Hatsune Miku: Project Diva has the beginnings of a good rhythm game, but has some hiccups here and there that bring the experience down a whole lot. The game has a fantastic core that is both well-designed and very fun. However, getting to really delve into the core requires way too much effort and quite literally the credits roll before you can enjoy your richer depth. The game is designed as a love letter to Hatsune Miku and her fans, leading to many extra features and functions specifically for fan service, all of which are great. But because of such a great plethora of fan service for Miku, the other Vocaloids are barely present and so little was done to give them anything in this title.
In Project Diva, there are three levels of difficulty on each chart: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Each difficulty changes the amount of buttons required and the overall complexity of the chart itself. Easy features one button, Medium has two, and Hard requires all four main buttons. Those buttons are X, Circle, Triangle, and Square. Outside of those four buttons, no other buttons are required or possible to use during play. The rhythm element is presented like this: an outline for a note will appear on the screen along with a clock hand that turns to the pace of the song. The note corresponds to one of the four buttons which will begin to fly in from off-screen to meet up with the note outline. During this travel time, the clock hand will turn exactly 360 degrees clockwise, at which point the outline and note will exactly match. Once said note and the outline overlap, you press the corresponding button to clear said note from the screen, the better the timing, the better the score. The differing timings that you can press lead to different rhythm-based results. A Cool or Fine are the only two that increase the player's score and continue a combo. A Safe does not contribute to combo nor increase score, but you don't lose health from hitting one. A Bad or a Miss will cause the player to lose health, losing all of your health means you fail the song and have to start over. Depending on how well you do during a song there are three different grades you can get. A Standard is for a pass that is significantly shit for lack of a better word. A Great is for hitting a majority of notes with Cools and Fines but not quite a Perfect run. And a Perfect, which means hitting every single note with a Cool or a Fine. Or at least, in theory, that's how it should work, but the difference between a Standard and a Great is actually based on the player's ending score.
This is the first big issue with Project Diva, under normal circumstances being score-based for grading wouldn't make a difference unless the game had some sort of combo-based scoring. Which under normal circumstances, it doesn't. Scoring is primarily based on the player's accuracy. However, this all goes out the window with the game's strangest addition: Chance Time. Chance Time appears in every single song and for only that period of the song does the game change to a combo-scoring-based system, where the more consecutive notes you hit with a combo, the higher the score count for each note, capping out at 5000 per note. This SUCKS. Every run of a song ends up being mindless nothing until the Chance Time where you have to be as precise as possible if you want a Great rating. This means you could be pretty damn shit before Chance Time and recover everything too. There's also the problem that the moment Chance Time begins you can no longer see what your note accuracy is. Somehow this made it through!? You see, each note you hit is given the accuracy of during play, but only in the bottom right corner of the screen, completely away from the gameplay. That's already an issue in of itself, but once Chance Time starts, an overlay appears not letting the player see the accuracy, their health, or their score. Why the fuck was this done? I wish I knew...
Unfortunately, that isn't the only issue, but this next one has some layers to unpack. To unlock a song, you must first beat the previous song on the list (with minor exceptions). But when you get a song, you only have access to the Easy and Normal versions of said songs. To unlock Hard difficulty on a song you must beat the song on Normal at least once. So if you want access to all of the songs, you have to beat all of the songs on Normal first. Then this unlocks all of the hard versions of said songs with it. That doesn't sound bad at first, but remember that Normal only uses two of the four buttons during play. Without being able to touch Hard difficulty, the player is forced to play a significantly less interesting version of the game they could be playing. While the charting between Normal and Hard is relatively similar, they aren't the same, so not only is the difficulty reduced, but so is the overall button complexity. For someone entirely new, this might not seem that big a deal, but when you can only hit buttons with a single thumb and there are exactly two buttons to choose from, the game is not nearly as fun as it could be. I sorely wish I could be doing something with my other hand or maybe even other fingers but I really can't.
Before getting to the last bad thing, let's talk about something good: Chart complexity. Project Diva has a pretty decent selection of charts all with their own unique quirks and identities. This coupled with the game's innate unique rhythm experience leads to a match made in heaven. Notes can fly in on top of each other, from opposite directions, all around if they so please. The speed at which the notes travel can be heavily decreased or increased to match the chosen pace of the song. The note outlines can be placed literally anywhere on the screen, including on top of other note outlines. Hell, some charts even begin at a slower pace and then change midway through the chart. The possibilities are staggering and it leads to a mountain of fun to be had regardless of whether or not you like the song which is usually the biggest issue in a rhythm game.
Now, lastly, the lack of diversity. Hatsune Miku is just about the only singer in this game. Now this would've been more understandable if not for the fact that there do indeed exist optional outfits you can unlock that are the models of different Vocaloids. Kagamin Rin and Len, Megurine Luka, Kaito, Meiko, Yowana Haku, and Akita Neru. Out of these characters, two have two songs each, both of which are literally repeats of existing songs. The exact same chart, PV, and model movement, just a different singer. And to unlock these optional different voiced charts (which are counted as different songs mind you) you have to beat the original chart multiple times over. Three times to be exact. This seriously sucks because it clearly shows that this is simply a Miku game. I would be remiss to not mention that, yes, DLC did release after that came with new tracks specifically based on the other Vocaloids, but those aren't in the base game so, not in my house. If they wanted to include them later as completely DLC instead of having the models in-game locked behind arbitrary requirements with a paltry showing of songs to listen to from them, then that would've made more sense. What we have currently is just stupid.
