Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd Review

Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd is a rhythm game developed by Sega and Crypton Future Media and follows the release of the first Diva F game. With plenty of Rhythm games getting released these past few years, with a lot of them being played by myself, it can be hard to make your game stand out from the rest. While Diva F 2^nd doesn’t resort to taking the clothes off the characters like in Senran Kagura it holds its head up high and lets its gameplay speak for itself.

Story

From what I could gather from the beginning intro sequence the game would seem to have a story based around the Stars the main cast carry. Their lights died out and they needed to perform in front of a crowd to bring them back to life, though through the gameplay is does show Stars as a button input.

As you start the game up there seems to be no story attachment at all, besides selecting a song to perform or interacting with the performers there isn’t much else. Each of the songs has a “Music Video” along with it, each with their own stories to tell and tales to sing, one of them being a song about loving the other half of the song and another about friendship.

Through the main Rhythm game there are over 40 songs to unlock and play with difficulty settings from the very simple Easy all the way to the finger killing Extreme. The Normal difficulty setting takes some time to get used to with full use of the PSVitas controls. Along with the difficulty setting there are also BPM scores on each song, from 100 to high 200s which depict the speed of the song and how many button presses are within each.

The song lengths carry from 3-5 minutes and with 40 songs to collect and complete you can easily get 3+hours from one playthrough on easy, but with trying to get the best score you can and trying the higher settings you can milk even more time out of this release. The game feels more suited to be played whilst on a train or waiting for something, as repeated play can get boring quite quickly.

 

Gameplay

“My fingers can’t move that fast goddamnit!”

Diva F 2^nd is a game focused on using the most of the controller as it can, bar the trigger buttons, with the Arrow buttons being used in time with the face buttons, or the face buttons on their own, to swiping the screen with 1 or 2 fingers when a Star appears. In Normal mode and above you are subject to all of this and it can become very difficult and confusing when you have to swipe the screen then return your hands to the side to continue the button pressing.

When playing the Rhythm game the buttons you need to press are displayed in different places on the screen with a clock hand to show when the button needs to be pressed and if they need to be held down, the button then flies onto the screen and to where the display is and when they meet you press the displayed button. This mechanic can become hectic very quickly with the screen being full of different displays and flying buttons that you can lose track of which button is flying to which display. The game’s nature reminds me of OSU with its UI and how much screen space is taken up by the button and movement displays.

Away from the hustle and bustle of Rhythm Game you can also select AR concerts and Portrait to use the back facing camera to place one of the Singers in your environment and have them pose and dance for you right in your living room. While this isn’t integral to the game experience it is a nice feature to show off what the game and the console can do.

You can also visit the Diva Room where all the characters stay, mainly bring a bedroom for them to rest in, in here you can buy them new outfits or room accessories or even touch them to increase friendship level. Whilst the touching is neither here or there, the customising is a pretty neat feature to have as it allows all the characters to have varying outfits from silly to cool looking whilst they perform for you.

 

Overall thoughts and Feelings

The music in Diva F 2^nd is varied and there is a song for each tempo and emotion you might want to play, though some of Hatsune’s songs seem to be missed off of the track list. While the tracks are great to listen to, they give you subtitles to read but with all the buttons on the screen to follow I found it hard to read along even on Easy sometimes. To appeal more to Languages other then Japanese it would have been nice to have some Voice Dubs or something that would allow me to view the lyrics in a better way in-game.

Overall I give Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2^nd a 4/5, a great game to have whilst in transit or waiting around for a couple of minutes with some great music to listen to while you play. The difficulty options are great for people who love games like Guitar Hero with the ramped up difficulty over Normal settings. A Casual gamer who hasn’t tried a game of this genre might look at this game, see the anime influences, and throw it away, but the gameplay speaks for itself.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.