GLORIA

GLORIA first appeared in Pump It Up XX, in version 2.07, as part of the World Music channel. The visuals were handled by Sierra (illustration) and BlueTail (BGA). The release had a small hiccup: the BGA was pulled shortly after going live because a nun's hand pose in the middle section was starting to stir controversy in the community. BlueTail quickly retouched the hand and re-posted the video, so the matter never blew up. As a footnote, the original draft credited the illustrator in the opening, but that credit was removed in the revised version.

Every chart is the work of CONRAD. On S17, the centerpiece is a bounce-hit trill in the drum section. Players who have just reached this level often freeze up the first time they see it and get broken off on the spot. Even if they scrape past it, an intensified ending follows, so pacing your stamina is essential. That said, once the pattern is known it sits among the easier S17s. S23 shares its gimmick with the Final Audition Episode 2-X chart. The opening and middle are manageable with some double-stepping, but watch out for the hold note plus double-step burst in the mid-to-late section. The finish is a 245 BPM run that demands very fast feet, whether you hit it cleanly or smudge through it.

D16 uses only the four center panels, much like the D16 of Innocence. D18 shifts toward weight-shifting twists and serves as a textbook chart for practicing that skill. D21 is built around Half-Double double-steps, and the red-note double-steps in the closing stretch are tricky to read. D25 takes the S23 finishing run into Double as a smudgeable burst that flows into a Half and weight-shift run. When it first dropped, many expected a D25-D26, so its release as D24 sparked plenty of debate; CONRAD himself is said to have submitted it as a level 25. Once smudge routes were studied and players actually ran it, the consensus became 'tough, but a correct D24' on a break-on basis. It was eventually bumped up to D25 in PHOENIX.