ONI (meaning “deeper” or “inner” Oni). Note that not every song has a Ura Oni difficulty available.




Kantan, Futsuu, Muzukashii, Oni & Ura Oni.
For practical purposes I’ll use the Japanese names for the rest of the document


The playstyle can be very different depending on how you are playing: classic controllers, keyboard or tatacons. This document focuses on tatacon / arcade play (tatacon being the name given to the Hori Drum available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and others), if you play with another type of control this guide will also be useful, just try to interpolate the information to your preferred playstyle.

It's also noteworthy that this game for some reason doesn't let you use your Hori tatacon by default, but worry not there's another guide that helps with that and you can find right here.

Improving at lower levels

To be totally honest from kantan to futsuu there’s not much to say, just get used to the game; play your first songs, get used to the timing, the soul gauge and the crowns, check the song list and see if something catches your attention, and just play till you get comfy. Kantan is made for you to learn the basics, and futsuu is made for you to start improving on a base level.

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Futsuu is a difficulty which is really good to practice when you’re new at the game, and where some basic mechanics start to appear. The hardest Futsuu songs are usually where you’re gonna spend some time challenging yourself to get better, introducing basic patterns and faster songs. I strongly recommend new players to try playing using both hands from the start. It’s very common to feel comfortable playing with just the dominant one because it’s more intuitive and easy to follow the notes that way, but loosening the hands and feeling the rhythm with both of them is the base to improve later on.

On another note, I’d like to mention that although the game is about taiko drums and such, a lot of the charts DON’T NECESSARILY FOLLOW THE DRUMS OF THE SONG, this may seem very weird but I’ve seen some people (usually drummers) very confused with the way the game charts its songs. Sometimes the chart follows the vocals, sometimes it follows some sounds, and sometimes it follows the drums. So if you feel that the chart “doesn't match how the drum goes in the song”, try following the vocals or hearing the song in its entirety.

Muzukashii is next and a ton of players feel a large gap between this difficulty and futsuu, performing way worse and feeling overwhelmed by the amount of notes and speed the game is throwing at them. This difficulty is all about understanding the patterns and learning how to do them correctly, while also getting better with timing and reading the chart which refers to processing the information the game is giving to you. Speaking of patterns, have you noticed how certain notes appear in the same manner in different songs? If not, Muzukashii it’s gonna be where you’re gonna learn about patterns.


ㅤㅤDo Do KaㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤKa Do DoㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤDo Do DonㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤKa Ka Kat

Notes arranged in a certain way in the chart is called a “pattern”, and here are some examples. The thing about them is that the game revolves around it, repeating the same ones over and over across the different songs, and learning how to play them with ease is the key to getting better. You’re gonna come across the same “Do do don” pattern several times, but the more you play the easier it’s gonna be for you to recognize it and hit the notes successfully. A thing that comes along with this is the “Hand Switching” but that’s something that I’m going to explain later, for now try to recognize them and use both hands to play.

The more you play, the easier it's gonna be for you to recognize notes faster and hit them without missing or feeling lost while more notes fly through the screen, that’s “chart reading”, and the more patterns you learn to play correctly the better your chart reading is going to be. Put everything you learned here into action and sooner than later you’re gonna dominate Muzukashii.

On a final note about this difficulty: although the game revolves around patterns and chart reading, the key to all of this is patience, nothing is learned in a rush and improvement doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Play at your own pace, have fun with the songs the game offers and improve step by step. This holds true now and even more with the next difficulty, so don’t give up!

Entering Oni

Kantan welcomes you to the game, Futsuu is to get used to it, Muzukashii is when the game challenges you to get better, and Oni is the peak of your learning curve. Very similar to the gap between Futsuu and Muzukashii, Oni is on another level compared to everything you have played so far, and the game expects you to fully understand the mechanics and chart reading. Although the lower levels of Oni are very similar to the previous difficulty (if not easier at 1 or 2 stars) it soon gets very complicated and strict, so be ready for another set of grinding and practicing before you get used to what the game is throwing at you.

