Aiha's Gallery of Leaves

AihaLoveleaf · August 31, 2022

22 hours ago, Yuber6969 said:

Congrats! After watching your video, that speedrun trophy looks worse than it initially sounded. You played like a total boss in that run.

This game sounds like it would be up my alley as I'm a mech nerd. Might pick it up at some point.

Thanks Yuber! The Gauntlet was more intense than I was expecting, too - especially with having to aim and shoot while making jumps. Luckily, memorization does kick in after enough playthroughs.

If you're a mech enjoyer, this is definitely your game. Any Vanquish achiever has the chops for this one.

21 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

Excellent work on completing Titanfall 2, Aiha.

I actually added that one to my profile a couple of months back amidst fear of a possible server issue/closure/something that could've rendered those online trophies unobtainable. So I picked the game for what was essentially dollar change money and did the online at the time. The FPS angle always catches my attention, and the fact that it got so much praise led me to check it out, although admittedly, before checking your review here, I had zero idea what the game was about. Now I know titans will be falling from the sky, lol. xxD

Thank you, Honor. ? Luckily, the online trophies are still plenty obtainable for anybody in 2022 via private matches. Unfortunately, it's sounding like public multiplayer is basically unplayable; sucks for people that actually enjoyed the online.

21 hours ago, Honor_Hand said:

But really, great work on this one. Outstanding job on that Gauntlet level too. I saw the video of your successful attempt, and you played like a boss. Now, 10 hours? Damn. I remember previous CoD's had challenging speedruns in their tutorial levels, but this one here sounds particularly tough. Now I am all the more interested in checking this one out to see if it's really that hard.

I believe I heard others bring up those CoD speedruns in threads about the Gauntlet. The general consensus seemed to be that the Gauntlet was much worse in comparison. Either way, you've played enough similar games that I reckon you'll be finished with the time trial in a much shorter amount of time. My case is a bit unique, since I had to build skills that other games didn't require me to have.

17 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

Always a great feeling when you finish something like the Gauntlet in Titanfall 2.

Too true. Man, I was buzzing when that trophy finally popped, lol. Felt great.

AihaLoveleaf · September 10, 2022

Platinum #40 - Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 2nd (13.36%)
Completion Time: 1 week, 3 days
Game Time: 83 Hours (Records - Play Info)

Project DIVA F 2nd is a bit of a unique experience for me: the trophy list is a 4/10 if done to the bare minimum, but with all the optional challenge I put myself to, and all the skill-based milestones I happened to achieve, I feel more like I stepped out of an 8/10 playthrough. This is a game that you can get as much or little out of as you want to -- safe to say I got a ton out of my playthrough, and re-lit my spark for the series in general.

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 2nd released in all regions in 2014 for the PlayStation 3 and Vita, and serves as a sequel to Project DIVA F. Like the title before it, DIVA F 2nd is a rhythm game that has you tapping PlayStation icons on screen to the rhythm of the music. If you've played DIVA F beforehand, you can import your save data to carry over items unlocked in the previous game. Save import won't cause any trophies to autopop, nor does it seem to actually contribute to any trophy progress (despite what the guide might say), but it does allow you to bring over your costumes and furniture items.

Core gameplay in F 2nd is largely unchanged, but there are still a number of noteworthy changes to be pointed out. The tracklist features 40 new songs - various flavors of J-Pop with a blend of other genres including electro, trance, eurobeat, punk, and so on. Theme song for the game this time around is Decorator by kz (livetune) - a treat to see and hear, as kz is one of my favorite Vocaloid producers. Additionally, game data will install upon your first boot, which helps with loading times (and there will be a lot of them). Additional subtitle options are present for songs now, giving you a choice between Romaji and English translation. I would have liked to see proper 日本語 as an option too, but it's no big deal as you rarely have time to look at the lyrics regardless. Lastly, a set of unlockables have been integrated into each song, granting replayability and encouraging coming back to songs that you may otherwise have skipped over after the first play.

Unfortunately, some irritating downsides are still present. The most obvious flaw is that F 2nd is still 30 FPS - something I really hate to see in a rhythm game. Framerate is something that really should have been given priority here, even if other visuals would have needed to be cut back as a consequence. Lack of an actual practice mode also burns, especially when you're trying to obtain Perfect scores (AKA full combo). Once you're at the skill level to Perfect a chart, it's often the Chance Time, or a single Technical Zone that is likely to trip you up - something that usually amounts to seconds of a song at most. Being able to drill difficult sections to perfection, without having to pull up a video on YouTube would have been amazing. Restarting songs during play is almost sinfully brutal, as you have to sit through a loading screen and another confirmation screen afterwards; restarts should always take you right to the beginning of the song - ready to play.

But at least the loading screens are cute

Now, coming back to the good stuff: you're going to be spending a lot more time than before in the Rhythm Game of F 2nd, meaning the part where you're slapping buttons to the beat - we'll get to the DIVA Room later. Part of this is due to the mandatory playthroughs of all 40 songs on Normal and Hard difficulty, which is also a requirement present in Project DIVA F. Unlockables for each song are where most of your time will be spent for this part of the game. Conditions will need to be met for each song - such as cumulative scores of 3,900,000, or cumulative combo of varying amounts across multiple plays - in order to unlock Modules (AKA costumes) and other things.

The extra song plays required for all the unlocks can be tedious, and can be a grind... but only if you let it. It is possible to play for most of the unlockables on Normal or Hard difficulty, mindlessly repeating charts that don't engage you for an experience that will likely bore you to tears.

Don't do that. Given that you have to play through the full tracklist on Hard mode anyway, you're being set up with the skills needed to push forward into Extreme charts, assuming you didn't have them before - so take advantage of that. Rhythm Games are their most engaging - their most brain-ticklingly addicting - when you're pushing the limits of your ability, and learning to do what you couldn't do before.

The roughly 60 hours I spent in DIVA F 2nd's Rhythm Game were some of the most fruitful I've experienced in gaming in quite a while. I managed to pull off a total of 12 Extreme Perfects - just a little over 1/4th of the total tracklist. My skill ceiling also finally progressed to the point of getting my first actual passes on the game's two 10 star charts (The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku, and 2D Dream Fever). I was also able to obtain an Excellent rating in Two-Sided Lovers, which - despite being just a 9 star - happens to be one of the hardest charts in the notoriously difficult Dreamy Theater series; something that makes me quite optimistic for the future. I could have saved some time here by playing a little more optimally, but I've got no regrets, considering how much it paid off in skill progression.

My current highest star Perfect (8.5★) - pleased that it was done on such a fun chart

DIVA F 2nd sees the welcome return of some neat features, like Edit Mode. Edits allow users to create brand new charts using songs already in the game, or mp3s that you import yourself to the PS3's hard drive. Provided you pick good edits from decent chart makers, this extends playability wonderfully, and opens you up to great practice opportunities, such as Let's Say the P Names - which I was able to push through to the end of... though my score wasn't pretty.

You've also got Studio Mode, giving you the ability to pose the Vocaloids whatever way you like for cute photo opportunities. Most will likely quickly snap their 10 photos for the trophy and move on, but those that care to take the time might make something they like.

Studio Live also returns from DIVA F, allowing you once again to enjoy stage performances of songs previously performed for a live audience. J-Pop done with a live band is always a real treat to hear, so if that happens to be your thing, you'll likely find these live songs to be a charming experience.

Speaking of returning features: DIVA Room also rears its ugly head once again, and it's even worse than last time. DIVA Room isn't a terrible concept on paper -- it actually is entertaining if enjoyed casually, but unfortunately, having trophies tied to it mostly sours that part of the experience. For those that don't know: DIVA Room is a 3D space where you watch and interact with each member of the Project DIVA roster individually. You can pat their heads, give them gifts, or play mini-games with them to raise affection points in a dating sim-esque manner in order to unlock most of what you need in terms of trophies.

In the first DIVA game, the DIVA Room wasn't a big investment, and I was able to finish within a few hours. Unfortunately, F 2nd's DIVA Room took me about 20 hours to finish. There are two big reasons that DIVA Room drags on for so long this time around: firstly, you're put on a cooldown timer after patting and gifting -- if you want to raise affection levels, or see all the gift item events, you have to wait. This leads to you awkwardly idling in the DIVA Room for hours on end, or playing songs while waiting on your cooldowns to pass. Fortunately, you can purchase an extra DLC character that doesn't have a cooldown on gifting; this saves hours on the DIVA Room grind, and is 100% worth the value, but you're still going to be working on those unlocks for a while.

Secondly, the DIVA Room has a ridiculously high amount of requests you have to fulfill: 78 in all! Requests are events that occur randomly after patting or gifting a character - they may ask to play games with you like Patty Cake, or to change the music or furniture. You have no real control over when a request happens, and you have to deal with the patting/gifting cooldown, which equates to hours of awkwardly idling the DIVA Room and praying for requests. This all makes for a rather sour portion of what is otherwise an amazing experience, though certainly not sour enough for me to regret playing.

At least KAITO knows what's good for his DIVA Room, though

Like the game before it, DIVA F 2nd's trophy difficulty is nothing major. If played to the bare minimum, you're only required to play on Normal and Hard, with only a few of the easier Extreme charts being asked for along the way. Help Items are there to make songs easier if needed, and don't void any trophies - so feel free to use them. If you've already gotten the Platinum for Project DIVA F, you won't have any problems here, and even those new to the genre will likely pick up pretty quickly.

DIVA F 2nd has been a rewarding experience - not just for the trophy milestone, but the skill-based milestones I reached in the game as well. This playthrough re-lit my fire for the series, and I'm excited to see where I can go with continued practice. Chances are that I'll continue to play DIVA F and F 2nd, and continue working towards more Extreme Perfects. If I eventually work up the skill and confidence to go for the biggest boys in the DIVA franchise, I'll let you guys know, but for now I'll just keep practicing and having fun.

serrated-banner9 · September 11, 2022

well done

Yuber6969 · September 11, 2022

Congrats! I had pretty similar opinions about F2, except that I was way less tolerant of the Diva Room lol.

Nice job on all those perfects. Think you'll tackle Diva X soon?

AihaLoveleaf · September 12, 2022

15 hours ago, serrated-banner9 said:

well done

Thank you! I appreciate it. ?

6 hours ago, Yuber6969 said:

Congrats! I had pretty similar opinions about F2, except that I was way less tolerant of the Diva Room lol.

Thanks Yuber!

The Diva room occasionally redeemed itself with a cute or funny moment here and there, and I was actually pretty okay with it for the item events and 50 requests, but discovering I needed 28 more requests afterwards finally broke me, lol. Happier now than ever that there is only one stack for F 2nd.

Still never got that 100% on level 3 Patty Cake, but I think the only way it would happen is if I could remap the analog sticks to buttons on my HORI mini controller. Maybe someday if I ever come back for the rest of the titles.

6 hours ago, Yuber6969 said:

Nice job on all those perfects. Think you'll tackle Diva X soon?

Definitely. Any concerns I had about the game are pretty much completely evaporated at this point. I'm thinking that DIVA X will be the next milestone, unless something crazy happens to make me reconsider.

