YMMV / Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA

These examples only apply to the Project Diva/Project mirai series. For examples related to Sega's other Hatsune Miku-based rhythm game, Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!, go here.

For examples related to the songs themselves and/or Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid in general, go to Miku's page here or the Vocaloid page here.

---

• Adaptation Displacement:
  • For a decent chunk of the gaming community, this series is often their only real exposure to Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid, leading to the common misassumption (and Fandom-Enraging Misconception) that Miku and company are characters that originated from this series, when it's actually the other way around.
  • It is very common for the original PVs created for this game to overshadow the original PVs in popularity, especially on Western-based sites like YouTube, where the Project Diva PVs tend to be the more accessible option. A famous example is Doriko's "Romeo and Cinderella", while it is one of the most popular Vocaloid songs of all time, the original YouTube upload has less views than the unofficial Project DIVA PV upload, with the former having 5 million views vs the latters 38 million. The YouTube upload also tends to be most people's first exposure to the song.
• Alternate Self Shipping: During the height of the game series' popularity, it was not uncommon for fans to ship the different modules of each character with their other-selves. The biggest victims of this were of course Miku and, surprisingly, KAITO because of the Yaoi Fangirl crowd.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • In mirai 2, the final song prior to the obligatory Post-Final Boss song that plays the credits is "glow", which is actually decently difficult on Hard. In DX, "glow" was moved back by one and replaced with "Nice to Meet You, Mr. Earthling!", the game's only new song and the theme song, which is far easier than "glow" and is rather lacking in difficulty.
  • In terms of presentation, the "Final Song" of X is this as the player has just replayed songs multiple times to get a 2nd Crystal from each Cloud while Miku believes it to be the complete climax of the whole game. The "Final Song" itself is a medley of difficult songs that fall under That One Level below, but the presentation itself is just Miku on a stage and doesn't even come close to being as visually impressive as the Back from the Brink moment that served to return the Vocaloids' ability to sing and open the game up after the first Cloud or even many of the other Cloud Event medley tracks in general.
  • Admittedly, the harder challenges in general, since you need to play the songs so often, on various difficulties, ALL the songs become boring and tedious, to the point that you just no longer feel the need to play them again!
• Awesome Art: A lot of the MV's are gorgeous to look at, with that one of the series' biggest highlights. It's gotten to the point where MV's from the game uploaded to various YouTube channels have gotten more views than the Vocaloid songs they're originally tied to.
• Awesome Music:
  • Being a rhythm game drenched in J-Pop and ear worms, this is inevitable. See the Vocaloid page for examples related to specific tracks.
  • For a DLC minigame, "Hello Planet" had some pretty cool music, including this badass tune.
• Best Level Ever:
  • F:
    • "Secret Police" just rocks. Even though it's fairly static compared to the rest of the game's setlist, no one can deny that the song is super addictive.
    • "World's End Dance Hall", actual meaning of the song aside, is a very fun track with a very fun PV.
    • "Senbonzakura", which is not just one of the most well-known Miku songs, but SEGA did the song justice with its music video.
  • F 2nd:
    • "DECORATOR", despite being relatively concert-style, takes what it does best and runs with it, being an incredibly colorful and energetic concert based on F 2nd's opening PV that notably features all six characters (one of the only songs to do so), all to an incredibly fun and upbeat song by Kz Livetune.
    • "Kagerou Daze" is really quirky in a fun kind of way. Also helps that it's an ultra-popular song from the Kagerou Project series.
    • "Two-Sided Lovers" gets an upgrade in this game, returning with a vengeance from the depths of extend's setlist, and with a great Chance Time event as well!
    • "Wintry Winds" also returns from extend.
  • X:
    • "Urotander, Underhanded Rangers" is probably the PV with the most effort put into it given the new concert-style presentation, and it definitely shows. The chart is also liked for being kinda mean.
    • All of this game's Original Generation songs, "Name of the Sin", "Satisfaction", and "Amazing Dolce", quickly became fan favorites the moment the full songs were uploaded to the internet.
  • Project mirai series:
    • Both SUPER Hard charts for "Romeo and Cinderella" have enough notes for a good player to easily score over half a million points.
• Breather Level:
  • I'll Miku Miku You (Foreals) is the penultimate song of 2nd, and it's far easier than what came before, and what comes after.
  • Continuing Dream in F, very merciful for a (non-Extra) final song, especially with the two hardest songs in the game coming before it.
  • F 2nd has the un-intensive The World is Mine and DECORATOR sandwiched between two particularly brutal duos (see That One Level).
  • As far as high-level songs go, "Kimi no Taion" in Mirai is actually quite easy for being rated "9". Granted, the game is pretty easy anyways, but "Kimi no Taion" is rather simplistic.
  • Future Tone has no need to play any song at lower than HARD, and also has all the songs unlocked, meaning you can go at your own rate for everything.
• Broken Base:
  • For international audiences, the Super-Deformed style of Project mirai. Bottom line is that chibi isn't as widely accepted in other parts of the world as in Japan. Also, the fact that mirai is overall easier than DIVA is a dealbreaker for some people. Also not everyone is fond of the game using full versions; while many appreciate the songs being playable in their full glory, others feel that the songs can drag out by rhythm game standards, especially if one opts to go for 100% Achievement or to use the Do Or Die item.
  • For many fans, Project Diva X, due to Forced Level-Grinding to the point of self-parody, very plain gameplay, poor editing down of songs, compiling half the song library in fixed medleys, and a general poor treatment of everyone except Miku, with the Derivatives being treated like they don't exist. In contrast, Future Tone on the PS4 is considered a much better anniversary title, even with the stripped down presentation.
  • DX itself has been a point of contention: some fans are upset that it's essentially Future Tone, but with all the DLC, and that the two songs they added are a recycled PV and a dance PV, which makes DX feel like a cop-out. Others argue that this is the entire point of the game due to DX being sold physically for those who dislike buying digital. It doesn't help that Arcade stopped receiving updates in early 2016, leaving fans wondering about the fate of the series generally and Future Tone specifically.