For this difficulty you MUST learn patterns and hand switching, these are the base for all songs in Oni and the better you’re at it the faster you’re going to improve, so because we have already talked about patterns let’s dive into Hand Switching.

Hand Switching makes use of both hands to play patterns in an optimal way, optimizing stamina and improving the flow of your play, easing the different notes of the chart so you don’t get stuck mid play. Let’s take for example the following pattern:


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Here are four “Do Do Don” patterns, one after the other. If you have been playing only with your dominant hand so far this series of patterns in a slow song should be possible to play it, but when you face it on a fast or tricky song it’s gonna annihilate your combo and even your flow with the chart. Based on that, the optimal way to play it it’s the following:

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ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤLeft - Right - Leftㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ Right - Left - Right


You can start with either left or right, but the main thing here is to always intercalate your hands. At the beginning it sure is weird to play that way, your hands will get confused and lose some notes, but in the end it’s key to master this. All patterns follow the same concept (or vice versa if you’re left handed):


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Something that I’ve been saying a lot in this section is Stamina, but how does it affect gameplay? It basically determines how much you can play without getting tired. It doesn’t matter if you’re amazing at chart reading or pattern recognition, if you get tired in the middle of the song, it’s over. Sadly, with this the only solution is to play a lot and develop some stamina on your arms, so get on it!

Also, another thing to note with this topic is the bachi you're playing with. If it’s not in very good condition, play with too much force or it’s not a bachi suited for play you may get blisters in your fingers, so keep this in mind and don’t force yourself too much.

Now that we have fully talked about patterns and stamina, we can touch on something called Note Streams, which is gonna put both of those things in practice. In short, a note stream is a large number of notes clustered together in a determined section. At first they’re gonna be very intimidating but using our previous knowledge we can clear them easily. Take the following example:


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This large amount of notes in such a short time can be very intimidating and may take you by surprise, but if you look closely you’ll see that this large note stream can be separated in small parts:

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That way you end up with three patterns, which are way easier to follow and you probably have already seen them in other songs, in fact I have already shown them in the hand switching section. A good pattern recognition and chart reading makes note streams a walk in the park.

To finish this section I’d recommend you to slowly increase the difficulty of the charts you’re playing. Find a good starting point, one that makes you feel in control when you’re playing and you have no trouble clearing (say for example Oni 5 stars) and then slowly go one step above; try some Oni 6 stars and check how you perform, take notes on the things you struggle most and improve on those mistakes, some games even have a “practice mode” included (Rhythm Festival, the newest entry in the franchise have one for example) so use that to your advantage. Also, if possible try to build good accuracy, it’s gonna be helpful to your overall sense of rhythm, and speaking of which try to always use your hearing when playing. A common mistake is to rely too much on your eyes when clearing songs, this is a RHYTHM GAME so make use of the rhythm to play. Eventually you’ll be dominating songs that seemed impossible at first, and soon you’ll be challenging the hardest songs in the game, at this point on I only have some final tips to give you in the next section.

Technical Tips

Most topics have already been covered at its full extent, but there’s still a couple of things that will help you rack up more points and improve the way you play at the highest levels, starting with the drumroll. So far the drumroll hasn't been much of an interest for us, but there’s a neat trick which is gonna help you get the most out of them and also it’s gonna come in handy to improve the way you play: the “Double Stroke”.

How do you perform the drumrolls? You probably hit the drum once with each bachi alternating each hand, which is not bad but can be better. If you grab the bachi firmly at the bottom with your fingers, letting the tip bounce on the surface of the drum you’re gonna let it roll twice (or even more) on every hit, that’s the basis of the Double Stroke. By letting the bachi bounce firmly on the surface instead of hitting once each time you can perform drumrolls easier, faster and consume less stamina, and with some practice you can even control the amount of bounces it does on the drum, which can change and even improve the way you play some patterns in the long run.