Cave Johnson · September 12, 2022

On 8/21/2022 at 6:21 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Platinum #38 - Senran Kagura Estival Versus (31.00%)

On 8/28/2022 at 9:06 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Platinum #39 - Titanfall 2 (8.29%)

It's been about a month now, and I can't say I have much to add regarding these two games; it's been a while since I played Estival Versus and I know next to nothing about Titanfall. On the other hand, I have a lot more to say about Project Diva in general (as you probably know already).

On 9/10/2022 at 4:38 PM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Project DIVA F 2nd is a bit of a unique experience for me: the trophy list is a 4/10 if done to the bare minimum, but with all the optional challenge I put myself to, and all the skill-based milestones I happened to achieve, I feel more like I stepped out of an 8/10 playthrough. This is a game that you can get as much or little out of as you want to -- safe to say I got a ton out of my playthrough, and re-lit my spark for the series in general.

Only doing the bare minimum is probably why some people struggle with Project Diva X, so in that sense it's good that you went beyond that. Not only that of course, but there's a lot of fun to be had outside of the trophies—grinding to buy furniture isn't very fun nor rewarding.

On 9/10/2022 at 4:38 PM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Unfortunately, some irritating downsides are still present. The most obvious flaw is that F 2nd is still 30 FPS - something I really hate to see in a rhythm game. Framerate is something that really should have been given priority here, even if other visuals would have needed to be cut back as a consequence. Lack of an actual practice mode also burns, especially when you're trying to obtain Perfect scores (AKA full combo). Once you're at the skill level to Perfect a chart, it's often the Chance Time, or a single Technical Zone that is likely to trip you up - something that usually amounts to seconds of a song at most. Being able to drill difficult sections to perfection, without having to pull up a video on YouTube would have been amazing. Restarting songs during play is almost sinfully brutal, as you have to sit through a loading screen and another confirmation screen afterwards; restarts should always take you right to the beginning of the song - ready to play.

Prioritizing visuals over performance was a really poor and puzzling design decision, especially considering Dreamy Theater is 60 FPS on PS3. What makes it even more odd is that some of these songs have the same backgrounds in both versions—Packaged is one example. Having an actual practice mode would've been nice too; playing the same song 20 times for one section is not fun.

On 9/10/2022 at 4:38 PM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Part of this is due to the mandatory playthroughs of all 40 songs on Normal and Hard difficulty, which is also a requirement present in Project DIVA F.

That's a requirement I could do without. You'd think that after releasing a few games in the series, newer entries would've had extreme or at least hard unlocked right away.

On 9/10/2022 at 4:38 PM, AihaLoveleaf said:

The roughly 60 hours I spent in DIVA F 2nd's Rhythm Game were some of the most fruitful I've experienced in gaming in quite a while. I managed to pull off a total of 12 Extreme Perfects - just a little over 1/4th of the total tracklist. My skill ceiling also finally progressed to the point of getting my first actual passes on the game's two 10 star charts (The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku, and 2D Dream Fever). I was also able to obtain an Excellent rating in Two-Sided Lovers, which - despite being just a 9 star - happens to be one of the hardest charts in the notoriously difficult Dreamy Theater series; something that makes me quite optimistic for the future. I could have saved some time here by playing a little more optimally, but I've got no regrets, considering how much it paid off in skill progression.

12 extreme perfects, nicely done! Based on what you've written here, I doubt you'll have any problems with the difficulty of Project DIva X. Also, I should note that in Dreamy Theater 2nd (not sure about Extend), extreme difficulty generally isn't on the same level as extreme in F, F 2nd and X. This is particularly noticeable with songs that are in both versions, like Romeo and Cinderella, where the chart is clearly easier in Dreamy Theater 2nd. There are exceptions, though, with the prime example being The Intense Voice Of Hatsune Miku.

On 9/10/2022 at 4:38 PM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Speaking of returning features: DIVA Room also rears its ugly head once again, and it's even worse than last time. DIVA Room isn't a terrible concept on paper -- it actually is entertaining if enjoyed casually, but unfortunately, having trophies tied to it mostly sours that part of the experience.

Perhaps you've heard about it, but the Diva Room is considerably worse in Project Diva X. The only way to raise affection is through gifts, which barely do anything unless the gift is given at a vocaloid's request. These requests only appear after playing five songs with one vocaloid, and choosing the wrong gift (which isn't always clear) will lower their affection. It's kind of ridiculous how the Diva Room got exponentially worse from F to F 2nd to X; had the pattern continued, the next grind would've taken a few hundred hours, probably.

On 9/10/2022 at 4:38 PM, AihaLoveleaf said:

DIVA F 2nd has been a rewarding experience - not just for the trophy milestone, but the skill-based milestones I reached in the game as well. This playthrough re-lit my fire for the series, and I'm excited to see where I can go with continued practice. Chances are that I'll continue to play DIVA F and F 2nd, and continue working towards more Extreme Perfects. If I eventually work up the skill and confidence to go for the biggest boys in the DIVA franchise, I'll let you guys know, but for now I'll just keep practicing and having fun.

Talking about this has made me want to fire up F and F 2nd again, and I also need to go back to Dreamy Theater 2nd (got kind of burned out doing Easy and Normal perfects). I wouldn't say that I particularly have the skill or confidence to 100% Dreamy Theater 2nd, but that didn't stop me from starting it on my account anyway, lol. Anyway, when you go for Project DIva X, I'd highly recommend becoming familiar with how to effectively raise affection from the beginning to reduce the grind later on. I don't remember a lot from it, although one useful bit of advice I can give is this: if you give the wrong gift by mistake, you can quickly close the application before the game autosaves. This results in having to play one song to trigger the request again (the last song played won't count after closing the application), but it's vastly preferable to losing affection points and wasting a request opportunity.

AihaLoveleaf · September 12, 2022

17 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

Only doing the bare minimum is probably why some people struggle with Project Diva X, so in that sense it's good that you went beyond that. Not only that of course, but there's a lot of fun to be had outside of the trophies—grinding to buy furniture isn't very fun nor rewarding.

You're so right; just playing the game is a joy in itself, and I found myself with such a massive surplus of DIVA Points from playing Extremes that it made me regret bothering with Challenge Items on Normal and Hard -- could have focused on squeezing out a few more Perfects instead! I do like how there are still Titles unlocking after the Platinum, though; it gives me the same lizard brain tickle that a trophy pop does, lol.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

Prioritizing visuals over performance was a really poor and puzzling design decision, especially considering Dreamy Theater is 60 FPS on PS3. What makes it even more odd is that some of these songs have the same backgrounds in both versions—Packaged is one example. Having an actual practice mode would've been nice too; playing the same song 20 times for one section is not fun.

I found out fairly recently that Dreamy Theater actually is 60 FPS, and it made my jaw drop a little. Insane that the series took a massive step backwards in terms of performance during the PS3 era. Happy that Sega got their act together for the PS4 games with a proper 60, at least.

Lack of Practice Mode really is suffering. ? Tricky sections aside, I also enjoyed drilling the end of a map in Future Tone, just to keep my nerves from getting the best of me on a good run. I've already been bit a few times screwing up an easy note at the end, lol, but that's just part of the process.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

That's a requirement I could do without. You'd think that after releasing a few games in the series, newer entries would've had extreme or at least hard unlocked right away.

I think I'm with you on this one, too. ? When I had to play through Normal and Hard I figured "Well I probably need the extra DIVA Points anyway" but considering the massive surplus of points I had afterwards, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I'm afraid we would have gotten stuck with a Normal and Hard playthrough regardless, though, since Titles probably don't stack--based on Easy mode's Title not stacking with Normal. Anyway, Future Tone got pretty close by letting us play Hard right away, so maybe the next DIVA game will finally let us get right to the good stuff.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

12 extreme perfects, nicely done! Based on what you've written here, I doubt you'll have any problems with the difficulty of Project DIva X. Also, I should note that in Dreamy Theater 2nd (not sure about Extend), extreme difficulty generally isn't on the same level as extreme in F, F 2nd and X. This is particularly noticeable with songs that are in both versions, like Romeo and Cinderella, where the chart is clearly easier in Dreamy Theater 2nd. There are exceptions, though, with the prime example being The Intense Voice Of Hatsune Miku.

Thank you! Feeling pretty good about DIVA X at this point, so it's been bumped up the queue. Even X is baby stuff compared to what's being asked for in Dreamy Theater. Speaking of which - thank you for letting me know about the Extreme charts in DT. ? I only looked at Intense Voice and Two-Sided Lovers to compare the PSP charts to F 2nd--didn't have time to scan every single Extreme chart on those games, so it's great to hear they're mostly manageable. Intense Voice really is no joke, though! I can't believe Sega unleashed that chart on PSP players in 2010, lol - insane.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

Perhaps you've heard about it, but the Diva Room is considerably worse in Project Diva X. The only way to raise affection is through gifts, which barely do anything unless the gift is given at a vocaloid's request. These requests only appear after playing five songs with one vocaloid, and choosing the wrong gift (which isn't always clear) will lower their affection. It's kind of ridiculous how the Diva Room got exponentially worse from F to F 2nd to X; had the pattern continued, the next grind would've taken a few hundred hours, probably.

I took a peek at the DIVA X guide/forum a few days ago and... the DIVA Room does sound horrible. ? At least before I could just hoard gifts with my points, but I heard you have to RNG for gifts as loot drops from songs now--ridiculous! I've also witnessed some horror stories of a few people having to play the same song a few hundred times just to get through the DIVA Room... really hoping there's a way to avoid that; if I can go score-chasing like I did in F 2nd while taking care of the DIVA Room, that will at least make the experience a little easier to bear. The medleys/requests do look fun, though, based on what I saw on YouTube; I'm looking forward to playing those.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

Talking about this has made me want to fire up F and F 2nd again

It's worth it! Not gonna lie - Future Tone really demotivated me for a bit with the steep uphill climb provided by those multi-notes; it felt pretty ridiculous to even be gated out of 8 star Perfects when the flurry of multi-notes eventually arrived late in the song. I'll come back for Future Tone eventually, but... F/F 2nd just feels so good right now -- the straightforward progression I'm getting out of the two games really has me obsessed, and since Dreamy Theater charts are "old DIVA", I can play the old games 100% guilt free, which is amazing.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

and I also need to go back to Dreamy Theater 2nd (got kind of burned out doing Easy and Normal perfects).

I can imagine. ? Not that Easy/Normal charts are insane or anything, but the lack of note density can catch me off-guard at times, and lead to me getting SAFE due to mistiming a note that I didn't expect lined up on an offbeat. Having to replay an entire 1-3 star chart - possibly multiple times - due to silly mistakes like that can get real old real quick, I would think.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

I wouldn't say that I particularly have the skill or confidence to 100% Dreamy Theater 2nd, but that didn't stop me from starting it on my account anyway, lol.

You're definitely braver than I. ? Dreamy Theater 2nd and Extend will eventually show up on my list, but I want to make sure I at least have a fighting chance first. I do feel pretty confident about DT1 at this point though, and may be popping that trophy list sometime in 2023, if I can get all the necessary components lined up for it.

Speaking of Dreamy Theater 2nd: I'm working on a set of Edits for F 2nd right now meant to help build up the skill needed for DT2/Extend, and I'm already noticing improvements in my own ability just from playtesting them. It'll probably be a week or so before I finish them up, but I'm interested in having a good player test them out, if you're going back to the DIVA F games. If so, I'll hit you up once they're ready.