  • DX being a physical version of Future Tone is another base-breaker. In the lead up to the Japanese release, there was considerable demand for a physical version, which was flatly ruled out as an option by the Diva team. Diva's staff also stated that a North American version of FT wasn't even being considered, making the digital Asian version the only one. Within a year of release, however, not only did FT receive a Western release (which was cheaper than the Japanese one, as if to spite American and European players who bought the Japanese version), but also an upcoming physical release — all of which has left fans who bought the Japanese download after being told it was the only option mildly annoyed, to put it politely.
  • The introduction of the Voltage system was something of a base-breaker, even among those who felt that the prior system relied too heavily on bonus sections.
  • The usage of "toon shaders" in Mega Mix split fans. While some fans like the stylistic, cel-shading-type look that it gives, others dislike it for making the game look "cheap". While the shaders were used before to produce a 2D-esque effect for certain PVs, in Mega Mix the effect is applied to all songs, further dividing the fans.^note The Plus version just allows people to use both.
  • The usage of 2D PVs in Future Tone DX and Mega Mix. Some fans don't mind this, either because they like the recycled PV or find the 3D graphic creepy, while others think SEGA is lazy and would like to have an original video for the songs^note It should be noted that the decision to use the 2D PVs was not out of laziness, but a creative decision made by the original producers of those songs. It doesn't help that, including DLC, over half of new songs in Mega Mix use recycled PVs instead of original PVs, many of which were fan favorites and heavily requested songs.
  • X giving Project DIVA a storyline and characterization to the Crypton characters. While some players didn't mind the story and enjoyed the rarity of the Cryptonloids receiving characterization so long as it didn't conflict with their own interpretations of the characters, others felt the main story to be quite boring and unnecessary while also feeling like the addition of personalities to the otherwise Blank Slate Vocaloids was similarly unneeded.
  • Song-specific example. World's End Dancehall is notably one of the few songs that has two different PVs, the original story PV featured in F, and the "Live Dance edition" PV featured in Arcade, Future Tone and Mega Mix. Unsurprisingly, there tends to be a lot of debate over which PV is better. Some prefer the Live Dance version for incorporating the late Wowaka's art direction and for being more faithful to the original music video, while others prefer F's PV for being more visually interesting and elaborate, on top of telling an actual story instead of simply having Miku and Luka dance around.
• Contested Sequel:
  • Due to a series of happenstance instances, F 2nd ended up being this way. After its predecessor F had been the first game since the original to have an entirely unique (that is, no songs reused from older games) setlist, F 2nd went back to series form: half of its songs were updated versions of songs from the PSP games, while half were new: Series veterans either didn't mind (since this was par for the usual course for games other than F) or considered this lazy; making this even more divisive was that these were songs from games that had never made it outside Japan, so people who had played only the localized versions generally didn't mind at all and were even happy that they got to play songs they wouldn't have been able to otherwise, many of which were iconic fan favorites. The drastic changes to the note charts for songs from prior games (as well as their status as classics) made this fight somewhat less prone to incinerating boards than other fan disputes.
  • mirai DX is praised for having excellent and expressive PVs, solid gameplay, and the Puyo Puyo minigame, but is criticized for being far easier than the main series and (depending on who you ask) the chosen art style.
  • Mega Mix is something of a mixed bag in this department as many fans agree that it's essentially a discount Future Tone, which has its upsides and downsides attached to it. Mix Mode was found to be surprisingly far more enjoyable than the trailers made it seem and that it's great that the game is expanding to other consoles, but the severely-trimmed down setlist has been a sourspot for fans, not to mention SEGA attempting to sell returning songs as DLC and the core game outside of Mix Mode being practically unchanged from Future Tone. The new song additions are also of varying quality, as copy-pasting existing MVs from Nico Nico has always been controversial and the new PVs have had mixed reception of their own. The localized version has a bit less contention with the DLC practice, since the base game is sold much cheaper than its Japanese counterpart ($39.39 USD) and also has a bundle pack available for $60 that comes with all DLC songs, compared to the Japanese version which charges full price for the base game and an additional ¥4500 for the DLC.
    • Mega39's+/Mega Mix+ notably fixes the setlist issue and also allows you to remove the fixed toon shader, while being sold at effectively the same price as the original release.
• Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: While the series has always had a small but dedicated modding scene, the series finally receiving an official PC release in the form of Megamix+ saw it practically explode, with mods for custom modules, enhanced lighting, porting over MVs from games like X and F2nd and even adding new songs entirely, to the point where it'd be hard to find someone who plays the game completely vanilla unless they're a diehard purist.
• Covered Up: The series features a number of "Vocal Switches" for preexisting Vocaloid songs, such as there being Luka and Rin switches for Miku's "Romeo and Cinderella" in Project mirai and a switch for KAITO in Len's commissioned song "Terekakushi Shishunki" in the mainline Project DIVA series.
• Critical Dissonance: X received high scores all across the board from numerous reviewers, keeping in line with the positive critical reception of the series thus far. Its reception by the fans, however, is a lot more divisive, due to many long-time players complaining that X took out nearly everything enjoyable about the series.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Mega Mix, released for the Nintendo Switch, uses the same symbol for the X button (which is the top button in the ABXY), as the Playstation games do, where "X" is on the bottom. Which has tripped up many players coming from the Playstation games, especially veterans. Fortunately, there is an option to switch to the original Playstation symbols, likely to alleviate this.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Puyo Puyo 39! can get extremely frustrating when MEIKO shows up; she uses Suketoudara's drop pattern, in that she always fills the bottom four rows with fast-drops, then starts pulling off ridiculous 5-Chains, which can make it very difficult for players unfamiliar with Puyo to keep up. Ironically, this is also a case of Schizophrenic Difficulty, since any other character that comes after her will almost always be easier, unless you're playing as Luka (where MEIKO is the Final Boss) or as MEIKO.
  • "Ievan Polkka"'s Extreme variation in F 2nd adds a massive onslaught of notes during the Chance Time segment. This is supposed to be the tutorial, for the record.
  • Anyone moving from the normal console games to Future Tone on PS4 will be punished hard, since even Easy can't be completed with one button. ^note On Project Diva, an Easy song just uses one button, usually Circle, with F and F 2nd adding the Star Note which uses the stick. All difficulties on the Arcade version note maps potentially use all four buttons and optionally Slide Notes. Higher difficulties just change how MANY buttons you press at once.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gumi seems to be a popular addition to the series, judging by her mirai reaction. Unfortunately, her licensing is difficult to negotiate for Project Diva despite how often fans ask for her inclusion.
