Those who are eager to see what Spike Chunsoft have in store next for Danganronpa will soon have the chance to play the latest game, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, in Japanese as the release date for the game on the PlayStation 4 and PS Vita happens to be tomorrow, January 12th. To celebrate the game’s launch the company has released a launch trailer, that you can check out below, where we are given a glimpse at many of the game’s new features as well as a look at the sixteen new characters that will be in the game.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has already been confirmed for Western release but no exact release date has been announced.
Now it is worth noting that Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone is available in separate packs, with Colorful Tone and Future Sound being available for $29.99 a piece or together for $53.99 at a discounted bundle and it is fairly clear that unless you happen to dislike all of the songs in one of these packs, that picking up both versions is the way to go as you will find that over 220 songs are available to play right off the bat when both packs are purchased.
I say this because while over half of the songs are available all the way from the Easy difficulty level, the other songs are only available from Normal and a few are only available at the Hard level. This news may be disheartening to some since certain songs are not available on lower difficulties, which is an odd choice, but it is interesting to note though that every song can immediately be seen in music video mode if you choose to simply enjoy the performance or played using the aforementioned No Fail Mode.
In fact, thanks to the controls of the game and the way that it has been adapted from an Arcade machine, this is one of the hardest games in the series so far. This is partially due to the fact that while there are fewer inputs to generally worry about, as the game generally uses only four of the face buttons at most, there are also a number of new note types to keep an eye out for. These include hold notes that can be held for bonus points, notes that must be input at the same time that generally are given a pop-up diagram of what to tap to avoid confusion, analog stick inputs, as well as swipes that make use of the touchpad. Touchpad notes tend to be fairly finicky to get the hang of as starting too soon can cause the whole note to be missed while ending a slide will give the player less points and possibly ruin a combo they would have otherwise been able to build up by timing their inputs correctly.
Unfortunately outside of the base gameplay mode and the outfits that can be unlocked and accessories that can be worn, players will find that Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone doesn’t really expand much beyond that. This is in part due to it being an arcade port so the only other options available to the user are to compile a list of songs they want to play in a playlist manner and allow them to play like music videos, which I actually have running while writing this review. Those who enjoyed the little slice-of-life interactions with their favorite Vocaloids may be a bit disappointed by the bare bones nature of the game outside of the performances but the clear focus spent on the rhythm gameplay will delight fans of the genre.
It is worth noting that while this game may not feature some of the most recent hit songs from creators; it does feature what many may call the greatest hits that the series has had to a certain point. Almost every popular Vocaloid song including some variants are included in this release and there are a wide number of genre to select from though players will need to listen to/perform some of these songs to find out how they sound for themselves as there is no sort option in this regard. With so many great songs to choose from, including some classic Sega tunes, and the outstanding looking videos they are set against that can be viewed at any time, players will be in for a real treat here.
