Hatsune Miku Project DIVA: Mega Mix released in Japan (known as Mega 39’s) to celebrate the game series’ 10th anniversary. The game features 101 songs on launch and SEGA has already announced six bundles of DLC songs to be released between launch day and April this year.
New features for Mega Mix include every character model being remodeled and cel-shaded in a more moe art style with brighter colors. New models are included as well as a new t-shirt customizer, allowing players to modify their own accessories for their favorite Vocaloid. A new game mode called Mix Mode plays songs in a drop-and-catch style. During which, music notes fall from the top of the screen, color-coded, and must be caught using the motion controls of the JoyCon.
Arcade Mode controls have been updated, slightly. Now, you can customize rhythm notes to either correspond to the Nintendo Switch ABXY buttons, the PlayStation shapes, or simple directional arrows.
That’s where anything new ends.
The game is fun, but there is a lot of negative points to Project DIVA: Mega Mix that ultimately makes it feel absolutely pointless. For starters, of 101 songs in the base game, 91 of them are returning from previous titles. Many songs will have now seen their 3rd or even 4th appearance in a main Project DIVA game (not counting appearances in the Project Mirai sub-series. In which some songs have seen as much as their 6th appearance). All returning songs were in the previous mainline game, Project DIVA: Future Tone. They use the same note patterns and Promotional Video (PV), making the game beyond repetitive for veteran players. Of the ten new songs, some don’t even have newly animated PVs, but instead use music videos the original composers released on YouTube.
The series has had a practice to reusing songs and PVs as early as the second game, but at a much lower ratio than 90%. This is annoying for anyone who’s been playing since Project DIVA: F (and even more for Japanese and hard-core western fans who played the original Japanese PSP trilogy). The F duology gave older videos alternative endings, new PVs entirely, or used different versions of older songs (Project DIVA: F2nd being most noteworthy of such). This kept gameplay fresh and long-time fans feeling like they were still getting a new experience.
Yet, Project DIVA: Mega Mix uses the exact same PVs from Future Tone. There are no secret endings to PVs except for songs that saw their first appearance in F/F2nd. Meanwhile, songs or alternative PVs that have never seen reuse despite popularity such as ‘Kagerou Daze’, ‘Streaming Heart‘, or ‘World’s End Dancehall -F Edition-‘remain exclusive to their respective original titles. It feels lazy, considering that character models are, for the most part, the only thing that was remodeled in most videos when compared to Future Tone.
Project DIVA: Mega Mix is the second mainline game in a row that can be summed up as a bundle of almost entirely old songs with a different art style and some altered gameplay mechanics. With Mega Mix suppose to be celebrating Project DIVA‘s 10th anniversary, one would only hope there’d be a lot more to celebrate than playing ‘World is Mine‘ for the 5th time in a mainline game.
The game may still be fun, holds charm, cute-factor, good music, and a sizable variety of songs featuring the main six vocaloids, but Project DIVA: Mega Mix is only worth it for newcomers to the series. If you’ve already paid for all content in Future Tone and past titles then Mega Mix is not worth shelling out $60+ dollars on launch day, especially when it has been reported that the ten new Mega Mix songs are slated to be released as DLC for Future Tone this year. All that would be paid for would be the convenience of having a mainline game on a mobile device other than the PSVita.
In Japan, ’39’ is a pun off the romaji pronunciation of “thank you.” SEGA gave a “mega san kyuu” to fans with Project DIVA: Mega 39’s, but it’s regrettable that the response is “no thank you. Now please make an actual new Project DIVA game.”
Project DIVA: Mega 39’s was released in Japan on February 13th this year. It was confirmed during the game’s reveal back in August 2019 that the western version would be titled Project Diva: Mega Mix, and be released sometime in 2020. Currently, the final release date is unknown. The game is not region locked, nor does it feature any story mode. So long as one can navigate through the menus then those wanting to import it can do so from any online retail of their choice.