  • Despite being little more than glorified skins, Sakine MEIKO, Akita Neru, Haku Yowane, and Teto Kasane are all very popular additions thanks to their preexisting popularity with the fanbase.
  • As far as specific modules are concerned; while it is a minor module that has only appeared in a total of four games (Extend, Arcade, Future Tone and Mega Mix), the "Sonic-style" module is one of the most popular modules in the entire series, thanks to it being a very cute looking hoodie stylized after Sonic The Hedgehog.
• Even Better Sequel: The first game was considered decent in its own right, if not a little hampered. Then 2nd rolled around and basically set the standard for the series going forward, with major mechanical overhauls and the introduction of story PVs and the infamous EXTREME difficulty.
  • Project Diva Arcade: Future Tone is considered the de facto version of the arcade game, to the point that it's largely forgotten that Arcade isn't just to indicate it's an arcade game. Not helped by the PS4 version.
• Fanon Discontinuity: If a name in the localized version differs too greatly from the widely-accepted version, it is usually ignored, as fans prefer to refer to the songs with the names that they're comfortable with. This usually applies to the Woolseyisms that are kinda out there, like "Urbandonment" and "Although Songs Have No Form", the latter of which no one can agree on the translation of, and some of the Too Long; Didn't Dub titles like "Roshin Yukai" and "Arifureta Sekai Seifuku". This was not helped by Future Tone's English release reverting and re-translating several names, as if even SEGA can't decide what to call them.
  • Some fans like to pretend the MV for "Kagerou Daze" doesn't exist due to feeling like it misses the point of the song, or disliking how "City Pop" (the module recommended for it) looks.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • One of the biggest criticisms from fans towards X was how Miku-centric it is, with little focus being given to the rest of her co-stars. However, the series from the beginning has always had a heavy focus on Miku due to her popularity (she is the title character after all) with her often getting the lions share of the spotlight compared to her co-stars. The reason why it didn't really become a major vocal problem in previous games was that they still gave the other Vocaloids a good bit of focus and a decent number of songs, despite not getting as many as Miku. X by contrast, only has four out of the game's thirty songs that aren't sung by and/or don't involve Miku in some form, making the large focus on her much more blatant compared to previous games.^note The songs in question are "The Lost One's Weeping" (Kagamine Rin), "Holy Lance Explosion Boy" (Kagamine Len), "A Single Red Leaf" (Megurine Luka), and "Amazing Dolce" (MEIKO, Kagamine Rin and Len).
  • The story mode in X has turned off many fans due to it giving the Vocaloids "officially" defined personalities and relationships in spite of their appeal being that they're blank slates. However, earlier games have also given them "official" personalities and relationships via the opening animations, what with Miku, Len and Rin being classmates, the Homoerotic Subtext between Miku and Rin, the implication of Luka being their teacher, Kaito and Meiko being close friends, etc. The reason why fans didn't take much problem with it in previous games is because it was limited to the opening videos, with the rest of the games being mostly detached from them. X on the other hand, brought those portrayals to the forefront by having a story mode that ties the game together, which fans saw as being imposing on the idea of them blank slates in a way the openings weren't.
  • One common criticism towards Arcade Future Tone and Megamix are that a decent cut of the new songs simply recycle their original MVs as opposed to getting proper 3D ones, with some extreme detractors accusing SEGA of getting lazy (not helping is the fact that quite a few of these songs, like Sand Planet, Dreaming Chuchu and Ohedo Julia-Night, were heavily requested songs prior to being added). Not only was it the original producers' decisions to keep the original MVs, but 2D MVs have been in the series' songlists since the very first game: "The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku", arguably one of the series' most iconic songs, originally had a MV that was just a slideshow of Miku fanart and didn't get a proper 3D MV until the release of Dreamy Theatre about a year later.
• Fridge Horror: Miku may be a tyrant in Sadistic.Music Factory, but she's also doing what she does simply for the sake of survival and escaping the factory (not getting the Chance Time bonus) means leaving her to starve to death!
• Friendly Fandoms: As both are Vocaloid-centric games published by Sega, it's unsurprising that there is a bit of cross-over between players of this series and those that play the games "younger sister" mobile game Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!. As of 2022, there are even several mods of the SEKAI versions of the Virtual Singers added to Project DIVA, as well as requests for some SEKAI commissions to be added to the game as downloadable content.
• Gateway Series: Given the games are essentially a greatest hits complication of both old and new Vocaloid tracks, they make for a great introduction to Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid as a whole. In fact, there have been numerous cases of fans who have become fans of Vocaloid thanks to these games.
• Genius Bonus:
  • In the mirai and Arcade/Future Tone PV for "1/6 -out of the gravity-", the moon segment of the song features strings of numbers flying in the background. There are two distinct strings among them; one is "6.673*10^-11*7.35*10^22/1738000^2 = 1.62m/s^2", or the equation that calculates the rate of acceleration for gravity on the moon. The other is "F=G*M*m/r^2", or the equation for Newton's universal law of gravitation.
  • In the mirai PV for "Kokoro", the lines of code that can be seen in the background when Rin receives a heart are written in Python.
  • The video for "Systematic Love" includes C++ code. Compiling and executing it will write an ASCII heart with "SYSTEMATIC LOVE" written in the middle of it, identical to the one that appears in the PV itself.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Project mirai DX received lukewarm reception in Japan due to being just an Updated Re-release of Project mirai 2; why buy an entire new game just to get one new song and some extra goodies? In the West, it's the first Project mirai game to get a localized release and therefore was much better received.
  • The franchise as a whole is incredibly popular and beloved in the West. Getting to the point that Sega eventually decided to fully localize F due to massive fan demand and to large success, leading to nearly every entry afterwards getting localized.
