With the prisms going dim, idol Hatsune Miku and friends need to put together concerts in order to restore their colour! Do just that as you make your way through Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X!
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X is the newest title in the series of rhythm games based around the vocaloid star. The cloud prisms that power the idols have gone dim and the only way to restore them is by singing for the fans! Over the course of the five prisms your characters will learn how to express the different styles while also restoring the light to the prisms, and all of this will come a head in one final song at the end!
The story in Project Diva X is pretty simple, but as far as rhythm games go the story is competent. I spent most of my time playing with Hatsune Miku, but each of the six characters will all have their own little interactions you can do. In order to reach the final song you will need to do a second go through, this time building up enough voltage to get another set of prisms. This is the point in which completing the story becomes a bit tedious, but at the same time it’s still not bad as you’ll be given a festival to do each time you’ve completed a new prism.
Festivals are special events in which you’ll need to do a song under preset conditions.Some of these conditions will ask for you to perform a certain type of song – Cool, Quirky, Classic, etc – and this will also sometimes come as a set of songs you need to do, others will give you a preset song on a preset difficulty (I still haven’t cleared the ones that are on Extreme…). These Festivals will reward you with a variety of things, often stated on the screen where you chose the festival.
Gameplay in Project Diva X will play out as your typical match-the-rhythm-of-the-song game. You’ll need to press the right button (or combination of buttons) at the correct time in order to score. These will move around the screen so you’ll need to be diligent in following it so that you don’t miss a note. The higher you go up in the difficulty, the more notes you are going to have to hit. You’re also going to have to crank up your skill if you want to be able to meet the voltage requirements on the higher difficulties as notes are going to be flying fast and often for you to hit!
As you play the game, you’ll be given rewards in terms of accessories and outfits for your characters to wear. For outfits, you’ll only get ones for whichever character you used on the song (and for the multi-song festivals, you’ll get one for the last character used). You’ll only get outfits if you manage to clear the Chance Time that comes up during songs. As for obtaining accessories, you’ll need to first meet the voltage goal – after that, you’ll start getting them as you obtain more and more voltage. The amount you get, at least from what I can tell, appears to be tied to whatever difficulty you’re on. However, you won’t always get an accessory, and will instead sometimes get a “Gift” type item instead.
Gifts can be used to raise your affection with the different characters, and this in turn makes it easier to get voltage with them. There will be times in which a character will make a request for a specific type of item such as “something to help me understand the Cool aura”. You can give these items to the characters at any time, but you’ll have to keep in mind that each one has their own likes and dislikes, and if you give them something they dislike you’ll lose a bit of affection with them.
Before you actually start off a song, you’ll need to do some dress up with your character. This involves setting them with an aura-appropriate outfit, after which you’ll also need to consider what bonus that outfit has (gradual voltage increase, flat score bonus after a Technical Area, etc). Once you’ve chosen the outfit you need to set the accessories, again making sure they match with the particular aura you have. The other thing you’ll need to keep in mind with accessories is that some of them belong in different sets, and these sets will help give you an even higher initial voltage percentage at the start of the song. In the end, making sure you have the right outfit and accessories for the song matters a lot! And if you have one you want to keep using? Well, you can set it as a favourite!
Graphically, Project Diva X looks quite good. However, the game also tends to get pretty distracting during the songs. It can become even more difficult to try and track what you’re supposed to press with how active things get. All of the background movement just added another layer of difficulty for me when I was trying to keep track of things on Hard and Extreme.
Overall, Project Diva X is an extremely solid rhythm game. While the general story will only last you around 5-10 hours (it took me around 10 hours to make it to the final song and credits), there’s a very high replayability with all of the different difficulties available. Even beyond the four main difficulties are the extra challenges, and from the ones I attempted prior to reviewing this, some of those aren’t very easy at all. I can definitely see myself coming back to this game when I need my rhythm game fix as I work towards trying to earn all the trophies… someday. If you’re a fan of rhythm games, even if you’ve never really listened to Hatsune Miku’s music before, then I definitely recommend looking into Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X.
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X Review Score
4.5/5
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X is available now on PSN for PS4 and Vita, as well as on Amazon for PS4 and Vita.
I would like to thank Sega for providing me with a PS4 code for review purposes.