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Remember this pattern? You probably play it alternating each hand like this:


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ㅤRight - Left - Right


By using Double Stroke, you can play the same pattern like this:


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Right - Right (Double Stroke) - Left


That way you can perform the pattern way faster, which helps a lot in those pesky Oni 10 Stars with a ton of notes. This requires a lot of practice and some players may not be interested in learning it because it breaks the basic structure of playing patterns and can be quite hard to manage , but I want to cover it anyway so you can try it and judge for yourself. If my explanation it’s not that clear I suggest you watch videos of players doing this and analyze them (you can usually find high level players doing this on high level songs), also note that this can only be achieved consistently if your drum is sensitive enough (so unmodded Hori drums are discarded right away).

Double stroke can help you get score more efficiently with drumrolls, but at the same time how does score work in this game? Well, let’s talk a bit about them.
In the franchise you can find two score systems: Combo & Accuracy. The Combo system gives you more score the bigger your combo count is, so getting a Full Combo usually gives you more points than getting a better accuracy and failing a couple notes in the song. The Accuracy system on the other hand rewards good accuracy (hence the name) with more score, capping at 1 million points with a perfect accuracy, so if you miss a couple notes but get a good accuracy you usually end up with a good score nonetheless. Personally I recommend playing with the accuracy system, it’s the one that’s used in arcade and the most modern one (in Rhythm Festival, Shin-Uchi it’s the equivalent of this score system).

And finally, a good thing to do if you feel like you need a goal in order to improve is to challenge the Dan-i Dojo. This is a gamemode unique to arcade in which you need to clear two to three songs under certain conditions to get a title, said conditions usually being to clear them under a certain amount of misses, under a certain amount of “ok” notes or getting a certain amount of drumroll. The Dojo offers 19 different courses: from easiest to hardest we have Fifth to First Kyu, First to Tenth Dan, Kurouto, Meijin, Choujin and Tatsujin, the five kyus being the introduction of the Dojo and having songs in Muzukashii and Oni, and the rest of them having all songs in Oni and Ura Oni. This gamemode is really good to measure your level and to set a goal, challenging you to improve your game and your accuracy in order to clear them. If you don’t have an arcade in your country you can always check the songs and clear conditions on Youtube or somewhere else, so you too can try to beat them from your home. (I cleared the 8th Dan and the 9th Dan surpassed me by very little, good luck in your journey!)

Final Comments

Everything in this game revolves around patterns, chart reading, stamina, and patience. Take your time and go step by step, your body and your mind need to build up to develop a great sense of rhythm. I personally feel that Taiko can have large gaps between difficulties which usually end up overwhelming people, so just take it easy and most importantly have fun.

It's been a while since I last wrote this much about Taiko, it’s been fun remembering everything that helped me improve at the game. I hope this helps you in some way to get better, this is such an important game for me so I really wish you too can have fun while playing.

Interesting Stuff related to this:

• Taiko Time Blog
  https://taikotime.blogspot.com
  
  
• Taiko Time Blog 𝕏 (Twitter)
  https://x.com/taikotimeblog
  
  
• Official Taiko no Tatsujin 𝕏 (Twitter)
  https://x.com/taiko_en
  
  
• Check my stuff too, I make content related to the game in a variety of platforms
  https://linktr.ee/lochag

Speaking of which:

Interesting Taiko Content Creators

• Kevin_202
  https://www.youtube.com/@Kev2o2
  
  
• Latioslife
  https://www.youtube.com/@Latioslife
  
  
• Jaymin
  https://www.youtube.com/@jaytaiko
  
  
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[TFD500]

Very good guide, Locha <3

[red_uwu]

very good guide! will definitely recommend this to newcomers!

[Sinory]

Man, the long streaks of notes are my biggest problems, I gotta find a few charts that have them and practice them a LOT. NS2's practice mode is just too good to not use to improve!

[Yuuuuuuuuuu]

Long time player here, very good guide!
I'd like to emphasize on the having fun (and don't get too frustrated over the game) part, because as corny as it sounds it's a mindset that plays an incredibly important role in your improvement on this and every other rhythm game in general.
Good luck everyone!

[Lutroooo]

Best guide ever