• Growing the Beard: Project Diva 2nd is regarded as being the point in which the series truly began to shape into what it is now, introducing what are now series hallmarks such as the hold/wide notes, the extreme difficulty and the d-pad as alternate buttons, on top of giving more focus towards the greater Crypton cast, having more elaborate story PVs and having a larger variety of songs in general, amongst many more changes that would refine the overall experience and turn Project Diva into what it is now.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The poor handling of "Kagerou Daze" in both the localized version of F 2nd and its exclusion in Arcade/Future Tone, both the result of licensing, hurts that much more when you realize that the game IA/VT Colorful has almost all of the Kagerou Project songs on its own setlist^note Bar album exclusive songs, Otsukimi Recital, Outer Science and "Konoha's State of the World", which is a Miku/IA duet, which means it can't appear in either game, which can potentially be taken as a sign of favoritism...
    • From what has been said, the composer forbade use of english lyrics on Kagero Daze, and the song has only been in a Project Diva concert ONCE, suggesting that the licensing may well had been revoked around November 2014 for any use.
  • Hiroshi Utsumi left SEGA mid-2016, with the franchise under a dark cloud due to poor reception over Project Diva X, which was intended to be part of an anniversary celebration of Miku's time with the company, with Utsumi promising 'multiple projects' for the following year. Outside of collaboration works and the physical release for Project Diva Future Tone, barely anything new had come out related to Project Diva, Project Diva Arcade or mirai since his departure until the release of Project DIVA: MegaMix in 2020.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Miku uses a Fei-Yen costume in extend. Over a year later, and on a totally different system, Fei-Yen turns into a familiar idol...
  • One of the biggest criticisms for X was the Virtual Singers receiving "canon" characterization to go with the game's storyline. Fans complained about this because they felt like these official portrayals were being forced on them, despite Sega going on the record to say that the characterization was not meant to be taken as how the Virtual Singers actually are. Fast forward a few years later to Sega's second attempt at this in Project SEKAI where they utilized a similar method to the personality-changing modules from X; Instead of the Virtual Singers' personalities changing with their module's aura, they are influenced by the SEKAI they appear in, with their characterization primarily being a reflection of the SEKAI's owners' own traits, though they do have quirks unique to them as well. The "original" Virtual Singers that appear outside of the main SEKAI's have characterization as well, however, they are largely flat characters that don't have much screentime. As well, while fans of the Virtual Singers criticized the game for giving the characters official characterization, they eventually warmed up to the idea, making quite a few of these iterations fan favorites. And ironically, after some time fans began to complain that the Virtual Singers didn't receive enough screentime to expand on their characterization and inner group dynamics compared to the Original Generation.
  • Miku fights a Godzilla rip-off several times in the "Kyoudai Shoujo" PV. Fast forward to 2020 and a version of Miku would get to briefly face the real deal in the Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion movie.
• Ho Yay: Though less often than Miku and Rin, KAITO and Len also get a bit, particularly in the MV of "Erase or Zero", a song that is supposed to be about two friends that cannot meet each other anymore ... but it comes off as incredibly gay because of the lyrics making it sound as though they're longing for each other in a different way. The pair also get some in the last shot of the Project DIVA F opening; The Cryptons are all sitting on the grass in designated pairs, looking like couples - Luka holding hands with MEIKO, Miku is closest to Rin, and KAITO and Len are sitting together◊.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!:
  • The lack of an Extreme difficulty level is one of the more common criticisms of the Project Mirai series. Even the addition of a "Super Hard" mode in DX fails to completely remedy the issue, since it only applies to 6 out of 48 songs and is still easier than the other games' Extreme difficulty.
  • X came under fire for this after F 2nd had given the series a severe Difficulty Spike; even those who felt that F 2nd was too difficult found that X was too easy even compared to f/F. The Voltage system introduced in PDX further compounded the issue, with PDX being far more player-friendly/generous than prior titles.
  • Easy and/or dull charts can also cause players to dislike a track. Note that "hating playing it" and "hating the song" can be separate: some players dislike the chart but are fine with the song.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!:
  • In the same vein as the above, players can also dislike a track because of its difficulty.
  • The timing windows are unusually strict for what's meant to be a Rhythm Game that looks like it would appeal to more casual players. While not as strict as, say, beatmania IIDX, players often complain about getting Safes that would otherwise be Perfects in other games.
  • Future Tone and Mega Mix tend to get this reception from players due to how extremely difficult and unforgiving they are compared to past games. A common criticism is that what would qualify as a great or excellent in the other games can end up being a standard in Future Tone and Mega Mix instead due to how much stricter the timing can get. It also doesn't help that since they are both ports of Arcade: Future Tone, the charts are designed with a special controller in mind and not the normal Dualshock/Joycons/Xbox controllers, with one of the most common criticisms being that the team didn't take into account the differences in controller when porting Future Tone to consoles, making what are already difficult charts even more difficult with a normal controller.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • X has a comparatively tiny setlist. On release, it didn't even come up to the first game in terms of unique songs. DLC added two extra, but it's still not much.
  • Ironically for such a content-filled game, one of the only notable downsides of Future Tone is that it's essentially a rhythm game in its purest form — as in, there actually isn't anything to do other than play the Rhythm Game (and watch PVs). Of course, most fans don't mind this, but it was notable enough for many critics to state the fact. The same applies to Mega Mix, given that it is a port of Future Tone
• It's the Same, So It Sucks: Some fans were less than pleased about MEGA39's being essentially a copy paste of Future Tone with some added gimmicks.
• Les Yay: Miku and Rin have a lot of this in the bonus materials for the games.
  • In Project Diva F and F 2nd, many of the Miku and Rin duet songs are heavily on the shipping, with Summer Idol having them consider going out with each other. Rin looks disappointed when Miku says that's not going to happen. They also sing about how they like the other in Colorful X Melody.
  • And of course there's Luka and Miku in Magnet.
  • "Reverse Rainbow" has Miku kissing Rin (or Luka).
• Memetic Loser:
  • KAITO and MEIKO used to receive this treatment by fans due to the two often getting the least amount of songs and outfits compared to the other characters. In recent years, this has let up as fans tend to treat this as more of an "injustice" more than anything, as they believe the Crypton Virtual Singers should be fairly represented in the game's roster.
  • "packaged", which is often derided for being one of the easiest EXTREME charts ever made. Its F 2nd variant is actually easier than F songs on Hard.
