Disclaimer: I played the Japanese version on my Vita. Any comments about controls, graphics, and framerates will probably be different compared to the PS4 version. Also, because I played the Japanese version, I can’t make any comments on the story, so my “review” will focus mostly on the Rhythm Game.
Hi everyone, it’s RenegadeMizu. I’ve been playing the Project Diva games quite a bit since F on the PS3, yet for some reason there was something about Project Diva X that scared me off from buying it on release. While I was initially hyped for a PS4 Project Diva game, much of my anticipation died off when I heard about the lack of PVs and small song selection. What disappointed me even after seeing the song list that not all songs are new to Miku rhythm games, let alone Project Diva games. Regardless of all of this, I decided to give it a try as I have nothing better to do with my money than spend it on rhythm games. This “review” will focus on what I believe are the most important parts of my experience.
Song Selection: This is probably where most people will disagree with me. I found the song selection in X to be extremely meh. While I enjoy most of the songs in the game, I really don’t feel like most of them fit in a rhythm game. Counting the amount of “memorable songs” to me in each game since F, I have: F – 19 F 2nd(excluding DLC) – 20 X (excluding Medleys)- 5. I realized that after I unlocked all the songs in X, I really only played 3 or 4 of them. It really kills the replayability of the game when there’s only a few songs that I really enjoy playing.
Graphics: I’m actually pretty impressed. This is my first time playing through a Project Diva game on the Vita (I have F, F2nd on the PS3 and Future Tone on the PS4), and I thought the game looked really nice. The framerate is pretty bad compared to Future Tone, but that’s to be expected and I didn’t really feel like it hurt the gameplay. This might not be the appropriate section, but the lack of actual PVs for the songs feels extremely lazy. I miss the fun videos for songs like Knife and 2D Dream Fever. Every song uses a stage dance now, and it just doesn’t have anywhere near the same feel to it. While they are a tad less distracting, there were much better solutions if that was the problem they were trying to solve.
Difficulty: Most of my Project Divaing as of recent has been on Future Tone, so the difficulty has been a joke. Even compared to F & F2nd, the 8, 9, and 9.5’s of the game feel pretty easy. I was able to manage all but 1 on my first try, which I’m normally not able to do. Even then, the 1 failure I had was mainly because I’m not used to playing on the Vita at all. While not every rhythm game needs to be as insane as Future Tone can sometimes get, a nice in-between is usually preferred.
Game Mechanics: Outside of the rhythm games, the way you collect modules is pretty annoying. I almost exclusively play Free Play, and so I’ve managed to collect barely anything. What’s extra annoying is that playing in the mode that does unlock modules doesn’t save your score. Not sure why they thought that was a good idea. Best part about the game right here: Unlocking a song in free play gets you every difficulty for it. No need to do Normal -> Hard -> Extreme like usual. Worst part of the game right here: Unlocking the song you want on Free Play means beating (and sometime suffering through) 4 other songs that you might not care about in the (I guess? I can’t Japanese) story mode.
Inside the rhythm game, the rush notes are pretty okay. I feel like they aren’t really used much, but they make sense when they are used. I kinda miss the double flick stars. While not really related to game mechanics, I enjoy the extra noise they added to arrows and hold notes. It really gives the song an extra beat and makes it feel like you’re really playing along.
That pretty much does it for my thoughts on Project Diva X. I’m expecting a lot of people to disagree with me ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯, so feel free to tell me why I’m wrong in the comments. Thanks for reading!
P.S, I’m in need of writers/an editor. If you’re interested, please leave a comment!