18 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

Anyway, when you go for Project DIva X, I'd highly recommend becoming familiar with how to effectively raise affection from the beginning to reduce the grind later on. I don't remember a lot from it, although one useful bit of advice I can give is this: if you give the wrong gift by mistake, you can quickly close the application before the game autosaves. This results in having to play one song to trigger the request again (the last song played won't count after closing the application), but it's vastly preferable to losing affection points and wasting a request opportunity.

Thank you for the heads-up here, too. I did tend to hold off on DIVA Room for the most part, aside from occasional headpat, at least while I was working on the bulk of the Rhythm Game. It sounds like I better get educated early on for X, though, given the level of grind. ? I'll try to get familiar with gifting from the beginning, and keep my cloud saves regularly updated just in case

Cave Johnson · September 13, 2022

9 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

You're so right; just playing the game is a joy in itself, and I found myself with such a massive surplus of DIVA Points from playing Extremes that it made me regret bothering with Challenge Items on Normal and Hard -- could have focused on squeezing out a few more Perfects instead! I do like how there are still Titles unlocking after the Platinum, though; it gives me the same lizard brain tickle that a trophy pop does, lol.

From what I remember, some of the challenge items gave less points in F 2nd compared to the first one. Either way, it didn’t really matter as playing extreme resulted in amassing enough points. Some titles are kind of ridiculous (like the one for spending 100 hours in edit mode), but yeah, going for the other ones can be fun too.

9 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Lack of Practice Mode really is suffering. Tricky sections aside, I also enjoyed drilling the end of a map in Future Tone, just to keep my nerves from getting the best of me on a good run. I've already been bit a few times screwing up an easy note at the end, lol, but that's just part of the process.

Screwing up right at the end is indeed a part of the process, painful, but part of it nonetheless. Speaking of which, DT 2nd really could’ve used some kind of practice mode for some of the more questionable chart decisions. The last string of 1/8 notes at the end of Kogane no Seiya (hard difficulty example) aren’t actually timed to the music, and are the worst choke point ever, for example.

9 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Intense Voice really is no joke, though! I can't believe Sega unleashed that chart on PSP players in 2010, lol - insane.

I tried to play that exact chart on PSP without knowing what I was getting into. Needless to say, I failed pretty badly. How that’s supposed to be playable on PSP without destroying the buttons, I have no idea.

9 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

I took a peek at the DIVA X guide/forum a few days ago and... the DIVA Room does sound horrible. At least before I could just hoard gifts with my points, but I heard you have to RNG for gifts as loot drops from songs now--ridiculous! I've also witnessed some horror stories of a few people having to play the same song a few hundred times just to get through the DIVA Room... really hoping there's a way to avoid that; if I can go score-chasing like I did in F 2nd while taking care of the DIVA Room, that will at least make the experience a little easier to bear. The medleys/requests do look fun, though, based on what I saw on YouTube; I'm looking forward to playing those.

That’s the problem with X, there are far too many things that depend on random drops. Having to play the same song a few hundred times sounds unlikely, though. In my case, the affection grind outlasted everything else. Also, the medleys and requests can be fun, but the song list feels kind of short compared to previous games. It doesn't help that there are only two DLC songs, either.

9 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

It's worth it! Not gonna lie - Future Tone really demotivated me for a bit with the steep uphill climb provided by those multi-notes; it felt pretty ridiculous to even be gated out of 8 star Perfects when the flurry of multi-notes eventually arrived late in the song. I'll come back for Future Tone eventually, but... F/F 2nd just feels so good right now -- the straightforward progression I'm getting out of the two games really has me obsessed, and since Dreamy Theater charts are "old DIVA", I can play the old games 100% guilt free, which is amazing.

I couldn’t really get into Future Tone until I played the arcade version, and even then I’ve barely touched the console version since. There’s something about it that’s just not as fun as the older style.

9 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Speaking of Dreamy Theater 2nd: I'm working on a set of Edits for F 2nd right now meant to help build up the skill needed for DT2/Extend, and I'm already noticing improvements in my own ability just from playtesting them. It'll probably be a week or so before I finish them up, but I'm interested in having a good player test them out, if you're going back to the DIVA F games. If so, I'll hit you up once they're ready.

For whatever reason, I never got around to playing any edit songs. Now is a good time to change that, though; I certainly wouldn't mind testing some out.

Honor_Hand · September 15, 2022

Outstanding work on clearing and platinum'ing Hatsune Miku. Project DIVA F 2nd, Aiha. =D

Fair to say you had a blast playing that one given all the extra time you spent on it. Unfortunately, there's very little I could say about the game as I have very little experience with rhythm games in general. ^^;; This one does look like a good time considering all the extra enjoyment you got out of it. That and that it prepared you for the big boys/girls leagues of rhythm game mastery later on.

That DIVA Room grinding and head patting sounds like it was quite intense, though. Even with the use of that extra DLC character. x3

AihaLoveleaf · September 19, 2022

On 9/15/2022 at 4:42 PM, Honor_Hand said:

Outstanding work on clearing and platinum'ing Hatsune Miku. Project DIVA F 2nd, Aiha. =D

Fair to say you had a blast playing that one given all the extra time you spent on it. Unfortunately, there's very little I could say about the game as I have very little experience with rhythm games in general. ^^;; This one does look like a good time considering all the extra enjoyment you got out of it. That and that it prepared you for the big boys/girls leagues of rhythm game mastery later on.

That DIVA Room grinding and head patting sounds like it was quite intense, though. Even with the use of that extra DLC character. x3

Thank you, Honor! Had a blast for sure, and am having even more fun now that I can just play without touching the DIVA Room. ?

The DIVA F list you opened up a while ago is fortunately far less grindy, while still being a fun game. I'll do my best to help you get the most of it when you come back around for it. No rush, though -- you've got a lot of projects ahead of you.

On 9/13/2022 at 2:51 AM, Cave Johnson said:

For whatever reason, I never got around to playing any edit songs. Now is a good time to change that, though; I certainly wouldn't mind testing some out.

I was away from both my PS3 and computer last week, but I'm still in there with F and F 2nd! My Edits are all finished, and just about ready to upload, but I'm going to playtest them for a few more days to make sure they're fit for the public. I'll send you a private message in a few days when it's time for testing. ?

Deadly_Ha_Ha · September 19, 2022

AihaLoveleaf · October 7, 2022

Hello friends, let's talk about video games. Specifically, rhythm games. A lot of cool things have happened recently, despite the lack of trophies popped over the last month. I'll be covering three series of games today.

Project DIVA F and F 2nd Progress Update

The last post from me in this thread was a review for Project Diva F 2nd. My reaction to the game was overwhelmingly positive, and it's sparked an obsessive gameplay binge in both DIVA F and F 2nd that has been ongoing for over a month now. Skill milestones reached while going for the F 2nd Platinum were pretty great, but what has been achieved since then has been so much greater.

Let's talk about scores. Full combos -- referred to in DIVA as "Perfect" ratings -- are the most impressive markers of progress, so we'll talk about those first. My number of Extreme Perfects has gone way up, now that I've had time to work on them specifically. In Project DIVA F, I currently have 34 Extreme charts at Perfect rating out of the 38 song tracklist. In F 2nd, that number is up to 28 Perfects out of 41 songs. The progress in DIVA F is particularly interesting, as there are only four songs left to Perfect. It's a weird feeling to almost be "done" with a DIVA game, at least as far as the Extreme charts are concerned. The 10★ charts are no joke, though, and are going to take a lot of continued practice.

After a lot of near misses, I've finally started achieving Perfects on 9★ charts. Funny enough, I actually achieved a 9.5★ Perfect before the 9★ Perfects started rolling in. I had something of a curse that took a while to break, with several one-miss plays on what would have been my first 9★. These are my current Perfects at 9★ and above:

I'm right on the verge of getting a few more Perfects in the 9-9.5★ range, and they could happen tomorrow or within the next couple of weeks, but this is what I have right now. I'll put the rest of my scores from both games in the spoilers below, if you're curious to see what's done, and what's still pending.

DIVA F Scores (Picture link if the spoiler breaks)

Spoiler

F1 Songs (Perfect: 34/38)
Acute (7★) ?
Time Machine (7★)　?
Ashes to Ashes (7★)　?
Freely Tomorrow (7★)　?
Continuing Dream (7★)　?
Cat Food (7.5★)　?
DYE (7.5★)　?
Glasses (7.5★)　?
Nostalogic (7.5★)　?
Stay With Me (7.5★)　?
Odds & Ends (7.5★)　?
Weekender Girl (7.5★)　?
World's End Umbrella (7.5★)　?
Black★Rock Shooter (7.5★)　?
Tell Your World (7.5★)　?
Monochrome∞Blue Sky (8★)　?
Fire◎Flower (8★)　?
Urbandonment (8★)　?
What Do You Mean!? (8★)　?
God-Tier Tune (8★)　?
Melancholic (8★)　?
Tengaku (8★)　?
Remote Controller (8★)　?
Tokyo Teddy Bear (8★)　?
Dream-Eating Monochrome Baku (8★)　?
Hm? Ah, Yes (8.5★)　?
Secret Police (8.5★)　?
The MMORPG Addict's Anthem (8.5★)　?
Summer Idol (8.5★)　?
Sweet Devil (8.5★)　?
World's End Dance Hall (9★)　?
Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! (9★)　?
Kagamine HachiHachi Flower Fight (9★)　
Senbonzakura (9★)　?
Unhappy Refrain (9.5★) [Excellent]
Rin-chan Now! (9.5★)　?
Sadistic.Music∞Factory (10★) [Excellent]
Negaposi*Continues (10★) [Excellent]

DIVA F 2nd Scores (Picture link if the spoiler breaks)

Spoiler

F 2nd Songs (Perfect: 28/41)
Packaged (7★) ?
Sakura Rain (7★) ?
I'll Miku-Miku You♪ (For Reals) (7★) ?
Thousand Year Solo (DIVA Edit) (7★) ?
Meteor (7★) ?
Melt (7.5★) ?
Kokoro (7.5★) ?
Roshin Yukai (7.5★) ?
Clockwork Clown (7.5★) ?
Love-Hate (7.5★) ?
Erase or Zero (7.5★) ?
Hello, Worker (7.5★) ?
Cantarella ～Grace Edition～ (7.5★) ?
Decorator (7.5★) ?
The World is Mine (7.5★) ?
Miracle Paint (8★) ?
Luka Luka ★ Night Fever (8★) ?
Colorful x Melody (8★) ?
Double Lariat (8★) ?
SPicA -39's Giving Day Edition- (8★) ?
Pinky Swear (8★) ?
Two Breaths Walking (8★) ?
Soundless Voice (8★) ?
Glory 3usi9 (8★) [Excellent]
Romeo and Cinderella (8.5★) ?
Wintry Winds (8.5★) [Excellent]
Clover☘Club (8.5★) ?
Close and Open, Demons and The Dead (8.5★) [Excellent]
Kagerou Daze (8.5★) ?
This is the Happiness and Peace of Mind Committee (8.5★) [Excellent]
Akatsuki Arrival (8.5★) ?
Doubleganger (8.5★) [Excellent]
Break It, Break It! (8.5★) [Excellent]
Blackjack (8.5★) [Excellent]
Paradichlorobenzene (9★) [Excellent]
Envy Cat Walk (9★) [Excellent]
Knife (9★) ?
Ievan Polkka (9★) [Standard]
Two-Sided Lovers (9.5★) [Excellent]
The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku (10★) [Great]
2D Dream Fever (10★) [Excellent]

My skill ceiling -- meaning my ability to perform on charts above what I can full combo -- has risen quite a bit as well. Between the four 10★ charts available in both games, I've earned Excellent ratings in three of them. The final Technical Zone of the F 2nd version of Intense Voice is still a bit too brutal for me, so I only have a Great on it. Out of the three 10★ Excellents that I do have at the moment, I'm the most excited about Sadistic.Music∞Factory, as the song has a lot of tempo changes towards the end that makes it very difficult to combo. Slowly getting the hang of it, though, and I hope to be ready for Perfect on it in the future.

