I did Core2k in standard order and aside from steps 3-5 (which were, I swear to God, 95% business Japanese) it was fairly straight forward. However, I already knew 70% of the deck, so that of course made things a touch easier.

After finishing RTK I'm moving into Core6k now. I see why people like the optimized decks. I've had sentences where literally every non-grammar term is a new word to me (five being the record). However, with RTK under my belt I've been going slow and steady. I write out the most difficult sentences in their entirety, I write out nearly every new term that isn't stupidly easy, and although I'm only 400 cards in, I've already seen ~200 new words.

Retention hasn't really been suffering (thanks Heisig), and my main motivation is that although it's pretty difficult now, it'll be much easier later when these words come up again and I'm already familiar with them. If most of the filler words in these early example sentences turn out to be vocabulary later, it seems like once I break through this wall of new words I'll come out the other side swinging and hit the finish line at a sprint. I hope.

Has anybody else tried going all the way through in standard order?