• Memetic Mutation: Safe^ExplanationSafe is the note ranking you get for when you press a note too early, which has become a target of mockery and disdain by fans for how just one safe alone can often break a long combo and completely prevent the player from getting a perfect, even if they were good otherwise. This has especially blew up thanks to Future Tone, due to that game's more brutal nature compared to past games
• Misblamed: Many saw the use of the original 2D PVs for certain songs in Future Tone and Mega Mix instead of original 3D PVs as a lazy cost-cutting measure by Sega. However, according to interviews, the decision to use the original PVs over making new PVs was a deliberate creative choice made by the original producers of those songs, not a cost-cutting measure or act of laziness by Sega.
• Most Wonderful Sound: "PAAFEKUTO!", and to lesser extent "EKUSERENTO!".
• Moe: All of the Vocaloids, particularly during the Diva Room interactions.
• Narm: Gumi and Rin's "swimming" in "Invisible" in mirai DX.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • Project Diva F 2nd is full of it, from English lyrics for all but one of the songs on the localized version to the return of some of the most famous (and infamous) songs and costumes from the PSP games. Not to mention, almost all of the returning songs are part of a poll, which players can vote for a song to appear in the game.
  • Project Diva has been on a handheld and the PS3 ever since it was first released. When the series migrated to the PS4, with Project Diva X, however, it stayed true to its roots, and its fanbase, by announcing it will be releasing first on Playstation Vita.
  • The Ending Medley in Project DIVA X has, for Intense Voice Of Hatsune Miku, purely the fastest part of the song.
  • Project Diva Future Tone is a complete version of the arcade game as of mid-February 2016, missing only Ageage Again and its associated module, which released in the last week of that month, with a grading system and other features that would be impossible on any other release.
    • Notably, the version released as Future Tone DX has literally every song and costume released EVER for Future Tone, even ones released while the original was still being released!
  • Mega39's+/Mega Mix+ paints itself as the ultimate Project Diva title for Steam, including all the songs from the original as baseline content, plus almost every Future Tone song that was omitted, plus some songs that aren't even in Future Tone(!).
• Periphery Demographic: The games are, for the most part, aimed at existing Vocaloid fans, as they expect you to have at least some tangential knowledge of the Internet culture surrounding them - how would you know that Rin likes oranges or Kaito likes ice cream unless you're aware of the memes associated with them beforehand (or following a guide)? Following the localization of f/F into English, however, it gained a small fanbase among non-Vocaloid fan Vita owners due to the lack of games on the console along with the series's collection of indie music, extensive costume system, and aversion of The Problem with Licensed Games in terms of its quality as a series of rhythm games.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Pretty much no one plays X for the included story mode, which gets a lot of focus as being one of the game's highlights. Players who imported the game but are unable to read anything are thus subjected to cutscene padding interspersed between songs during cloud and event requests. Some players who didn't import it also ended up skipping it, due to it ending up being an Excuse Plot.
• Polished Port: The Updated Re-release of Mega Mix on Steam, Mega Mix+, restores all the tracks that were missing from the Switch original, has the option to switch the toon shader on and off (effectively restoring the graphics to how they were in Future Tone), and runs at a full (albeit locked) 60fps (the Switch original only ran at 30fps). On top of all of that, if you have the Steam Deck, you can play it on the go just like the original, but with the aforementioned benefits. While the port does remove Mix mode (since the mode is made exclusively with the joycons in mind) and it isn't without its downsides, such as occasional performance issues and the framerate being locked^note though fans have made unofficial mods to alleviate the performance issues and unlock the framerate, the pros far outweight the cons in this case.
• Quirky Work: Unlike DanceDanceRevolution or beatmania, and Rock Band and Guitar Hero in the West, Vocaloid was largely a niche property when the first game was released. Then SEGA asked if the newest game should be localised. The reaction was immediate. SEGA never looked back.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The first game only allows using the face buttons to hit notes, which can get tiring for harder charts and also comes off as a screw-you to left-handed players. Thankfully all subsequent games allow using the D-pad as well.
  • The star links in F 2nd weren't popular in players. Their timing is often inconsistent with the rest of the song, either much faster or much slower, which throws a lot of players off on their first try. As well as many, many tries after that. It was removed in X along with the wide star notes.
  • Chance Time in the original PSP game can feel like this at times as missing a single note on it in several songs is what could very easily separate a Standard and Great score. It's still this in later games due to heavily weighing one particular late-song section over the rest of the song.
  • Buying a new game means playing all the easier charts to unlock all the harder charts. Part of the charm of Project DIVA is its relatively high difficulty for an official rhythm game, so veterans tend to dislike mulling through fluff to get to the good stuff. Future Tone at least gives Hard charts from the outset, and Arcade has no unlock requirements due to being an arcade game.
  • X's cloud and event requests forces you into a repetitive cycle of Level Grinding in order to gather crystals and unlock all the modules and gift items, most of which are Random Drops. Needless to say, its execution has proved near-universally unpopular.
  • If you go too long without playing Project mirai, the next time you start the game your partner will be mad at you for neglecting them and prevent you from playing until you apologize (either by pressing the "I'm sorry..." button or verbally speaking it). At first, it seems kind of endearing and makes them seem more human and like characters rather than just 3D models. After a few more times, it gets obnoxious and basically punishes you for going on hiatus (whether due to work, school, other games, etc.)
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • The second game, 2nd, makes the acceptable hitboxes for each note far more lenient in exchange for populating charts with more notes in general. It also rebalances Normal mode to have far fewer fast-paced sections.
  • An unusual case where it applies to a single level. In F 2nd, The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku's insane difficulty was greatly reduced from "god-tier" to "possible for most people", although it remains extremely difficult. This also applies to its 20-second appearance in X, which uses a variation of the F 2nd chart.
  • X vastly reduces the presence of gimmicks such as Scratch Notes and overall chart difficulty is far easier compared to the F series.
  • mirai tones down the infamously strict timing windows from the main series and has generally more lenient mechanics (such as all the notes being on a single linear track rather than the "fly-in" system the main series uses).
• Sequel Difficulty Spike:
  • The final PSP entry, extend, may very well be the hardest game in the series. Songs on Extreme are now filled with high-speed rapid chains.
