I love how visually dense this game is, notes flying all over the screen from any possible direction whilst in the background flashy music videos featuring Miku herself play, and yet how the game manages to clearly communicate itself despite this visual density; the notes moving towards their respective pads, spinning clocks on the pads ticking down to the moment you need to press the corresponding button, distances between these pads indicating roughly how big the gaps will be between the notes in the song, and the beat of the music itself, all serve to provide information as to when exactly you're going to have to press those buttons, every single element of this a necessary part of the equation at some point but which indicators are the right ones to rely on in any particular moment is very contextual, depending on exactly which part of this informational cacophony is going to be the easiest bit to parse, something that you have to be able to instinctively adjust to moment-to-moment.
I also love how you can play notes on either side of the controller. The notes presented on-screen will always describe a specific button on a specific side of the controller, and typically act as solid suggestions for how you should be doing things, but the two sides of the controller itself are functionally identical when it comes to these inputs so once you get comfortable with the controls it starts to make sense to shift notes from one side to the other, ignoring what the game says and turning that triangle note into an up note for example, in moments where it makes things easier for you. Eventually this becomes so second nature that you stop seeing that triangle note as a triangle note in the first place as you freely flow back and forth from side to side; it's a really satisfying way for the game to work mechanically, and that evolution with how you approach and see it is a lot of fun to go through.
So mechanically this game is incredibly sound and among the better rhythm games I've encountered. Despite that I found myself falling off of Project Diva Future Tone quite fast? Part of the problem is a thing I often struggle at with arcade-y videogames which is that I don't find seeking a higher score particularly motivating, and when there's nothing resembling a campaign mode to work through then that's all there really is to do here; try and get better, complete higher difficulties and get those higher scores whilst doing essentially the same thing over and over. It's not really for me. I also say this as someone who has only a passing familiarity with Hatsune Miku, and who hasn't really listened to said music in several years, but I wish the song list here was more aggressively curated. There's over 200 songs here, and some of them are great, but there's also a lot of stuff that reads as filler to my unfamiliar ears and at times this can lead to the experience of playing this game turning into a bit of a blur for me. All of this means that despite my strong initial impressions of Project Diva Future Tone I just haven't played that much of it and struggle to imagine playing that much more.
I also love how you can play notes on either side of the controller. The notes presented on-screen will always describe a specific button on a specific side of the controller, and typically act as solid suggestions for how you should be doing things, but the two sides of the controller itself are functionally identical when it comes to these inputs so once you get comfortable with the controls it starts to make sense to shift notes from one side to the other, ignoring what the game says and turning that triangle note into an up note for example, in moments where it makes things easier for you. Eventually this becomes so second nature that you stop seeing that triangle note as a triangle note in the first place as you freely flow back and forth from side to side; it's a really satisfying way for the game to work mechanically, and that evolution with how you approach and see it is a lot of fun to go through.
So mechanically this game is incredibly sound and among the better rhythm games I've encountered. Despite that I found myself falling off of Project Diva Future Tone quite fast? Part of the problem is a thing I often struggle at with arcade-y videogames which is that I don't find seeking a higher score particularly motivating, and when there's nothing resembling a campaign mode to work through then that's all there really is to do here; try and get better, complete higher difficulties and get those higher scores whilst doing essentially the same thing over and over. It's not really for me. I also say this as someone who has only a passing familiarity with Hatsune Miku, and who hasn't really listened to said music in several years, but I wish the song list here was more aggressively curated. There's over 200 songs here, and some of them are great, but there's also a lot of stuff that reads as filler to my unfamiliar ears and at times this can lead to the experience of playing this game turning into a bit of a blur for me. All of this means that despite my strong initial impressions of Project Diva Future Tone I just haven't played that much of it and struggle to imagine playing that much more.