I've talked about Hatsune Miku: Project Diva before. The english release last year was... okay.
But now I got "Future Tone", and boy, this game is just so much better. There are over a hundred songs (a lot I don't like, but a lot that I do like). And as silly as this may seem... a lot of the dance routines just look better in this new game. The game definitely puts an absurd amount of emphasis on the dance routines of the virtual characters, so... yeah, its important within the context of the game. Take for example, the song "
Hello, Worker". When you youtube for other people's playthroughs, you can clearly see how many accessories and costumes are available for
customization of the routine.
A kind of stupid thing that I appreciate in Future Tone: there's a button (L2 + R2) which picks out the default costume associated with the current song. Diva X (the PS4 game last year) had bonuses for insane combinations of accessories... from a "power-gamer" perspective, I always was interested in maximizing my bonus... but it would come up with insane combinations like kitty-cat ears, a rabbit face-mask and a crazy bowtie for like +8% bonuses or whatever. In Future Tone, I can quickly select a reasonable default costume and not have to worry about playing dress up. While for others, the dress-up opportunity is still there if that's your shtick.
The game is organized into two packages for $25ish each. The "Future Tone" songs (itself $25) are songs from earlier PS2 games. While "Colorful Tone" songs (another $25ish) are songs from the arcade version of the game, which was also never released in America. But this is my 2nd buy in this series, and I'm actually enjoying it now.
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The game is entirely self-aware, and includes internet meme-hits like
Nyan Cat and
Ievan Polkka (aka:
Leek-spin, so of course Miku pulls out the Leak as part of the dance).
As usual, all of the songs are sung by Volcaloids (aka: robots), but the song selection is just so huge that the game does cover a lot of genres. Rock, Pop, electronica, etc. etc. The quality of the Volcaloid lyrics are somewhat masked by my ears (I don't understand Japanese...) but overall the "pleasantness" of the song depends on the arranger / composer.
One major point of contention: although the menus are all translated to English, there are no English-translated lyrics to any of the songs in this new release. The lyrics are in romanji for easy pronunciation, but I'm not really going to be able to understand it. Project Diva X
did have english subtitles to all of the songs. But because of the shear number of songs available... I think its still okay anyway.
I still stand by and say that there are better music games out there. (
Superbeat Xonic for the Vita). But Hastune Miku Future Tone is pretty darn good. Definitely better than "Diva X" from last year.
First Strike +1/+1 and Indestructible.