  • F 2nd's Normal mode is much, much more difficult than the previous game, bearing more resemblance to that game's Hard mode. Strangely enough, Hard is about the same, while Extreme is mostly the same with a few charts being even easier.
  • F 2nd also made attaining Diva Points much harder; F had more difficult Challenge Items provide better multipliers, but F 2nd's choice to stack Challenge Items is offset by all of the challenge items having the exact same effect on your DP (50% increase from base DP per Challenge Item), meaning there is next to no reason to activate Cool Perfectionist^*Good and Safe hits decrease Song Energy instead of rising/maintaining it when Nano-targeter^*notes become smaller and Chaos Storm^*notes fly in from random directions have the exact same DP gain for much less dangerous gameplay.
  • Arcade can be very difficult compared to the main series, as it includes heavy Button Mashing on Extreme and many three-Wide Notes. This is coupled with a score-based success system that heavily penalizes you for screwing up a lot. The ranking system is also a lot tighter; just a handful of notes can mean the difference between an Excellent and a Great.
  • The console version of Future Tone manages to be this to both the main series and its own original arcade release. The charts are exactly the same in the console version as they are in the arcade version, and they're very much designed with the arcade machine's button layout in mind, so playing Future Tone with a regular controller is insanely hard and practically forces you to use macros to survive the toughest stages.
• Sequel Displacement:
  • If someone brings up the earlier DIVA games, they will usually be talking about 2nd and not the original. 2nd is the far more iconic installment due to introducing the bulk of the series' main mechanics and ditching the Early-Installment Weirdness of the original.
  • f is often forgotten in favor of its Updated Re-release, F, which includes every song and properly attributes several modules to their correct song.
  • The initial version of Arcade is practically forgotten, even by SEGA, with the Arcade and PS4 version both being solely referred to as Project Diva (Arcade) Future Tone.
  • In non-Japanese regions, Hatsune Miku and Future Stars: Project mirai basically doesn't exist. Its sequel, mirai 2, is far more recognized, since it's used as a base for its localized follow-up, mirai DX.
  • In a very rare case where this trope applies to a particular level, "Sakura Rain" is acknowledged by fans to be a returning song in F 2nd. However, it's rather difficult to find footage of the original PV for the song, since the last game "Sakura Rain" was in was the very first game, six years before F 2nd came out with its version. Even Arcade/Future Tone doesn't acknowledge the original version, since the version ported to Arcade/Future Tone is the F 2nd version.
• Sequelitis: X is the least-liked game in the series for many series veterans. Complaints often point to the Sequel Difficulty Drop, complete lack of "story" videos, the Excuse Plot, the comparatively small setlist (that is heavily Miku-centric compared to past games), and replacing the shop with an extremely grindy system that enforces Fake Longevity to earn cosmetics.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: For veterans of the series, playing a new game means having to unlock every single Hard and Extreme chart from scratch to get back into the swing of things, going through the comparatively effortless Normal charts that can get tedious pretty quickly.
  • Future Tone removes this issue, with every single song having Hard unlocked immediately, and a large number of songs don't even HAVE Easy charts, and the Normal charts are far from effortless.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Whenever someone wears the Mikudayo head, but not the Module, their hair clips through the accessory if they have a hairstyle larger than it. Averted with the Module, which flat out replaces the character.
  • Mikudayo herself causes a lot of incredible screw-ups due to being extremely disproportionate. This includes the camera constantly zooming in on her forehead (where a regular model's head would be), lack of limbs causing her dance routines to look hilariously disjointed (which gets even better with supposedly "provocative" dances, like Blackjack), and constant clipping issues with various props. There are even song-specific things, such as KAITO's violin being removed entirely in "Cantarella ~grace edition~" and Mikudayo clipping through the floor in several Medleys in X. And no, using mods to give Mikudayo the same freedom of movement as the regular characters does not help.
  • Changing the character's hairstyle also change the character's skin tone on face and neck to match the skin tone of the hairstyle's original module, so sometimes the character may have normal skin tone from the neck up, but have pale or tanned skin tone from the neck down.
  • When "Amatsu Kitsune" was ported to Arcade/Future Tone, many considered the visual effect for the comet worse than the original; it now uses a particle effect that makes it difficult to discern that it's a comet.
  • "Roki" from Mega Mix was originally a duet between Rin and the producer, Mikito-P. When the song was added to Project DIVA, it was changed to being a Rin/Len duet... except it's blatantly obvious that Len's parts are superimposed over Mikito-P's existing vocals.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The gameplay of mirai 2 and DX is basically Groove Coaster with Vocaloids.
• Surprise Difficulty:
  • "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" starts off with the memetic tune everyone knows and loves. Then the song starts to change in both style and tempo, at which point a lot of players' runs crash and burn.
  • mirai DX is an otherwise easy game for the most part. Then you hit Gaikotsu Gakudan to Riria...
  • Players of other rhythm games have noted that the main games have unusually strict timing windows for a game series revolving around virtual idols, not helped by how difficult it is to maintain a combo because you only need a few frames off to get a SAFE (which breaks combo) rather than a FINE or a COOL (which maintain it).*
• That One Achievement:
  • Several of the F/F 2nd Trophies can become this not due to difficulty, but because of grinding. For example, both of them have a trophy requiring you to view all loading screen images... with over 100 different pictures this can make it really annoying waiting for the one final picture to show up. Another one requires you to view every single music video in the game, and using the playlist to play them automatically after each other doesn't work - you have to manually start each of them.
    • X took all of the annoying aspects for earning trophies in F/F 2nd and cranked them up to eleven with needing to endlessly grind songs for Random Drops (instead of money) in hopes of getting the items that the characters like in what is a long, tedious process to get them to max level (a player can play the game for 50 hours, gather all of the crystals, have most of the item events, and still not have a single character to max level). Alongside that is the trophy for clearing every request for every song, adding even more Fake Longevity to a title that relies on MMO-level grinding.
  • So many in mirai, due to a combination of vague Stamp descriptions and how reliant some Stamps are on factors beyond your control, such as Stamp #59, which you can kiss goodbye if you don't know anyone with the game or aren't online Friends with anyone who also has the game, or most of the Mirai Room Stamps, which are heavily based on random chance.