To put all of this into perspective, it's worth talking about hours spent on the franchise as a whole so far. I started getting serious about the game in 2021, after finishing the list for Future Tone. Future Tone is the first DIVA game where I made a real effort to push into Extreme charts, and start raising my skill level in anticipation of more difficult games in the series in the future. I did mention before that I briefly played Project Diva games on PSP and PS3 about 9 years ago, but I peaked at Hard difficulty - and given that even the 3,100 Platinum achievers of Project DIVA F have to play Hard difficulty, that brief period can basically be discarded. Even if it must be included in the upcoming math, it wouldn't amount to any more than an extra 5 hours or so on the final number.

These are my current hours among my three DIVA games, according to the Records menu:

DIVA F: 66 Hours
F 2nd: 146 Hours
Future Tone: 62 Hours

Out of those three numbers, only Future Tone's is truly accurate -- that's because Future Tone tracks what are called "Rhythm Game" hours that are only recorded when you're in song hitting buttons. DIVA F and F 2nd count everything, from idling on menus to taking care of DIVA Room trophies, so a bit of fat needs to be trimmed to get into the right ballpark estimate.

The DIVA Room in F took me possibly about 5 hours to complete, but we'll remove another five from that number to account for any extra idling that may have occurred. F 2nd needs a lot more removed from its total, as the DIVA Room in that game took me a whopping 20 hours to finish. I also spent a lot of time in the Editor creating charts, which also needs to be accounted for. We'll take 30 hours off the total for F 2nd - that's brings the numbers to 56 hours for F, and 116 hours for F 2nd, roughly.

Now, comparing my "Rhythm Game" time in Future Tone to my reported game time on Exophase (108h), it comes out to around 57.41% of my time spent clicking buttons in songs. If I apply that percentage to F and F 2nd to trim the fat even further, I end up with these numbers:

DIVA F: 32 Hours
F 2nd: 66 Hours
Future Tone: 62 Hours

This brings my total "Rhythm Game" time in the series to around 160 hours, give or take. I'm excited to see where I land when that number reaches 200, as that's the upper limit of the time estimate given for one to be ready for the Dreamy Theater games - assuming the time is spent focused on improvement.

Speaking of Dreamy Theater: that's basically where all of this is heading. My biggest motivator behind all of this practice has been to raise my skill level to that necessary to 100% the trophies of all three games in the series. For those that don't know: the Dreamy Theater games came to existence as a way to bring the original PSP Project Diva games to the console, before proper home console versions of the game were later introduced. While still non-trivial for a newcomer, Dreamy Theater 1 only requires full combos of all songs on Hard difficulty - which is, relatively speaking, baby stuff compared to the other two games in the series. Dreamy Theater 2nd and Dreamy Theater Extend both feature Extreme charts, and require Perfects of every single song within them, leading to two of the toughest lists in the entire genre. Though most of the Extreme charts are manageable after enough practice, the hardest songs in both games are far above what most players are going to achieve. Standout charts include Two-Sided Lovers with its dense charting of double and triple notes, The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku testing your finger control at 240 BPM, and The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku hitting you with a whopping 256 note deathstream.

The first two songs I mentioned before can be worked up to simply by playing the game and getting better. Intense Voice is a bit of a special case, however; the massive stream towards the end is unlike anything presented in official charts, leaving players with few options for practice than playing the song itself and hoping for the best.

Fortunately, I was able to remedy the lack of good streaming practice using DIVA's own Edit Mode. Borrowing songs from another rhythm game, I created custom charts at lower BPMs -- from 120 to 180 -- made entirely of 1/16th streams. I unfortunately don't have a video to share yet, but they look something like the screenshot below, repeated for the entire song:

It looks ridiculous, and probably is, but the charts have worked miracles for my stamina and coordination over the course of a month's practice. I haven't gotten a Perfect on Dreamy Theater's version of Intense Voice yet, but I have started getting Excellent ratings, with my combo pushing past 500 in more recent plays. I'm excited how far along I've come with the song, and excited that a Perfect is actually going to happen after enough practice. I've put in a pretty significant amount of hours training specifically for Intense Voice over a month's time, and it's great to see that all the hard work is going to pay off soon. Next time I bring this song up, I should have a video ready to display my own progress.

In all, it's been a very rewarding month building up skill in Project Diva. After semi-retiring from my last rhythm game following years of stagnation, it feels incredible to experience the highs of progress again, and in a series that will hopefully pay off with some rather prestigious trophies. The experience has renewed my confidence in the genre, and even prompted me to purchase a few other difficult music games to eventually take on as future projects.

------

DJ Hero
Turntable Perfection (0.53%)

Earn 5 stars in every mix on expert difficulty.

Speaking of the previously acquired confidence from Project Diva, it was exactly that which brought me back to DJ Hero just a couple of weeks ago. I earned most of the game's five star ratings late last year, before taking a hiatus from the game around January. Out of the game's 93 songs or so, I was down to the last four which were, of course, four of the hardest in the entire game. The wall of difficulty was thick enough that Turntable Perfection became the trophy that finally "broke" me for several months. Though I was free to play new games as I pleased, DJ Hero always hit me with a tinge of guilt - knowing I had yet to obtain that remaining obtainable trophy. I have a tradition of keeping unfinished disc games next to the TV until they're finished, which meant I was subject to constant reminders of my unfinished business.

My internal dialogue during last month's DIVA binge was something like "If I can do all these Perfects in Diva, imagine what I can do with a few hours on these last F'ing songs in DJ Hero!" - so I popped the AA batteries back into my turntable and got to it. When I came back to the game, I had these four songs left to five star:

Ace of Spades and Sabotage are DJ/Guitar charts, meaning that they also feature Guitar Hero charts - though only Turntable scores count towards the trophy. Songs featuring alternative guitar charts are unfortunately a bit janked on the PS3, leading to some of them having sync issues. This made the two already difficult charts even harder to play, as I had to extensively test and figure out what the game actually wanted from me, while hopefully building up enough combo and multiplier to achieve five star ratings. Luckily, I was somehow able to get these two songs out of the way quickly. After that, I knew I had a very real shot at finishing the game - though the next two songs are exponentially more difficult, they're at least in sync, and I can work with that.

A bit of background: DJ Hero is a spin-off to the Guitar Hero series, developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision in 2009. The game is centered around the concept of turntablism, rather than the rockstar fantasy presented in the Guitar Hero series. The game immediately won me over when I realized the tracklist was almost entirely compromised of one of my greatest musical pleasures - mashups! Mashups have incredible potency: they can make bad songs good, and great songs legendary. I would have scoffed before in the presence of turds such as Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl", but couple it with Rick James' "Give It to Me Baby" and some scratches and fades? Suddenly, I can tolerate the song. Other mashups like Bustin' Loose/Bust a Move and Ain't No Love/How Do U Want It are so good that I can no longer accept hearing any of the included songs by themselves.

Gameplay in DJ Hero is quite unique compared to other rhythm games. Unlike other titles in the genre, DJ Hero's difficulty doesn't come from managing a flurry of incoming notes -- though plenty of that is present -- but from crossfades and directional scratches. Both require careful use of DJ Hero's proprietary controller, and take a lot of time to get used to. It pays off big time once you've learned to play, though. DJ Hero successfully immerses the player in the fantasy of rocking the party with the turntable, and really makes you feel like you're in control of the song.

An example of directional scratches - Beats and Pieces

Such unique mechanics also lend to DJ Hero being the difficult completion that it is. Prior rhythm game experience will give you a headstart, but you'll still have a lot of practice ahead of you in Expert difficulty. Directional Scratches and Crossfade Spikes are absolutely brutal mechanics, and even after earning the game's hardest trophy, I still feel like I've only scratched (heh) the surface of what you can do in DJ Hero.

Anyway, removing the burden of the last two Guitar charts really let me put all my focus into the two hardest songs in the game, and once I got going, the progress I made was pretty surprising. Rockit features rather simple scratch patterns, but contains insane crossfading action. Attempting to fade between both sides of the track while dealing with uncomfortable scratching and tapping patterns had me retrying for hours over the course of a couple of days before I finally nailed it. Though Beats and Pieces is by far the more difficult song, by the time I got through Rockit, my foundation was solid enough that I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Beats and Pieces focuses less on the crossfader and more confronting the player with a tremendous amount of directional scratches - so much to the point that players regularly report tiring their arm out with each playthrough of the song; myself included! Fortunately, the scratches largely follow set patterns, and once you've practiced them, you can hoard tons of points during the easy parts of the song, which eventually won me my remaining five star finish.

An example of Rockit's difficulty: Downward scratches combined with crossfades - insane

It's been a while since I've felt as euphoric over a trophy pop as I have with Turntable Perfection. The relief of breaking the trophy that originally broke me is immense, and knowing I can finally move on from the game is a great burden off my shoulders. Unfortunately, I won't be getting DJ Hero's Platinum -- I popped my first trophy in the game in 2011, and Trophies weren't a thought in my mind until 2021 -- so I unfortunately arrived to the hobby too late to grab the online trophies before server closure in 2020. It is what it is. If an open-source online solution ever makes its way to the PS3 version of the game, I'll be all over it - but until then, it's time to move on to new experiences. DJ Hero has been a great time, and is totally worth playing, but new players should go for the Xbox 360 version as it's still obtainable and has had the bugs patched out.

-----

Platinum #41, 42 and 43
Love Live! School Idol Paradise Vol.1 Printemps (54.04%)
Completion Time: 2 weeks, 3 days
Love Live! School Idol Paradise Vol.2 BiBi (52.59%)
Completion Time: 6 hours, 45 minutes
Love Live! School Idol Paradise Vol.3 lily white (59.67%)
Completion Time: 4 hours, 51 minutes

Since this little trilogy is directly linked, and consists of largely the same game with a few differences, it makes sense to talk about all three of them together. Love Live! School Idol Paradise is a three-volume series developed by Dingo and published by Kadokawa in 2014 for the PlayStation Vita. Though I was a fan of the characters and music, I had never actually engaged with any of part of the multimedia franchise until I played these games, making it my first dive into the story and character development of the series.

Love Live! SIP on the Vita does double duty as both a rhythm game and visual novel. The music game side of the experience operates by spawning little note highways over the course of the song. Gameplay basics are simple enough, as Blue notes are activated by the D-Pad/Left Touchscreen, and Pink notes are activated by the face buttons/right touchscreen. Occasionally you'll see Green notes that require pressing both sides simultaneously. Though a combo system is present, maintaining it is not vital; the game only cares about one thing: Tension, and if you're playing decently enough to maintain Tension at 180 or higher by the end of the song, then you're clear for an Excellent rating, and any associated trophies.