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva is right on the cusp of being a great rhythm game, but this title makes major mistakes that take the experience way down. Gameplay is incredibly fun, and all of the nods to the fans are fantastic, but it just needs more time in the oven. With a little finetuning and maybe some parts completely removed, this little rhythm game could hit it real big.
In Project Diva, there are three levels of difficulty on each chart: Easy, Medium, and Hard. Each difficulty changes the amount of buttons required and the overall complexity of the chart itself. Easy features one button, Medium has two, and Hard requires all four main buttons. Those buttons are X, Circle, Triangle, and Square. Outside of those four buttons, no other buttons are required or possible to use during play. The rhythm element is presented like this: an outline for a note will appear on the screen along with a clock hand that turns to the pace of the song. The note corresponds to one of the four buttons which will begin to fly in from off-screen to meet up with the note outline. During this travel time, the clock hand will turn exactly 360 degrees clockwise, at which point the outline and note will exactly match. Once said note and the outline overlap, you press the corresponding button to clear said note from the screen, the better the timing, the better the score. The differing timings that you can press lead to different rhythm-based results. A Cool or Fine are the only two that increase the player's score and continue a combo. A Safe does not contribute to combo nor increase score, but you don't lose health from hitting one. A Bad or a Miss will cause the player to lose health, losing all of your health means you fail the song and have to start over. Depending on how well you do during a song there are three different grades you can get. A Standard is for a pass that is significantly shit for lack of a better word. A Great is for hitting a majority of notes with Cools and Fines but not quite a Perfect run. And a Perfect, which means hitting every single note with a Cool or a Fine. Or at least, in theory, that's how it should work, but the difference between a Standard and a Great is actually based on the player's ending score.
This is the first big issue with Project Diva, under normal circumstances being score-based for grading wouldn't make a difference unless the game had some sort of combo-based scoring. Which under normal circumstances, it doesn't. Scoring is primarily based on the player's accuracy. However, this all goes out the window with the game's strangest addition: Chance Time. Chance Time appears in every single song and for only that period of the song does the game change to a combo-scoring-based system, where the more consecutive notes you hit with a combo, the higher the score count for each note, capping out at 5000 per note. This SUCKS. Every run of a song ends up being mindless nothing until the Chance Time where you have to be as precise as possible if you want a Great rating. This means you could be pretty damn shit before Chance Time and recover everything too. There's also the problem that the moment Chance Time begins you can no longer see what your note accuracy is. Somehow this made it through!? You see, each note you hit is given the accuracy of during play, but only in the bottom right corner of the screen, completely away from the gameplay. That's already an issue in of itself, but once Chance Time starts, an overlay appears not letting the player see the accuracy, their health, or their score. Why the fuck was this done? I wish I knew...
Unfortunately, that isn't the only issue, but this next one has some layers to unpack. To unlock a song, you must first beat the previous song on the list (with minor exceptions). But when you get a song, you only have access to the Easy and Normal versions of said songs. To unlock Hard difficulty on a song you must beat the song on Normal at least once. So if you want access to all of the songs, you have to beat all of the songs on Normal first. Then this unlocks all of the hard versions of said songs with it. That doesn't sound bad at first, but remember that Normal only uses two of the four buttons during play. Without being able to touch Hard difficulty, the player is forced to play a significantly less interesting version of the game they could be playing. While the charting between Normal and Hard is relatively similar, they aren't the same, so not only is the difficulty reduced, but so is the overall button complexity. For someone entirely new, this might not seem that big a deal, but when you can only hit buttons with a single thumb and there are exactly two buttons to choose from, the game is not nearly as fun as it could be. I sorely wish I could be doing something with my other hand or maybe even other fingers but I really can't.
Before getting to the last bad thing, let's talk about something good: Chart complexity. Project Diva has a pretty decent selection of charts all with their own unique quirks and identities. This coupled with the game's innate unique rhythm experience leads to a match made in heaven. Notes can fly in on top of each other, from opposite directions, all around if they so please. The speed at which the notes travel can be heavily decreased or increased to match the chosen pace of the song. The note outlines can be placed literally anywhere on the screen, including on top of other note outlines. Hell, some charts even begin at a slower pace and then change midway through the chart. The possibilities are staggering and it leads to a mountain of fun to be had regardless of whether or not you like the song which is usually the biggest issue in a rhythm game.
Now, lastly, the lack of diversity. Hatsune Miku is just about the only singer in this game. Now this would've been more understandable if not for the fact that there do indeed exist optional outfits you can unlock that are the models of different Vocaloids. Kagamin Rin and Len, Megurine Luka, Kaito, Meiko, Yowana Haku, and Akita Neru. Out of these characters, two have two songs each, both of which are literally repeats of existing songs. The exact same chart, PV, and model movement, just a different singer. And to unlock these optional different voiced charts (which are counted as different songs mind you) you have to beat the original chart multiple times over. Three times to be exact. This seriously sucks because it clearly shows that this is simply a Miku game. I would be remiss to not mention that, yes, DLC did release after that came with new tracks specifically based on the other Vocaloids, but those aren't in the base game so, not in my house. If they wanted to include them later as completely DLC instead of having the models in-game locked behind arbitrary requirements with a paltry showing of songs to listen to from them, then that would've made more sense. What we have currently is just stupid.
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva is right on the cusp of being a great rhythm game, but this title makes major mistakes that take the experience way down. Gameplay is incredibly fun, and all of the nods to the fans are fantastic, but it just needs more time in the oven. With a little finetuning and maybe some parts completely removed, this little rhythm game could hit it real big.