  • Averted with Future Tone, which only has achievements for doing tasks in the game which are spelt out in plain terms. Also, you only need to play^note and it does mean play - you can avoid pressing any buttons and still get the trophy ONE song on Extreme difficulty, not all of them.
• That One Boss:
  • The Sphinx in "Hello Planet" for foreign players. It's a minor Puzzle Boss that asks a question, then allows the player to select from three answers; the right one will defeat the Sphinx and allow you to pass. If you mess up, the Sphinx laughs at you and throws you another question. Foreign players of 2nd and Extend will run into trouble due to the fact that being unable to read anything makes it significantly harder, and the order of the answers are randomized each time, preventing players from learning repeat questions and answers easily without the use of a translation guide.
  • MEIKO in Puyo Puyo 39! is feared by players new to Puyo Puyo because her AI is set to fill the first four rows with Puyo, which oftentimes sets up devastating combos.
• That One Level: Every game has a handful of songs that can be absolute devils to play.
  • Whole series:
    • "The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku", full stop. Its 2nd/Extend incarnation has gained infamy among fans for being notoriously brutal in terms of design, possessing absurdly long drumming chains that range anywhere between five and twenty seconds. It also appears in Arcade and F 2nd, but it was nerfed slightly in the latter. The last twenty seconds also makes an appearance in X using a variation of the F 2nd chart. Then Mega Mix added Mix Mode, where Intense Voice returns with a vengeance.
    • cosMo music in general. In fact, a cosMo song has been the Final Boss of every game in the entire main series except F 2nd.
  • F:
    • "Sadistic Music Factory". Everything you want about a hard song: rapid tempo, drumming, and by the time you get to the end, the entire rhythm just completely falls apart.
    • "Nega*Posi Continues". The tempo is so fast that mere button pressing won't suffice; you have to master a slow form of drumming because the normal notes are too fast to push normally but also too slow to drum normally.
    • "Rin-chan Now!". The extremely quick tempo that utilizes a very repetitive note chart that quickly ramps up in difficulty as you push on through the song.
    • "Nyanyanyanyanyanya!". This one takes some time to get used to due to the sudden tempo shifts that can easily throw off unaware players.
  • F 2nd:
    • "Envy Catwalk". While the tempo isn't too fast compared to other difficult charts, this chart has a nasty obsession with drum chains and Star chains, and it lets you know it.
    • "Two-Sided Lovers". It has the same drum chain problem that "Envy Catwalk" has, but worse. The Star Links are of no help either.
    • "2D Dream Fever". In addition to a particularly rapid tempo that has a tricky speed-up portion in the middle, the accompanying video is a nightmare for players sensitive to explosive colors, which can make it difficult to watch for incoming notes.
  • X:
    • "Raspberry*Monster". This one can be a bit unusual because while the chart itself is pretty lax for an EXTREME, if you play on the accompanying stage, it can really hurt for people sensitive to bright colors.
    • "Urotander, Underhanded Rangers". It's an invoked instance of Fake Difficulty (the song is about a team of superheroes who use dirty tricks to win), so naturally it uses every dirty trick to screw with the player. It goes to show that you will not get a Perfect on it the first time you see the chart, and that's a guarantee, not a challenge. It also drops 12 different modules that can't be obtained from any other song, so prepare to grind it a lot if you want to unlock everything.
    • "The Final/X Medley". This is somewhat befitting of a medley that is made of That One Levels. Shifting, rapid tempos and drum chains abound with lots of Wide Notes spliced into seemingly random sections, in addition to a cameo appearance by "The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku."
  • mirai subseries:
    • "Gaikotsu Gakudan to Riria". It's gained notoriety as one of the hardest songs in the entire subseries, in an otherwise relatively easy game. It's so hard, it rivals Super Hard charts in difficulty. While the BPM is low, the chart itself is rapid and furious, chock full of half notes and drumming sections coupled with button switching and Wide Notes spliced in between. A first-time player going into the Hard chart for the first time is in for a rude awakening.
    • "Invisible". It's the second fastest song in the game, losing only to "Matryoshka", but unlike "Matryoshka", it makes up for the lack of cosMo music by having a lot of Motor Mouth segments in the main verses that are coupled with surprisingly difficult lengthy, rapid button switching chains and choruses that literally require dancing your thumbs over all four buttons, making for what is possibly the game's hardest chart.
    • "Matryoshka". It's a fairly frenetic song that also happens to be relatively long. It's possible to start missing notes later on due to how quickly the song wears you out.
    • "Hello/How Are You". Haven't memorized where the song uses half and quarter notes? Prepare for some major suffering, even in relation to mirai songs.
    • "glow". The instrumental part is extremely messy to read as it requires serious button-dancing to pull off.
    • "Ageage Again". The chorus is rather intimidating due to it involving relatively quick 11-note and 5-note chains that involve button swaps.
    • "1925". This song loves throwing half-notes in your face. If you haven't picked up drumming yet, this is a crash-course lesson in it. Not to mention the final chorus, which combines half-notes and Wide Notes.
  • Arcade/Future Tone:
    • If it's on this list, save for "Invisible" and "Matryoshka", which are GUMI songs and therefore cannot appear in Project DIVA, it's also a That One Level in Arcade/Future Tone. These games are also magnitudes harder than any other game in the franchise, and quite a number of charts, like most of the below-mentioned tracks in 10★ Master Course, are even more difficult than their main series incarnations.
    • "PoPiPo" deserves special mention; it gets upgraded to a whopping 10★ in EXTRA EXTREME, as it not only involves high-intensity drum chains linked together in addition to chords thrown everywhere, half the song is literally made of Slide Notes. They're very often spliced in between normal notes with extremely little breathing room between them as well, so a majority of the song is made of frantically Button Mashing while keeping one hand on the Slide Bar. Future Tone does make it easier with the use of analog sticks instead of the Slide Bar.
    • "Denparadigm", one of the only Arcade tracks to have the honor of holding a 10★ rating on EXTREME. This song is breakneck fast. It's possibly the fastest song in the entire franchise, and that takes Intense Voice and Disappearance into account. And a good portion of the song is drum chains. Have fun.