A couple of unique mechanics are present to both spice up the visual experience and rack up your score. Stage Gimmicks spruce the stage with creative decorations like spotlights and balloons. More importantly, though, Live Features allow you to get up close with one of the idols for a screen-drawing minigame where you want to follow the girl's finger as closely as possible. On top of being very cute to watch, racking up stars in Live Feature also racks up your score and the Tension meter; going for these every chance you get is one of the primary reasons the completions are as easy as they are.

Live Features are too cute

There is a story too, which is presented in the visual novel section of the game. Students of Otonokizaka Academy are informed that the school will be closing. In response to the news, nine girls form school idol group μ's (pronounced: muse) and put on live shows in order to raise the school's appeal, bring in new students, and put a stop to their school's closure. Love Live! SIP's story remains lighthearted throughout, so don't expect a deep dive into the grim underbelly of the idol industry. Story mode is sectioned up into little slice-of-life scenarios of cute idols doing cute things, and that works for me. Characters are endearing, and so are their interactions with each other. Best girl for me is Kotori, with her cutesy personality and homemaking skills, but I did also take a liking to girls I wouldn't have considered before like Hanayo and Rin. Ultimately though, all of μ's girls are best.

"Eri: There's no doubt about it - Nico is the little sister" "Nico: What did you say!?"

Trophy requirements are surprisingly thorough for a set of games this short. You do need to see all three story routes, and clear every song with an Excellent rating. A "Live Mission" mode is also featured, giving you certain challenges to overcome such as minimum score requirements, hidden notes and other things. Live Missions mean that your first game will take the longest to complete, but you'll only have to clear all 30 of them once as your progress will carry over to the next two games - via a "package link" system that brings over old songs, marks previously seen story sections as 'read', among other things, letting you get right to the good stuff in volumes 2 and 3: the story and music.

As it goes with a lot of games I talk about in this thread: if you're into weeb stuff, Love Live! School Idol Paradise may be your thing. The story is in Japanese however, so if you can't - or won't - read the story, then you're only really getting half of a game here. If you're considering this purely for the rhythm game: it should be noted that while the game does provide a bit of challenge in Live Missions due to forced modifiers, charts in Free Live mode are pretty easy, even on Hard difficulty at 7 stars. These games have their rarities for a reason, so don't expect to be heavily tested. Now that I've become a proper fan of the series, I'm going to have to make some time for the anime. Idols are justice.

Edited October 7, 2022 by AihaLoveleaf
Added failsafe for spoiler tables

YaManSmevz · October 7, 2022

What a great post!

While I'm not familiar with the DIVA games, it was fascinating to read about your journey. I couldn't help finding your attitude so refreshing - just having fun in the face of great challenge and being excited to see where and how you can improve. I can succumb to impatience and frustration with myself far more often than I'd like, so this is the sort of thing I really need to read more often. Thanks for that!

Also, DJ Hero!! Isn't it a trip how much harder that is than it looks? A friend of mine way back when showed it to me and I was so intimidated, but so intrigued - like a person so attractive that they simultaneously allure and terrify you?

Also, 100% in agreement on mashups, those will always be great?

AihaLoveleaf · October 8, 2022

20 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

What a great post!

While I'm not familiar with the DIVA games, it was fascinating to read about your journey. I couldn't help finding your attitude so refreshing - just having fun in the face of great challenge and being excited to see where and how you can improve. I can succumb to impatience and frustration with myself far more often than I'd like, so this is the sort of thing I really need to read more often. Thanks for that!

Thank you, Smevz! I appreciate that. ?

It's really addicting seeing noticeable progress by the day. Reading some of the positive outlooks in this very forum towards brutal difficulty, along with my own experience of what's possible with time, have really changed the approach towards challenge in video games. If something gets you hooked, it doesn't matter if it's an 8, 9 or 10 -- it's going to get done. I hope that everybody will find the game that does that for them.

21 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

Also, DJ Hero!! Isn't it a trip how much harder that is than it looks? A friend of mine way back when showed it to me and I was so intimidated, but so intrigued - like a person so attractive that they simultaneously allure and terrify you

Man, DJ Hero has to be one of the most misleading games ever! I can only imagine people coming off Guitar Hero in 2009, seeing trailers for this game and thinking they're looking at 'baby Guitar Hero' before stepping right into the bear trap, lol. DJ Hero puts you into such a false state of security early on -- Hard difficulty rocks the boat, but not by much, so most everybody is going to be fine. Expert mode is really something, though - soon as the directional scratches stop being simple patterns, the feeling of "Dear god, what did I get myself into" quickly hits.

That said, though...

21 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

Also, 100% in agreement on mashups, those will always be great

DJ Hero's mashups are going to be stuck in my head for years to come. Unlike a few other games in my PS3 history, DJ Hero has not earned the banned from my console status, so I can totally see myself popping in every now and then to hear some of those songs again.

Cave Johnson · October 8, 2022

On 10/7/2022 at 6:00 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

In Project DIVA F, I currently have 34 Extreme charts at Perfect rating out of the 38 song tracklist. In F 2nd, that number is up to 28 Perfects out of 41 songs.

My initial reaction to reading this was "You did what!?". When I said that you probably had more perfects than me back whenever that was, I didn't imagine you'd reach this level so soon. You've surpassed me by a great amount—not that hard to do, but still—and your progression cannot be stopped! I'm truly impressed.

(Now that I'm editing the post, I can't seem to directly quote; it just throws the quote into a new post)

Quote

Between the four 10★ charts available in both games, I've earned Excellent ratings in three of them. The final Technical Zone of the F 2nd version of Intense Voice is still a bit too brutal for me, so I only have a Great on it.

As of now it's the opposite for me in F 2nd; I managed to excellent Intense Voice, but 2D Dream Fever still eludes me.

Quote

These are my current hours among my three DIVA games, according to the Records menu:

DIVA F: 66 Hours

F 2nd: 146 Hours

Future Tone: 62 Hours

I don't quite have that many hours on these games specifically, but I've also played Project Diva X and the Vita version of F. In other words, by now I should probably be better than I actually am lol. I guess having a gap of a few years between playing regularly doesn't help. Also, I never thought to try calculating the amount of hours that were spent playing the actual game; that's interesting. All of the time from those long loading screens starts to add up, I'm sure.

Quote

Speaking of Dreamy Theater: that's basically where all of this is heading. My biggest motivator behind all of this practice has been to raise my skill level to that necessary to 100% the trophies of all three games in the series.

At this rate, you'll be getting 100% of the trophies in Dreamy Theater 2nd before I do! I guess I've got to step up my game a bit (not really; it was never a competition to begin with). In all seriousness though, reading of your rapid progression has fired up my inherent competitive nature. I'm still undecided on whether or not I'm going to bother with the first Dreamy Theater—DT 2nd has the entire tracklist from it, meaning you essentially have to 100% it twice if you play both—but I am going to at least attempt DT 2nd and Extend. I haven't actually bought DT Extend yet, but I got the PSP version last month at least. Anyway, all I can do is charge forward relentlessly, leek in hand, towards the absurd goal that is perfection.

On 10/7/2022 at 6:00 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

DJ Hero
Turntable Perfection (0.53%)

It sucks that DJ Hero is unobtainable now that you could easily get the platinum otherwise. I've never played it myself surprisingly; around the time it came out I was playing a lot of Guitar Hero. From your screenshots the gameplay looks nothing like Beatmania, which is probably intentional because Konami would've sued at the first opportunity.

On 10/7/2022 at 6:00 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Love Live! School Idol Paradise Vol.1 Printemps (54.04%)
Completion Time: 2 weeks, 3 days
Love Live! School Idol Paradise Vol.2 BiBi (52.59%)
Completion Time: 6 hours, 45 minutes
Love Live! School Idol Paradise Vol.3 lily white (59.67%)
Completion Time: 4 hours, 51 minutes

As far as the gameplay is concerned, I found these games to be just average. The gameplay in the mobile game is actually better than the Vita games, which shouldn't have been the case. I remember the visual novel portion being pretty good, but then again, I probably couldn't understand it very well back then. It seems Love Live is cursed to never have a really good rhythm game on consoles, with the fairly recent port of the arcade game being yet another example.

Edited October 9, 2022 by Cave Johnson
After having my seventh shot of espresso for the day, it turns out that I've got more to add to my post

ExistentialSolid · October 9, 2022

On 10/7/2022 at 9:00 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Fortunately, I was able to remedy the lack of good streaming practice using DIVA's own Edit Mode. Borrowing songs from another rhythm game, I created custom charts at lower BPMs -- from 120 to 180 -- made entirely of 1/16th streams. I unfortunately don't have a video to share yet, but they look something like the screenshot below [...]

As soon as I read that you were making the effort to create your own custom charts, I knew you were serious about improving. Players that even look at DIVA's Edit mode are few and far between these days. Intense Voice has gotta be shaking in its boots right about now (especially if you can already score an excellent)! I love Project DIVA to death, so I'm super excited to see your progression as you work to take on the Dreamy Theater games. Good luck! ?

AihaLoveleaf · October 9, 2022

16 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

My initial reaction to reading this was "You did what!?". When I said that you probably had more perfects than me back whenever that was, I didn't imagine you'd reach this level so soon. You've surpassed me by a great amount—not that hard to do, but still—and your progression cannot be stopped! I'm truly impressed.

Thank you, Cave! Once you start getting to those Perfects, it really does create a domino effect on the rest of the list. Considering where your speed is at right now, you might beat me to a few Perfects like Negaposi and Disappearance. Interested to see where you go from here now that you're warmed back up to the game. ?

16 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

As of now it's the opposite for me in F 2nd; I managed to excellent Intense Voice, but 2D Dream Fever still eludes me.

And this is why I mention your speed, lol -- Excellent on that version of the chart is awesome. Though I'm slowly getting there, the complex patterns they expect you to execute at 200 BPM at the end of that song is pretty insane. Fortunately with 2D Dream Fever, you can bomb the first Tech Zone and still get Excellent if you get the 2nd Tech Zone and the Chance Time - both of which are much easier. I found putting a few hours into Disappearance finally made the second Tech Zone of 2D Dream Fever consistently FCable.

16 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

I don't quite have that many hours on these games specifically, but I've also played Project Diva X and the Vita version of F. In other words, by now I should probably be better than I actually am lol. I guess having a gap of a few years between playing regularly doesn't help. Also, I never thought to try calculating the amount of hours that were spent playing the actual game; that's interesting. All of the time from those long loading screens starts to add up, I'm sure.

Calculating your proper hours is an exercise worth doing to really figure out where you stand. I can relate to that feeling of having some of your gameplay hours wasted; I stagnated for a while in Future Tone, because I got into a rut of trying to Perfect 8☆ charts when I really should have been forcing myself to get passes on 9☆ and 10☆ charts instead. Will definitely be changing up my gameplay routine when I eventually come back to "arcade" Diva. The JP Vita stack for F is on the to-do list as well -- looking forward to seeing how badly I play on a Vita, lol.

