FoOlRulez

Heya, your super translator Necrophantasia here!  No new releases this time because I was slacking on translations, but I promise to get back to work if you all go and pick up Project Diva 2nd and worship my waifu like I do.  Also, I will most definitely be acquiring more Hatsune Mix even if die doing so.

Project Diva 2nd and Accessory Pack

I never understood why they gave me both decals and a silicon case.  If I use the case, I can’t see my decals :s.  Also that other rectangular object is actually a cloth meant for scrubbing the psp.

So what is Project Diva?  Well that’s just Hatsune Miku’s dedicated rhythm game!  See here for my take on the first game.  Before I get into project diva 2nd, did you guys know there was a Project Diva Arcade?  And that there is one next to my house?

Project Diva Arcade hell's ya!

I bet you did.  Project Diva Arcade is kind of like Project Diva 1.5.  It has more tracks, Miku in her PS3 rendered glory, introduces the extreme difficulty mode, and arcade mode exclusive features like combination button presses and combination holds.  Also, the difficult for the arcade version is easily harder than the hardest song of Project Diva 2nd’s extreme mode, so ya… plenty of depth here.  Also, the module system works the same except you gain maybe 1-5 points per song and these are saved to a server on the internet.  Your account is linked to you by your RFID card that stores your unique user code.

You get 2 song per 100 yen, so that’s 10 points per 100 yen.  And the cheapest modules (the base ones) are 50 points each.  The most expensive ones are around 3000 points.  So ya, that’s going to be a lot of 100 yen coins from me…

Onwards to Project Diva 2nd!

The game is the mostly the same as the first, but with a large number of small changes.  I’ll just go with a change list, some are obvious, some are less obvious.

1.  The game no longer lags.  It is totally smooth even with duets where more than 1 vocaloid is on the screen.  As much as I loved Project Diva, lag in a rhythm game is totally unacceptable and Project Diva was a shitfest of lag.  Project Diva 2nd fixes all of that.

2. The way the beats are synced to the music has been changed.  Project Diva was consistently late on the sync (most likely to compensate for the lag).  Project Diva 2nd is now mostly in time, but since the button presses are more ambitious, there seems to be more cases of weird button chart design rather than poor sync.  However, that also means that people who whored Project Diva (aka me) will have a hard time adjusting to the new Project Diva.

3.  Tons of new modules, this time Luka, Rin, Ren are all included.   Even the unofficial ones like Neru and Haku have a bunch of costumes.  More variety is always great.  Also, you unlock based on the in game miku points.  No more of the stupid conditional unlocks for modules and percentage based unlocks for Miku room items.  I’ve played Project Diva for more than 100 hours and there are still 3 items that I am missing, and no it’s not fun to try and get them anymore.

4.  Miku Room has been upgraded.  Tons more items around, but the customization is still pretty limited.  It’s mostly the same as Project Diva, except Miku also has more actions now.  Oh and you can use the Miku Room to turn your PSp into an alarm clock.

5. Track list has been overhauled.  The picks are far better than what they went with with Project Diva.  There are still some glaring omissions, like where is Black Rock shooter?  Still they imported a ton of tracks from the old game, and even with upgraded button charts, that feels a bit cheap to me.  Also, Yellow is officially my new favoritest Hatsune Miku Song ever.

Yellow – Hatsune Miku

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6.  Improvement of the core game through addition of holds and directional buttons.  The new holds add a new challenge to the game and the directional buttons don’t really change much except give you 4 more symbols that you have to be ready for.  It’s also really weird that you have to press the arrow on the dpad as well as the psp button of the matching color to get it register but fine.

7. Upped Difficulty Level.  Normal is the new hard, and Extreme is just out there.  It took me far too many tries to get a perfect on Yellow and it wasn’t even supposed to be hard :(.

That's about twice the number of Fines I get in Project Diva, sigh

Things I still hate about Project Diva.

1. The holds.  Why does pressing it down count as 1 beat, and then lifting your finger up count as a 2nd?  It unnatural that you’ve been trained that 1 button press = 1 beat, but now 1 press = 2 on the holds.  It really messes things up when things get hectic.

2.  The contrived difficulty.  I don’t mind actual hard songs, but Project Diva 2nd tries a few tricks to make it harder for you.  Regardless of the actual BPM of the song, the distance between 2 button symbols doesn’t change.  Other than the confusing clock hands, there is no real notation that there is a BPM change, leading to needless misses.  Also, in high BPM songs the buttons become so close together that they become very very hard to see on extreme, especially when it comes to 16th notes.  “Let’s Be Friends” is particularly guilty of this, and so was the old Llevan Polka in Project Diva.  Thus, it becomes rote memorization and this isn’t particularly fine.

3. Scoring is still inane.  Arbitrary combo bonuses mean that, a person who gets 400 Cools and 100 Fines will outscore a person who gets 499 Cools and 1 Safe.

Anyway that’s enough for now.  Until next time, leave me your comments!