Hatsune Miku: Future Tone Review (PS4)
Hi, reader! Why are you reading this and not playing Hatsune Miku: Future Tone right now? Those 224 songs aren’t going to play themselves you know, and unless you hate fun and good music then there’s no reason you shouldn’t have bought this already. You don’t hate fun, do you?
Future Tone consists of 2 games, Future Sound and Colourful Tone, which come together to create Future Tone and both provide unique track lists. You’re more likely to recognise the bulk of the Future Sound which is made up of primarily Project Diva tracks – assuming you’re not new to Hatsune Miku games – whilst Colourful Tone is mostly new and Project Mirai songs. Definitely grab both packs though if you want the full experience because you won’t regret it, and you’ll be hard done to find a game that offers this much content for only £44.99; if you’re on the fence then try out the Prelude demo, which you’ll need to download to play the game anyway.
Unless you hate fun and good music then there’s no reason you shouldn’t have bought this already.
There are a few differences compared to the Project Diva games and this is undeniably a more arcade-like experience. Faster and more challenging than the other games released to date, Future Tone will give even the most experienced players a run for their money with more complex inputs and the Extra Extreme mode — yes, there’s a new difficulty and it’s ready to do anything to ensure you don’t get anywhere near clearing its songs. If that isn’t challenging enough, there’s now an option to play through several songs in a row on one life and yeah, these are difficult! If you’ve played Project Diva games then you should have little difficulty becoming accustomed to Future Tone.
The core gameplay is the same in that you hit corresponding buttons as they appear on-screen, and your timing is reflected in your score so you’ll always be aiming for better. There’s a new ‘slide’ function which involves holding a shoulder button until the arrow on-screen meets its end, and now you’re expected to sometimes hit up to 4 buttons at the same time – getting these several times in a row with different variations is a sure way to become confused! Future Tone is an outstanding rhythm game and Future Tone is the pinnacle of Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid games so far, and I’ll continue to sink hours and hours into this game as it offers an incredible amount of enjoyable content.
Future Tone is an outstanding rhythm game and Future Tone is the pinnacle of Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid games so far.
Its arcade roots shine most brightly in its visuals which are notably different than what is found in Project Diva, and they’re more detailed and fluid — the models can still sometimes look a bit stiff, especially when it comes to faces, but otherwise it’s been a blast seeing songs I love come to life in a fresh, new way. Each song has its own colourfully creative music video too, which you can watch as a music video too if you don’t fancy playing, and considering the amount of content there’s plenty to feast your eyes upon.
The UI is stylish and the song system is simple and makes it easy to find songs alphabetically or through who sings it. You can favourite songs too for your own personal playlist! It’s not a Hatsune Miku game without dozens upon dozens of outfits, known as modules, and accessories though, and it’ll be a while until you’ve earnt enough points to buy all of them — many of the songs have unique modules.
It’s been a blast seeing songs I love come to life in a fresh, new way.
Is it cheating to say that Future Tone has one of the best soundtracks in gaming? Revisiting favourites and warming up to songs which I’m not familiar with, Future Tone has been a musical delight featuring many of the best Vocaloid tracks out there. It’s a great introduction to the world of Vocaloids and you’ll find yourself quickly listening to Vocaloid songs outside of the game too — I listen to them a lot personally! The bulk of the songs feature Hatsune Miku herself but it’s nice to see the other Vocaloids – Luka, Rin, Len, Meiko and Kaito – have several of their own tracks featured as they’ve always been a tad sparse in previous games. All songs have romanji lyrics (romnaji being literal English translations that appear how the Japanese words sound), but they’ve not been translated into English.
I expected Future Tone to be fantastic and it’s managed to meet my lofty expectations.
2017 is off to an incredibly strong start in gaming with Hatsune Miku: Future Tone which I know I’ll return to time and time again, just like I have with the others. You’ll find hours upon hours of content in Future Tone and it’s always ‘ah, just one more song!’ and then you realise that you’ve played another 10 or so! I expected Future Tone to be fantastic and it’s managed to meet my lofty expectations, and I have nothing but praise for SEGA’s release of it, especially as I was doubtful that it would come to the West. £45 is a bargain for the amount of content you get and whether you’re familiar with Vocaloid’s are are being introduced to them with Future Tone, make sure you prepare for one of the best experience’s of 2017 and one of the best rhythm games to grace us.
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