16 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

At this rate, you'll be getting 100% of the trophies in Dreamy Theater 2nd before I do! I guess I've got to step up my game a bit (not really; it was never a competition to begin with). In all seriousness though, reading of your rapid progression has fired up my inherent competitive nature. I'm still undecided on whether or not I'm going to bother with the first Dreamy Theater—DT 2nd has the entire tracklist from it, meaning you essentially have to 100% it twice if you play both—but I am going to at least attempt DT 2nd and Extend. I haven't actually bought DT Extend yet, but I got the PSP version last month at least. Anyway, all I can do is charge forward relentlessly, leek in hand, towards the absurd goal that is perfection.

I'm just happy to see you getting back to Diva. ? I don't blame you if you skip DT1; it looks like more of a tedious 100% than a challenging one. I'll end up going for it though, since I eventually want to get as close as possible to getting every Diva trophy, and expect it to be a pain.

If it's of any use, this is what my gameplay routine looks like in F/F2 right now:

Edit Charts → 10☆ Charts → 9☆ Charts → 8☆ and below

Basically, warming up with Edits before doing daily plays of 10 stars and below in descending order, before finally allowing myself to chase scores on the lower star charts. I've found that to feed a consistent progression, compared to the 8☆ rut I got stuck in while playing Future Tone when I allowed myself to start off easy.

17 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

As far as the gameplay is concerned, I found these games to be just average. The gameplay in the mobile game is actually better than the Vita games, which shouldn't have been the case. I remember the visual novel portion being pretty good, but then again, I probably couldn't understand it very well back then. It seems Love Live is cursed to never have a really good rhythm game on consoles, with the fairly recent port of the arcade game being yet another example.

Totally agree with this - the rhythm gameplay in Love Live Vita is average at best. The game doesn't even track full combos, so the incentive to put extra time into the game for good scores is a lot less than it would be otherwise. Did enjoy the story though, and would say it's anybody's best reason to buy the game, for those that can read it. It was a good reading exercise too, seeing as it brought back to memory a lot of Japanese words that had gone dormant from years of non-use -- exactly 100 according to my dictionary app. Hopefully someday I can motivate myself to start studying again and return to my peak, but until then I guess it'll just have to be cute games with cute girls.

6 hours ago, ExistentialSolid said:

As soon as I read that you were making the effort to create your own custom charts, I knew you were serious about improving. Players that even look at DIVA's Edit mode are few and far between these days. Intense Voice has gotta be shaking in its boots right about now (especially if you can already score an excellent)! I love Project DIVA to death, so I'm super excited to see your progression as you work to take on the Dreamy Theater games. Good luck!

Hey! Happy to see the Diva king himself here. ? Your posts on the series from before were helpful, and gave me a tangible goal to shoot for during my own practice, so big thanks for that. Really appreciate getting your blessing here for my Diva journey. I'm so close with Intense Voice! It better be ready for the Perfect it's going to get. These games are just so good - I'm going to be playing them for a long time.

Deadly_Ha_Ha · October 9, 2022

14 minutes ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

The JP Vita stack for F is on the to-do list as well -- looking forward to seeing how badly I play on a Vita, lol.

Cave Johnson · October 9, 2022

13 hours ago, ExistentialSolid said:

As soon as I read that you were making the effort to create your own custom charts, I knew you were serious about improving.

Aiha's approach to improvement is a lot smarter than what I had planned initially—figuratively banging my head against the wall that is Intense Voice until I got it down. His edits have been a great help to me so far, and I'm sure others will make use of them in the future.

7 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Once you start getting to those Perfects, it really does create a domino effect on the rest of the list. Considering where your speed is at right now, you might beat me to a few Perfects like Negaposi and Disappearance. Interested to see where you go from here now that you're warmed back up to the game.

I kind of felt that the other day when I got two perfects in a row, which was a first for me. Getting a perfect on Negaposi is likely still a ways off, but I am feeling more confident about my skills after warming up.

7 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Fortunately with 2D Dream Fever, you can bomb the first Tech Zone and still get Excellent if you get the 2nd Tech Zone and the Chance Time - both of which are much easier.

I got really close the other day, although for some reason I have more trouble hitting the second technical zone than the first one. I've been able to hit the first one and the chance time fairly consistently, so I should have it down soon.

7 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Will definitely be changing up my gameplay routine when I eventually come back to "arcade" Diva. The JP Vita stack for F is on the to-do list as well -- looking forward to seeing how badly I play on a Vita, lol.

I'd like to try giving Future Tone another chance someday to see if I can get into it this time. As for the actual arcade cabinet, my "local" (60 miles away) Round 1 got rid of theirs, so now the closest one is 100 miles away instead... Anyway, from my experience, playing these games on a Vita feels a lot easier than trying to play them on PSP. I started with Miracle Girls Festival on Vita, then played the Vita version of F, however, so I don't know how it would be to go the opposite direction.

7 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

I don't blame you if you skip DT1; it looks like more of a tedious 100% than a challenging one. I'll end up going for it though, since I eventually want to get as close as possible to getting every Diva trophy, and expect it to be a pain.

For the sake of completion I'll probably end up doing it anyway; if I end up having almost every Project Diva platinum and 100% except that one, I wouldn't be able to leave it alone, lol.

7 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Basically, warming up with Edits before doing daily plays of 10 stars and below in descending order, before finally allowing myself to chase scores on the lower star charts. I've found that to feed a consistent progression, compared to the 8☆ rut I got stuck in while playing Future Tone when I allowed myself to start off easy.

I'll keep that in mind next time, since I usually go the opposite direction and start with easier stuff. As opposed to more physically demanding games like DDR—playing an 18 right away would be very rough, for example—it's not as necessary here.

7 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Totally agree with this - the rhythm gameplay in Love Live Vita is average at best. The game doesn't even track full combos, so the incentive to put extra time into the game for good scores is a lot less than it would be otherwise. Did enjoy the story though, and would say it's anybody's best reason to buy the game, for those that can read it.

The developer responsible also worked on the first three Project Diva games on PSP (which I just found out), so the lack of quality is kind of surprising; I wish they would've just rehashed the Diva gameplay, lol. Though there was some effort put into the story, I think it's safe to say that these games were quickly thrown together to capitalize on the success of Love Live.

7 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

It was a good reading exercise too, seeing as it brought back to memory a lot of Japanese words that had gone dormant from years of non-use -- exactly 100 according to my dictionary app. Hopefully someday I can motivate myself to start studying again and return to my peak, but until then I guess it'll just have to be cute games with cute girls.

I know how that goes. I started learning Japanese through unconventional and inefficient methods, but eventually I found that self-study wasn't working for me anymore. Without proper direction it was hard to motivate myself, which is how I ended up going back to college with the intent to major in Japanese. I've still got a long way to go, but it has been a good learning experience for me so far.

Edited October 9, 2022 by Cave Johnson

AihaLoveleaf · November 9, 2022

Hello friends, let's talk about video games. I have good news to share about Project DIVA, and a couple of successful shutdown projects to discuss.

Project DIVA F and F 2nd Progress Update #2

The last time we talked about DIVA, I was still very much in the middle of things, with a long road still ahead of me. At this point though, I may have finally reached the end of that road. I'll show you what I mean:

Project DIVA F is done. That's a Perfect rating (full combo) achieved on all four difficulties of the entire 38 song tracklist. This marks the first time I've ever truly "completed" a rhythm game in this manner. The feeling is pretty surreal, as it's always something I'd hoped to accomplish in a music game, but never thought I would actually see happen. Hopefully F's completion is the first of many, as there are at least five other DIVA games that I hope to eventually do the same for. For now, though, this sits high on the list of favorite things that I have accomplished in a video game thus far.

The above paragraph was a bit of a spoiler to one of the bigger milestones that I came here today to reveal, but it's still worth talking about anyway: I've finally achieved my first 10☆ Perfects - that being Negaposi*Continues and Sadistic.Music∞Factory, the two hardest charts in Project DIVA F. When I posted my previous update, I still had plenty of 8.5☆ and 9☆ charts left to Perfect, and 10☆ Perfects still felt like something in the distant future. To close the gap in about a month then feels pretty great.

The range of emotions I experienced between my two 10☆ Perfects were pretty interesting. To say I was excited when I full comboed Negaposi*Continues is an understatement; it was one of those gaming moments that made me involuntarily clap and shout in excitement. Sadistic.Music∞Factory went a bit differently, however. By time I got Perfect, I had played the chart over 100 times, spent hours watching the hardest parts in slow-motion on YouTube, and memorized the placement of every note in relation to the song -- I knew I had a real shot, but just needed the run to happen. Even with all of that, though, the idea of actually getting Perfect was still a bit too wild for me. After all, Sadistic.Music∞Factory is one of those boss songs that I, only until recently, have not been able to do much more than marvel at the veteran players on YouTube that could do the thing I couldn't. To actually reach the end of a full combo run and see that Perfect score on my screen then left me speechless. Rather than shouting with joy, I was just staring at the screen in disblief of what I had actually just done. I was still excited, but it took a few hours afterwards for the accomplishment to really sink in. Up until this point, I was playing both F and F 2nd daily to achieve new Perfect scores, so being able to finally shelf F and turn my complete focus to F 2nd was a liberating feeling.

The Mark of a DIVA indeed

Speaking of F 2nd: I've finally achieved all of my "Pre-DT" goals -- meaning, accomplishing all of the things I deemed necessary to finally feel 'ready' for Dreamy Theater 2nd and Dreamy Theater Extend. First up, I finally achieved a Perfect rating on the PSP version of The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku -- that's the version featured in DT 2nd/Extend with the monster-sized 1/16 stream. Over two months of daily practice finally paid off, after countless close calls. Knowing I've done it once will be a huge mental burden removed when the time comes for repeat performances in both DT 2nd AND Extend. That's right, you have to full combo Intense Voice twice if you want to 100% the trophy list of both games. Fortunately, it should be even easier in those games, as they're both in 60 FPS, unlike F 2nd's limited 30 FPS.

Me slapping buttons for dear life

Secondly, I also achieved Perfect on Two Sided Lovers. Out of all the songs I've conquered so far, this by far took the most attempts. By the time I was done, I cleared the song 203 times - with God knows how many retries to go with it. Truthfully, about 100 of those song clears were just me dealing with my nerves. By the time I played through Two Sided Lovers the first 100 times, I was ready for Perfect, but for some reason I just could not shake the elevated heart-rate I always got either during or after the Chance Time. The hours I put in just on this chart over the course of about 2-3 days were probably the closest this whole journey got to being frustrating -- usually, at some point I either stop caring, or can at least bottle up my nerves enough to finally Perfect the chart, but I never quite reached that state with this song. Perhaps it was because of all the weight riding on top of the Perfect - once I got it, I could finally say that I'm 'ready', and perhaps that was messing with me at some level. It was worth the effort, though; F 2nd's version of the song is far more difficult than the stripped-down version featured in Dreamy Theater Extend, so knowing I'll be playing an easier version of the song at 60 FPS after conquering the harder version at 30 FPS will have me feeling something like Goku stepping foot onto Namek after training with the Gravity Machine.

