I'm a First-Time Player!

What Difficulty Should I Play?

What's your background with rhythm games?

If you haven't touched a single rhythm game before or have only played things super casually, start with Basic!
If you've played rhythm games before, whether it's DDR groovin' to Butterfly or you're kinning and hearing the bells toll in Project Sekai, start with Advanced! Set your speed between 3.0, the recommend speed for Advanced, to 4.5.
If you have high fundamentals and excel in rhythm games like WACCA, Arcaea, or osu!, you should try the hardest Advanced charts or play Experts around Level 10! Set your speed to 3.0 - 4.5.

Stick with newer songs! Open up the Recommended folder or either the POPS&ANIME folder or niconico&Vocaloid! Then pick a song with a comfy BPM or something you recognize!
Don't try to pick songs at the end of the folder. Those older songs have harder difficulty curves.

Slides consists of two components: the star note and the slide itself. The star is a tap note and is graded as such. It's important to ALWAYS treat it as a tap. After you tap, the slide will begin moving one beat later.
You'll notice that the star is rotating as it comes in. The speed of the rotation determines how fast the slide will go. A star spinning fast like a shuriken means the slide will usually finish in 1 beat as well. So if you imagine 4 beats per measure, you can treat it like: "Tap. SLIDE. Tap. SLIDE." With each SLIDE completing the whole thing.
You'll sometimes notice that there are slides that follow each other one after the other. These back-to-back slides are very important to sync properly! The idea is that after you initially tap the first star note, you are sliding one beat later, which will, at the same time, also hit the next star note. Visualizing it as 4 beats per measure, this goes "Tap. SLIDE. SLIDE. SLIDE." Remember that all these sequences require WAITING one beat after tapping the first star note!!!
Your general goal is to try shooting up to Expert 12, where the game will start introducing multitasking with slides a bit more.

Look for MASTERS with the Note Designer 緑風犬三郎. These MASTER charts are designed for players who are getting into the MASTER difficulty after they've learned how to S-Rank Level 12 Experts or better.
Avoid the end of the folder and suspiciously low Masters. These are old charts and not rated correctly. Stick to the newer versions if possible.
You should be comfortable throughout Level 12+ and Level 13 Experts. In turn, this should let you play Level 12 and Level 12+ Masters.