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3DS

Miku Or Persona: A Tough Choice For The Portable Rhythm Fan

by Donald Theriault - September 22, 2015, 9:00 am EDT
Total comments: 2

Two games, one corporate overlord and one author who's down to dance.

September 2015 is known as the month of Mario Maker for most, or perhaps the month of quality home design. But for me, it’s a month of rhythm games, as Sega’s Hatsune Miku Project Mirai DX and Atlus’s Persona 4: Dancing All Night have vied for my attention the past few weeks. And for the most part, Miku tries, but Persona appears to be winning.

That’s not to say that Miku is a bad game – it’s just that Alex pretty much nailed the game’s problems in his review a few weeks ago. I’d definitely agree with the score, as although Miku has more individual songs, there’s only a couple that I can really say I remember. They all ran together in some sort of general mish-mash of lyrics that I couldn’t even try to read as an attempt to learn Japanese, since all the action in the game is on the top screen with the lyrics on the bottom. My other problem with Miku is that if it doesn’t live in the uncanny valley, it’s at least getting its mail there, as there’s something really unsettling about applying Mii styling to the vocaloid characters.

Miku’s big advantage is the sheer number of things to do - I’ll probably add it to my portable puzzle rotation since we’ll never get Puyo Puyo Tetris without doing some region hackery. Puyo Puyo and Othello with the vocaloids is a decent enough substitute. It’s nice to have something different to do besides just playing songs, as I felt I needed a few breaks as I chased the credits, while Dancing All Night doesn’t really have that.

What Persona: DAN adds instead of the mini-games is an actual honest-to-god story mode – and yes, Persona story fans, this one counts as much as the Golden additions or the fighting games. There’s a few songs out of the box, but you unlock the rest of the songs through the story mode (rough estimate; 25 hours to complete). The remixes of existing Persona 4 songs have given me a new appreciation for the source material as well. Akira Yamaoka remixing “Time to Make History” (the Persona 4 Golden battle theme and my favourite song in any P4 game) I knew would be absolutely amazing, and it doesn’t disappoint. The remixes of songs I thought were totally unmemorable, like “Shadow World,” have stuck in my head far longer than the Miku songs did.

The other kicker is the story mode itself; it’s not just an excuse plot. Without spoiling anything – that’s a sentence I never thought I’d had to put in a piece about music games – the storyline of DAN touches on themes that don’t really get explored in mainstream entertainment in North America. I’m learning a lot about the pressures of being an idol singer in Japan, which will definitely help me appreciate whatever the hell Genei Ibunroku #FE will be called when it launches. They even managed to work in call backs to older Persona games back to the pre-Social Link reboot days of Persona 2. If you have any level of care toward the Persona series, you’ll find something to love in this game. Plus, Nanako is one of the few good child characters in video games, and her dancing even made my stone cold heart melt a little bit.

The games control in a similar fashion, and have similar rules: if you nail the beat exactly, it’s perfect. Mistime it slightly for a slightly lower rating, but keep the combo going, and anything below that is a miss. Miku had me a little cross-eyed with the A and B buttons being similar in color in their interface, and I do hope DAN adds in the option to assign the “scratch” function (defaulted to the analog sticks) to the Vita’s shoulder buttons since they’re easier to hit in the button arrangement. (You have six buttons to hit in DAN: up, left and down on the Vita’s directional buttons or triangle, circle and X on the face buttons.)

UPDATE: The Japanese version did receive a patch to map scratching to L and R. May it come to North American versions quickly. (Thanks to Austen for bringing this to my attention.)

I know it’s kind of sacrilegious to recommend a Vita game over a 3DS game on a Nintendo website but, in this case, I have to. If you have access to Vita hardware – and at this point, the PlayStation TV is approaching “free with a large double-double” status – and have to make this call, get Dancing All Night first. Miku is good if you’re looking for a challenge or a wide variety of gameplay options, but as a music game, it’s advantage Atlus in this corporate duel. Though either way, Sammy wins.

Massive thanks to Atlus USA for supplying a Persona 4: Dancing All Night review code to a Nintendo website.

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Talkback

EnnerSeptember 22, 2015

Quote:

My other problem with Miku is that if it doesn’t live in the uncanny valley, it’s at least getting its mail there, as there’s something really unsettling about applying Mii styling to the vocaloid characters.

Unless something changed, the super-deformed style of the Project Mirai games are based on Good Smile's Nendoroid line of figurines. A line of figurines that popular for being cute and (relatively) affordable. ("Relatively" meaning $40 instead of $80+ for a bigger, more detailed statue.)

I was afraid of the Project Mirai games being lesser versions of the Project Diva games. Seems those fears have come true.

Fixed quote

This came out after it posted, but the P4:DAN patch I wanted not only exists but it's a day 1 addition for when the game comes out (29th). So hurrah!

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