Now that I finally consider myself "ready" for Dreamy Theater, we can talk about hours invested. I achieved Perfect on Two Sided Lovers on October 29th, which is when I 'stopped the clock' to record these numbers. I've still been playing F 2nd since then, but the plan here is to try to give an accurate time estimate for somebody trying to prepare outside of the Dreamy Theater games themselves. Here are my hours as of October 29th:

DIVA F: 91 hours
DIVA F 2nd: 237 hours
Future Tone: 62 hours

You can check out my last post to see how I'm arriving to the numbers coming up, but basically we're removing 40 hours from the sum of F1 and F2nd, and taking 57.41% of that for our "Rhythm Game Time" - meaning time spent in song, outside of menus. My "real life" hours spent on improving at the game in general is around 400 hours. My Rhythm Game Time then - with every ounce of fat trimmed - is around 227 hours, which is not too far ahead of the 200 hour estimate discussed in the last post. Your own time may vary depending on prior experience, natural talent, efficiency, and other things - but this is about where I landed, and I'm happy to be at this level at all, regardless of how long it took.

At this point, the pressure is finally off; everything I needed to do in preparation for "the big one" later on has been done, so everything else I accomplish in DIVA F 2nd and eventually Project DIVA X is really just icing on the cake. The Perfect scores I've gone for since have all been purely for the fun and accomplishment of it, and I can already feel the difference, despite the remaining songs in F 2nd being complete beasts. Speaking of which, I only have two songs left in F 2nd out of its 41 song tracklist: 2D Dream Fever and the F 2nd version of The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku. Don't worry, I didn't skip getting Perfect on the Extreme Tutorial - troll of a chart as it may be. Anyway, 2D Dream Fever and Intense Voice really are a grade above anything that's appeared in DIVA games before it, including Dreamy Theater. Despite that, though... I'm getting pretty close, on both songs. I've finally learned to do the first Technical Zone in 2D Dream Fever, achieved a few one-miss plays, and have already had a couple of full combo runs that ended simply due to nerves. 2D Dream Fever Perfect can happen any time at this point. Intense Voice however, still needs a bit of work. I've gotten pretty okay at the fast parts of the song - including the final Technical Zone - and am getting Excellents on the song now, but I still need another 20 plays or so to get my coordination together on the slow notes during and after the Chance Time. I'll get there eventually.

With all of that finally announced, we can start talking about my timeframe for starting Dreamy Theater. Project DIVA X is lined up for Platinum #50, and I'd like to play that first. The extra practice from the new songs featured can't hurt, and I'm itching to see how I do going for Perfect on all 30 songs featured in the game, which means some extra time will likely be devoted to chasing scores as well. All of this is to say that you can expect DT 2nd and Extend to show up on my profile anytime after DIVA X is done. You may possibly see Dreamy Theater 1 show up sooner as, besides being the "easy" game of the series, all the songs in DT1 have to be repeated in DT 2nd, so it'll be better if I try to space the two games out time-wise.

Right now, the most important milestones have been covered, so this will probably be the last of the big DIVA updates you'll see here for a while, outside of future game reviews. I'll still talk about the series when it's appropriate, though. Getting Perfect on F 2nd's two 10☆ songs will be a big deal, and at least worth a little snippet in the checklist, when the time comes.

------

Platinum #44
Onrush (7.62%)
Completion Time: 4 days, 20 hours

A couple of shutdown Platinums were achieved in-between all of my DIVA play as well, the first of which being Onrush - a racing title published by Codemasters in 2018 for the PlayStation 4. Onrush sat in my backlog for well over a year, after being picked up upon recommendation from a friend during a discussion about arcade racers.

Onrush is a bit of a unique racer, compared to others that I've played at least. I unfortunately haven't played most of the games that inspired this one, so don't club me too brutally if I'm off the mark here. Gameplay in Onrush feels something like Burnout meets Fortnite. This game is less about racing to the finish, and more wrecking the enemy team as many times as possible, with no regard to placement or lap count. The game's Battle Royale format took me by surprise. I tend to go into games blind more often than not, so I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but I sure as hell was not expecting this:

Yeah...

I'm probably just a bit outside of the demographic this game was targeting. Regardless, the good, bad and ugly parts of Battle Royale are all here - for better or worse. After getting over the initial shock of realizing I just booted up Fortnite in Cars, I found some fun to be had. Getting takedowns on opponents is extremely satisfying, and stayed that way even late in the game. Getting taken down myself, though, sucked. Be wary, Onrush is one of those games tailor-made to piss you off. AI in this game isn't exactly a pushover, and isn't just going to sit there next to you while you try to side-swipe them for a takedown. Expect to be juked, and be ready to play cat-and-mouse for those takedowns you desperately need to win.

Unfortunately, Onrush wears out its welcome somewhat early. The game features four different gameplay modes, and once you've spent a couple of hours playing through all of them in Superstar - Onrush's campaign mode - you've pretty much seen everything the game is going to offer. From that point, getting through the rest of the campaign started to become a bit of a slog - doing the same races over and over, and being forced to sit through all the Fortnite flossing at the results screen of each race. For a game with a 15-ish hour Platinum, it certainly feels a lot longer than it ends up being, and by the time I got to the end, I was definitely ready to be done.

Admittedly, Onrush gave me a bit of a rough time, and my experience didn't quite match up with the majority that found it easy. It could be because I missed out on both Burnout and Motorstorm, so this ended up being the game I had to 'git gud' at combat racing in. Onrush's peak difficulty points - such as the 12 Titan Takedowns mission - can be challenging, but as with most things, the more you try, the better you get. If you're coming in with experience in combat racing already, or just general ability from tougher racing games, then you should be fine here.

With the game getting ready to shut down at the end of the month, the window of opportunity is closing. Multiple trophies requiring online will be unobtainable after November 30th. If you can afford the 15-20 gaming hours necessary during the remainder of the month, it is possible to get Onrush done before the upcoming closure. Knowing what I know now, this isn't a game I would play through a second time, or recommend to others, but when it comes to shutdown games like this, you've probably already made your decision as to whether you're going to play or not. My advice would be to try to do the entire Platinum while the servers are still up, because if you find you need some help for the more difficult missions, then it's best to get it finished while online co-op is still available. Good luck.

------

Platinum #45
Babylon's Fall (44.10%)
Completion Time: 1 week, 2 days

First of all, big shoutout to the boys @CelestialRequiem and @Deadly_Ha_Ha for playing through the game with me. Props to Celestial for being a total unit and carrying through most of story mode, and big ups to Deadly for being a consistent co-op buddy as we both worked our way through the Platinum. It was a great time playing with you two, and good fun bullshitting in chat to pass the time along the way.

I regret to inform the readers of Aiha's Gallery of Leaves that Babylon's Fall is my first experience with PlatinumGames. A legendary studio - that never loses its luster - with beloved titles such as Bayonetta, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising, and even Sol Cresta... and somehow Babylon's Fall is my first game from them. This is as unfortunate as it gets for my gaming career in late 2022. Neither PlatinumGames or I deserved the pain and shame that came from Babylon's Fall being my introduction to their catalog. I promise I will make up for this mistake someday.

Right, so let's talk about the game. Babylon's Fall is a live-service Action-RPG developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix in March of 2022. While I'm not too sure about sales, the game bombed critically, and lasted for less than a year before being announced for shutdown in February 2023. I've heard comparisons to Nier, Drakengard, and others - but if I can only compare Babylon's Fall to games that I've actually played, then it feels something like Diablo meets Demon's Souls... minus the dodge-rolling, of course.

Just look at those GRAFIX

I was really rooting for this game at first. When I was told it was a looter, I was excited. I came in optimistic for something that I was hoping would scratch that Diablo itch - and early on, it wasn't all that bad. Babylon's Fall has something of a honeymoon phase at first, and while it's not the most engaging game ever, you almost start to wonder why others were so fiercely negative towards the game. The honeymoon doesn't last for long, though, as it's not long at all before tedium and boredom rear their ugly heads. Levels drag on for what seems like an eternity, and both enemies and bosses alike have way too much HP, leading to a lot of needlessly lengthy encounters. By the time I reached the end of the main story, I was ready for the game to be over, which was sad for me because...

Post-game is when the grind really begins. Grinding through story missions to open up an even bigger grind in the post-game isn't something unique to Babylon's Fall - and really isn't even that bad in most games. In a game that had already become boring and tedious, though, getting to endure even more boredom and more tedium is not quite what I wanted to be seeing. Days were spent running Skirmishes -- non-story missions that end in fights with the same bosses we've fought a million times already -- as well as post-game story missions in a desperate search to find and unlock Sieges, which is - you guessed it - even more content to grind.

Sieges are an unfortunate inclusion of time-sensitive content in a game that really didn't need it. Sieges rotate weekly, meaning both the location and moster level of a siege will change by the week. At Babylon's release, Sieges were around level 70. Now? Sieges are over level 200, meaning the Platinum takes way longer to finish now than it did at the beginning. It was at least of some comfort to find out that Deadly and I were only a few hours away from the plat after we started grinding Sieges for oils to upgrade our equipment. Make sure you save your Item Boosters to make things easier on yourself.

This is actually a glitch, but the NPCs calling me a dummy is oddly fitting considering my game choice

This is normally the part where I tell you whether or not Babylon's Fall is worth your time. This time around, I almost feel like begging you not to play the game. Please do not start Babylon's Fall -- I know you have some great games in your backlog; pay attention to those instead. If you absolutely have to play, PLEASE secure a consistent co-op partner. Trust me when I warn you that this is not the game you want to run solo; get in and out as soon as possible. If you have to start this game, start now, and not in January. Don't get clowned - I've been clown enough for all of you just in going for this Platinum alone. Once again, good luck.

Edited November 9, 2022 by AihaLoveleaf

Kefka1986 · November 9, 2022

Mad respect for playing Babilon's fall!!! I considered getting it and playing with a friend when I heard that the servers were going to be shut down, but decided that there are tons of multiplayer games more worthy of our time... but really, very impresive, that platinum will be unachievable in just a few weeks, so hats off to you!

ExistentialSolid · November 9, 2022

5 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Now that I finally consider myself "ready" for Dreamy Theater...

Amazing work! I'm starting to think your definition of "ready" might be an understatement considering where your skill's at right now! You might steamroll straight through the Dreamy Theater games (especially if you plan on earning the perfect in "that one song" in PDX along the way). I know you mentioned it'll be awhile before you post more big DIVA updates, but I'm excited to see just how far you're planning to push yourself. ?

5 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Hopefully F's completion is the first of many, as there are at least five other DIVA games that I hope to eventually do the same for.

The possible implications of "at least" here are a little more hype-inducing than most readers probably realize...
Congrats and good luck!

Edited November 9, 2022 by ExistentialSolid

CelestialRequiem · November 10, 2022

On 11/9/2022 at 1:59 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Platinum #45
Babylon's Fall (44.10%)
Completion Time: 1 week, 2 days

First of all, big shoutout to the boys @CelestialRequiem and @Deadly_Ha_Ha for playing through the game with me. Props to Celestial for being a total unit and carrying through most of story mode, and big ups to Deadly for being a consistent co-op buddy as we both worked our way through the Platinum. It was a great time playing with you two, and good fun bullshitting in chat to pass the time along the way.

I regret to inform the readers of Aiha's Gallery of Leaves that Babylon's Fall is my first experience with PlatinumGames. A legendary studio - that never loses its luster - with beloved titles such as Bayonetta, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising, and even Sol Cresta... and somehow Babylon's Fall is my first game from them. This is as unfortunate as it gets for my gaming career in late 2022. Neither PlatinumGames or I deserved the pain and shame that came from Babylon's Fall being my introduction to their catalog. I promise I will make up for this mistake someday.

