Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX

Written by Matt Mirkovich on 9/8/2015 for 3DS  

Hey guys, I might be on to something here, but I think this Hatsune Miku thing is going to keep growing. With how ridiculously cute and fun Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX it’s a miracle I was able to put it down. It also fills a niche that is pretty underserved on the 3DS, music and rhythm games, which is something that I am always up for. So how does Project Mirai stack up to its Vita cousin? That’s kind of a tough distinction to make, because while both are music games centered around the virtual pop star, each game has a different approach, which kudos to Sega for not just repackaging their games for different consoles.

The core of Project Mirai DX is based off two previous Japanese only releases, which makes this sort of a best-of compilation. There’s a total of 48 tracks in the game after everything is said and done, which feels like a ton of content, as some of these songs can be quite a bit long. And it’s a robust songlist featuring tracks from Oster Project, Livetune, HachiojiP along with some of the well known tracks like Matryoshka, Clover Club, and The World is Mine. Some of these differ from their Vita counterpart simply because they are the whole song as opposed to the game cuts that are normally heard on the Sony handhelds. There’s definitely something for everyone here in terms of musical taste, along with some tracks that can ease you into similar genres.

The presentation of Project Mirai is also strikingly different than its Sony counterpart thanks to the super-deformed style employed in this game. Based of the Nendoroid line of toys from Japan, these super-deformed visuals work out incredibly well for the game. What they lack in polygon pushing power they more than make up for in being aesthetically pleasing, and they are just really cute, to the point of it almost being too much. The visuals around each stage may be simpler, but you’ll find that you’ll be looking past a lot of them while you remain focused on the music line where notes appear.

Gameplay is more akin to the iPhone touch game, Groove Coaster, a line appears on the screen that notes will fly in on, and it’s simply a matter of touching the correct portion of the 3DS touch-screen. Higher difficulties will introduce more notes, but it caps out at three. You can also play in button mode which uses the 3DS face buttons and d-pad to hit notes and uses up to four buttons on the hardest difficulty. This mode can be a little bit more challenging for those that find the touch-screen based gameplay to be a bit on the easy side. But on the whole this game does not present the same level of challenge and difficulty that we’ve seen from previous games on the Sony handhelds which makes it perfect for those looking to try out a game like this but happen to be rhythmically challenged.

  

What’s also surprising about Project Mirai DX is the amount of content that’s present outside of the music game. If you look at the main menu it’s easy to believe that the music game portion of this title is actually an afterthought, instead the big button on the screen is for hanging out with Miku, which means changing clothes, giving her food and gifts, or even playing a game of ‘Mikuverse’ or Othello, or Go, whatever your name of choice. Then there’s the second page of activities which includes a portable version of Sega’s Puyopop game. There are also stamps to collect, clothing to buy, photos to sort through that you can take at your leisure, or you can make your own song. The amount of content here is pretty staggering and offers a nice accompaniment to the main music game.

The 3DS hasn’t really had a great music game, at least until now. Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX has a wealth of content, some fun gameplay, adorable visuals, and most importantly, great music. The series has always been known for a wide variety of music, and this game will not disappoint in that regard. The only real flaw to me was seeing that the localization effort for this game was a little lacking. The lyrics are shown during gameplay but in their romanized text. This is pretty disappointing to see after the excellent effort that went into Project Diva F 2nd last year. In the grand scheme of things though it’s a minor hang-up I had with the game but it shouldn’t be something that holds you back from picking up one of the best 3DS titles released this year.