    • If you want to witness increasingly lethal levels of absurdity, take the fastest song in the game and give it an EXTRA EXTREME chart. Watch what happens.
    • "Rolling Girl" EXEX employs gratuitous Fake Difficulty by making Wide Notes and Holds fly in on the screen at distressingly high speeds and bizarre angles (usually involving a rotating motion), making the chart rather difficult to sight-read and enforcing the use of rote memorization.
    • The April 2018 update added "Intense Voice" EXEX. This version deserves special mention because unlike its other charts, which only picked up in difficulty starting in the Motor Mouth segments and featured either long drumming chains between one or two types of notes or short drumming bursts spliced in with gimmick notes, EXEX starts with the game attempting to cram as many Wide Notes as possible into the opening segment while splicing Slide Notes and constant button tapping chains in between Wide Note spam, and the denouement cranks the difficulty up to 13 even by "Intense Voice" standards by having you juggle a constant stream of Wides, Slides, and drum chains simultaneously to the same speed as the original chart.
    • The console release of Future Tone also has a special treat for the really masochistic players: The 10★ Master Course in Survival Course Mode. "Two-Sided Lovers", "2D Dream Fever", "Nega*Posi Continues", and "The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku" on EXTREME difficulty, capped off by "The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku" on EXTRA EXTREME difficulty, the latter of which is considered by-and-far one of the hardest official charts ever made, period. This in a mode where LIFE recovery is halved and you carry one health bar between every song, back to back to back to back to back. If you think you're up to the challenge, God bless your soul.
  • Miscellaneous:
    • Don't try to do any of the Motor Mouth songs on BREAK THE LIMIT difficulty in Miku Flick. Getting a Perfect is actually, literally impossible.
    • A favorite pastime of Edit Mode users is to make custom charts that border on "virtually impossible".
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • This is one of the central complaints against X. Unusually for this trope, it's because they changed it back; the series had been riding on the 2nd formula for four games, then X suddenly goes back to what the first game did, which 2nd was meant to fix. The fandom were NOT happy.
  • Many fans were upset after Mega Mix cut a ton of fan-favorite and iconic songs from the Future Tone setlist (Ievan Polka, Roshin Yuukai, and the vast majority of MEIKO's songs among them) and some less-liked songs made it in in their place, including some examples of That One Level. MegaMix+ rectifies this by re-adding most of them to the game, but it's unknown when these songs will make it back to the previous releases of the game.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • GUMI is merely a guest character in Project Mirai 2/DX and thus she lacks any songs of her own and isn't made playable like the other characters are. While this is understandable since GUMI isn't owned by Crypton Future Media, but by Internet, Co., Ltd, fans can't help but be disappointed that she doesn't have much of a presence despite her popularity and Mirai 2/DX being her only appearance in the series.
  • Despite appearing in the games as playable characters, Kasane Teto, Akita Neru, and Yowane Haku don't receive any songs of their own, nor do they share any with the others, being little more than glorified skins. While this could be understandable for Neru and Haku, given they're merely derivatives of Miku, it is less understandable for Teto, who is an independent voice bank like the main Crypton characters (albeit as an Utauloid) and has several songs under her belt that could've been added to the games (such as "Mischivious Function" and "Song of the Eared Robot", amongst others), but were ultimately ignored instead. That said, in a similar case to Gumi, it's likely that the developers were playing it safe to avoid issues with TWINDRILL, her creator.
• Tough Act to Follow: One of the problems with X is that it came directly after the F series, which had the luck to be both the first games released outside of Japan (thus giving the series its first true international exposure) and be considered some of the best games in the franchise. This only ended up serving to highlight the more unpopular changes in X, thus souring its perception further.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Project mirai DX has a measly six songs available for play on a Harder Than Hard difficulty (Super Hard). And they don't get difficulty ratings, the game instead showing "MAX" where the number would be. It's possible that this is because each song already has a large number of charts (six; three Button charts and three Tap charts) by the series' standards, and adding Super Hard Tap and Button charts for every song would mean having to add another 84 charts on top of the 312 pre-existing charts.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Present in many, many of the PVs, especially in F and F 2nd with "World's End Dance Hall" and "Meteor" being some of the best-looking videos in the series. Many of these are even improved via graphical enhancements through an Arcade port. It's because of this trope that the PV's are so popular on Youtube, with some of the PV's having a higher view count than the original uploads the songs originate from.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The games are rated 12+, however, the series hasn't been shy on including songs about sex, such as "Gigantic OTN" and "Holy Lance Explosion Boy" in X. There's also a number of fanservice-y modules, particularly for the female Virtual Singers though the boys aren't safe either, and KAITO unambiguously dying of a heart attack in "Ashes to Ashes", among other things.
• Woolseyism: Several instances of this in F. For example, one song that would literally translate to "Left-Behind City" was named Urbandonment^*This doesn't really make sense until you realize that "urbandonment" is a pun on "urban" and "abandonment" in similar way that "torinoko city" is a pun on "torinokoshite", and Remote Control became Remote Controller, which is appropriate given the video has the Kagamines controlling each other through their devices.
  • In F 2nd, Narisumashi Genga, normally translated as "Spoofing Genga", became the punny-named Doubleganger, due to what everyone associates Gengar with nowadays. The "Hatsune Miku" outfit from DIVA, which is different from "Hatsune Miku Original", was also translated as "Ha2ne Miku" to avoid confusion and make them distinct, since the original way to tell them apart is impossible in English.
  • In X, Pink Stick Luv is translated to Pincostique Luv in an attempt to be subtle.
  • X has a brief scene where Rin and Len get into a fight, in which the localization has them start slinging pun-related insults at each other. Apparently, the original draft for the localized text was a lot less punny but a lot more savage.
• Win Back the Crowd: Project Diva Future Tone seems to be intended to do this, being literally the entire song library of the games prior to X, with virtually no pointless grind, compared to X's excessive repetition of the entire song list, returning to only needing you to grind, at a much more affordable, compared to every other game, in-game price for the modules and accessories. ^note As an example, the Mikudayo head, being 39,393 DP in F 2nd, drops down to only 3900 VP, and the swimsuits, notorious for also being expensive, are only 3000 VP.

---