Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
I love a good rhythm game from well-known games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero to lesser-known games like DJMax and Superbeat Xonic. The Hatsune Miku games have always been fun to play so I was pretty excited to see one coming out on the Switch where I could play it anywhere I wanted. For anyone who doesn't know who, or what, Hatsune Miku is, she is a Vocaloid witch is a singing voice synthesizer that means all of the lyrics are sung not by a real person but by a synthesizer. Like the other games in the Project DIVA series, there are more than one Vocaloid witch fans should know with the likes of Rin, Len, Luka, MEIKO, and KAITO.
Project DIVA MegaMix has a lot to love with over one hundred songs and two modes of play. The first mode is arcade mode where you press the right button in time with the rhythm like in the last Project Diva games. The second mode which is new for the Switch is called mix mode. Mix mode is still a rhythm game but you use the right and left joy-cons in each hand and tilt them left and right to match up with what's showing on the screen and pressing ZR or ZL in time.
It's a neat way of changing things up and it doesn't use bad motion controls like some games, it works well! There are three difficulty levels with mix mode from easy to hard while arcade mode has five from easy to extra extreme. Not every song has a easy difficulty and you have to unlock extreme and extra extreme songs, and again, not all songs have these difficulties. With over a hundred songs you would think it would be hard to find the song you're looking for but you can easily switch between the letters that the songs start with or you can put your favorites in the favorite category making it easy to find what you are looking for.
After completing a song you will get VP and experience that makes your player rank increase. VP is a currency that you can use to buy new costumes for the characters to use. Each song has a recommended outfit that matches the music video. I am not sure what levelling up your player rank does, I think it just measures how good you are as it only seems to go up once you complete a song for the first time on each difficulty and mode.
There are a lot of outfits for the characters and it's fun to keep playing to buy new ones and change things up, but if you don't like any of them, you can make your own t-shirt! It's pretty simple to draw on a shirt you can pick from four different draw sizes and then draw using the analog sticks. This can be a bit tricky but you have a steady hand you can also use the switch in handheld mode and draw using the touch screen. Now I am not good at art at all but I was able to make a pretty cool multicolored t-shirt.
A good feature to the Mega Mix is that the music videos can be watched without playing the rhythm games and I enjoyed watching some of them. They are very well animated and some even tell a story which is great as most the songs are in Japanese so following along may be the only way to know what the song is about. It also displayed the lyrics, so if you do know Japanese, you can read along. Finally, you can also set up your own playlists where you can set several music videos to play in the order you picked or have them shuffled.
Vocaloids have come a long way with the quality steadily becoming harder to distinguish a real voice from a synthesized one especially with some of the songs on this game. The only real problem I have with this game was trying to fix the input lag. Unlike some games like Rock Band where you press a button when you hear a sound, you can only set the lag in this game manually. It never really seemed off when I was playing it on the TV but when I played it in handheld mode that I saw the differences in my playing and scoring so I think my input lag might be a little off.
Fans of rhythm games and Hatsune Miku fans alike will enjoy this game with its large verity of songs and outfits for each character. There a lot of customization too like picking who you want to be in the music video and outfits and the such. Changing who is in the video does not change the singing voice however, and this although minor, it kind of stunk.
Summary
Overall I really loved my time playing Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix. The music videos put a smile on my face and some of the songs I really loved and have stuck in my head hours after playing. With its huge list of songs and additional DLC you can add even more to the experience and there was already a lot to love about this game.
The only thing some fans may not like is there is no The DIVA room mode like in the PS3/Vita game Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 2nd. Other than that I really love this game!
Score: 9 / 10