Right, so let's talk about the game. Babylon's Fall is a live-service Action-RPG developed by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix in March of 2022. While I'm not too sure about sales, the game bombed critically, and lasted for less than a year before being announced for shutdown in February 2023. I've heard comparisons to Nier, Drakengard, and others - but if I can only compare Babylon's Fall to games that I've actually played, then it feels something like Diablo meets Demon's Souls... minus the dodge-rolling, of course.

Just look at those GRAFIX

I was really rooting for this game at first. When I was told it was a looter, I was excited. I came in optimistic for something that I was hoping would scratch that Diablo itch - and early on, it wasn't all that bad. Babylon's Fall has something of a honeymoon phase at first, and while it's not the most engaging game ever, you almost start to wonder why others were so fiercely negative towards the game. The honeymoon doesn't last for long, though, as it's not long at all before tedium and boredom rear their ugly heads. Levels drag on for what seems like an eternity, and both enemies and bosses alike have way too much HP, leading to a lot of needlessly lengthy encounters. By the time I reached the end of the main story, I was ready for the game to be over, which was sad for me because...

Post-game is when the grind really begins. Grinding through story missions to open up an even bigger grind in the post-game isn't something unique to Babylon's Fall - and really isn't even that bad in most games. In a game that had already become boring and tedious, though, getting to endure even more boredom and more tedium is not quite what I wanted to be seeing. Days were spent running Skirmishes -- non-story missions that end in fights with the same bosses we've fought a million times already -- as well as post-game story missions in a desperate search to find and unlock Sieges, which is - you guessed it - even more content to grind.

Sieges are an unfortunate inclusion of time-sensitive content in a game that really didn't need it. Sieges rotate weekly, meaning both the location and moster level of a siege will change by the week. At Babylon's release, Sieges were around level 70. Now? Sieges are over level 200, meaning the Platinum takes way longer to finish now than it did at the beginning. It was at least of some comfort to find out that Deadly and I were only a few hours away from the plat after we started grinding Sieges for oils to upgrade our equipment. Make sure you save your Item Boosters to make things easier on yourself.

This is actually a glitch, but the NPCs calling me a dummy is oddly fitting considering my game choice

This is normally the part where I tell you whether or not Babylon's Fall is worth your time. This time around, I almost feel like begging you not to play the game. Please do not start Babylon's Fall -- I know you have some great games in your backlog; pay attention to those instead. If you absolutely have to play, PLEASE secure a consistent co-op partner. Trust me when I warn you that this is not the game you want to run solo; get in and out as soon as possible. If you have to start this game, start now, and not in January. Don't get clowned - I've been clown enough for all of you just in going for this Platinum alone. Once again, good luck.

Despite the game's best efforts, I still managed to have a good time with you fellas.

Since you're a SEGA fan like myself and I know you'll want to offset this experience, I highly recommend the Bayonetta and Vanquish collection. Those games are not only incredible, but very different from each other. They're also pretty immaculate in their respective genres (Vanquish especially).

Of course, you already know I'd recommend Transformers: Devastation. That was the same director as Babylon's Fall and before the aforementioned title, he used to make really fun games.

Cave Johnson · November 10, 2022

On 11/9/2022 at 1:59 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Project DIVA F is done. That's a Perfect rating (full combo) achieved on all four difficulties of the entire 38 song tracklist. This marks the first time I've ever truly "completed" a rhythm game in this manner. The feeling is pretty surreal, as it's always something I'd hoped to accomplish in a music game, but never thought I would actually see happen. Hopefully F's completion is the first of many, as there are at least five other DIVA games that I hope to eventually do the same for. For now, though, this sits high on the list of favorite things that I have accomplished in a video game thus far.

That's insane! I can't say I'm as surprised as last time, but that's only because it was clear from what you wrote last time that things were going in this direction. As for myself, I've made little progress since last time, and most of what I wrote didn't age well... I was getting in about an hour of practice a day, but then for various reasons I suddenly decided I wanted to get a lot better at the guitar, bought a new acoustic guitar, then started trying to learn fingerstyle arrangements of video game songs (despite having no prior experience playing fingerstyle). I don't want to go on about myself here though, I'll save that for a status update (or my own thread).

On 11/9/2022 at 1:59 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Secondly, I also achieved Perfect on Two Sided Lovers. Out of all the songs I've conquered so far, this by far took the most attempts. By the time I was done, I cleared the song 203 times - with God knows how many retries to go with it. Truthfully, about 100 of those song clears were just me dealing with my nerves. By the time I played through Two Sided Lovers the first 100 times, I was ready for Perfect, but for some reason I just could not shake the elevated heart-rate I always got either during or after the Chance Time. The hours I put in just on this chart over the course of about 2-3 days were probably the closest this whole journey got to being frustrating -- usually, at some point I either stop caring, or can at least bottle up my nerves enough to finally Perfect the chart, but I never quite reached that state with this song.

203 times! I've only got about 30 so far, but I can see why it would take that many. Though I've managed to clear it with one safe twice now, the distance between that and a perfect still seems far. The amount of notes and constant variations in the chart create an endless amount of chokepoints.

On 11/9/2022 at 1:59 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

Speaking of F 2nd: I've finally achieved all of my "Pre-DT" goals -- meaning, accomplishing all of the things I deemed necessary to finally feel 'ready' for Dreamy Theater 2nd and Dreamy Theater Extend. First up, I finally achieved a Perfect rating on the PSP version of The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku

With that, I think you're more prepared than 99% of players going into DT 2nd and Extend. You've basically proven that you can do it already by perfecting an overall much harder tracklist, along with the majority of F 2nd.

On 11/9/2022 at 1:59 AM, AihaLoveleaf said:

With all of that finally announced, we can start talking about my timeframe for starting Dreamy Theater. Project DIVA X is lined up for Platinum #50, and I'd like to play that first. The extra practice from the new songs featured can't hurt, and I'm itching to see how I do going for Perfect on all 30 songs featured in the game, which means some extra time will likely be devoted to chasing scores as well. All of this is to say that you can expect DT 2nd and Extend to show up on my profile anytime after DIVA X is done. You may possibly see Dreamy Theater 1 show up sooner as, besides being the "easy" game of the series, all the songs in DT1 have to be repeated in DT 2nd, so it'll be better if I try to space the two games out time-wise.

Project Diva X is a great choice for a milestone, especially since there's (unfortunately) no platinum for any of the Dreamy Theater games. Speaking of which, I've been wanting to boot up X again, but the only problem is going back and forth between that and F / F 2nd is very jarring due to the framerate difference. I assume by then you'll have completed F 2nd, so that shouldn't be a problem in that case.

AihaLoveleaf · November 10, 2022

On 11/9/2022 at 4:46 AM, Kefka1986 said:

Mad respect for playing Babilon's fall!!! I considered getting it and playing with a friend when I heard that the servers were going to be shut down, but decided that there are tons of multiplayer games more worthy of our time... but really, very impresive, that platinum will be unachievable in just a few weeks, so hats off to you!

Thanks Kefka! The level requirement for Sieges changes by the week, and God knows what the required level will be at in a month or two. Not nearly worth the pain for a Platinum that's flirting with Common status at this point. I hope that you and your friend enjoy the actual good games that you will be playing. Co-op in a worthy online game will be a memorable experience for the both of you. ?

On 11/9/2022 at 9:16 AM, ExistentialSolid said:

Amazing work! I'm starting to think your definition of "ready" might be an understatement considering where your skill's at right now! You might steamroll straight through the Dreamy Theater games (especially if you plan on earning the perfect in "that one song" in PDX along the way). I know you mentioned it'll be awhile before you post more big DIVA updates, but I'm excited to see just how far you're planning to push yourself.

Thank you! I'm sure not regretting using the tougher charts in F and F 2nd to build up skill. At this point, my reaction to seeing the PSP versions of the songs shared between DT and F is something like "Pff, that's it? Hold my vegetable juice."

Even though I haven't played the 10☆ Medley in PDX yet, it's been an interesting progression in how I've viewed it from a difficulty perspective. Last year, I wasn't 100% sure that I'd even have done the 211,000 Voltage for the Cloud Request without a bit of pain. Looking at the chart now, though, I'm seeing it's mostly the easy parts of the hardest songs in the F series, with the hard part of Intense Voice at the end. I better finish the remainder of F 2nd before I speak with any confidence, but Perfect on that Medley feels obtainable. I expect it to take a good 50-100 clears first, but I'm going for it. ?

On 11/9/2022 at 9:16 AM, ExistentialSolid said:

The possible implications of "at least" here are a little more hype-inducing than most readers probably realize...

Heh, at some point I won't have any other options than Arcade DIVA. Hoping my second rodeo with the game goes better than the first one. It will be pretty neat coming back to the game in a similar way to how some of the veteran players started Future Tone at release - with all of the console games fully Perfected and behind them. I'll be missing the "thousands of hours of Edit chart play" they had, but close enough anyway. If I click with Arcade on my next go-around, I'll be seeing how high I can get that total clear %!

6 hours ago, CelestialRequiem said:

Despite the game's best efforts, I still managed to have a good time with you fellas.

Since you're a SEGA fan like myself and I know you'll want to offset this experience, I highly recommend the Bayonetta and Vanquish collection. Those games are not only incredible, but very different from each other. They're also pretty immaculate in their respective genres (Vanquish especially).

Of course, you already know I'd recommend Transformers: Devastation. That was the same director as Babylon's Fall and before the aforementioned title, he used to make really fun games.

The "gaming with the fellas" part of the experience was great. ? I'll definitely roll with you and Deadly again in the future, if we find the right game and right time for it. (AC6 when)

Eyeing that Bayonetta/Vanquish bundle for a future pickup. Vanquish looks super sick - and of course I need to brutalize myself with Challenge 6 at least once, as a rite of passage. Bayonetta is Bayonetta, so I'm interested in that too of course, for all the obvious reasons.

Did not know the Transformers guy worked on Baby Falls! Man, Square really did Platinum dirty forcing Live Service on what could have potentially been a great looter. I'm interested in Transformers too, after reading what Flub had to say about it, so I look forward to seeing the Platinum looter done right.

5 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

That's insane! I can't say I'm as surprised as last time, but that's only because it was clear from what you wrote last time that things were going in this direction. As for myself, I've made little progress since last time, and most of what I wrote didn't age well... I was getting in about an hour of practice a day, but then for various reasons I suddenly decided I wanted to get a lot better at the guitar, bought a new acoustic guitar, then started trying to learn fingerstyle arrangements of video game songs (despite having no prior experience playing fingerstyle). I don't want to go on about myself here though, I'll save that for a status update (or my own thread).

Hey, what you're doing right now is already a heck of a lot more productive than anything most of us are doing in video games these days! That's pretty awesome, and considering how long you've been playing guitar already, I think the new journey is going to turn out pretty well for you. Unfortunately, I kind of fell off with guitar sometime after finishing Rocksmith. I don't intend it to be a permanent hiatus; I'd like to get back to it at some point. Learning the chords for my favorite Japanese songs was fun, and it'd be pretty cool to get fast enough to play them at regular speed someday. Rocksmith also showed me how fun bass guitar can be, so I do intend to pick up a bass someday to tinker around with.

5 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

203 times! I've only got about 30 so far, but I can see why it would take that many. Though I've managed to clear it with one safe twice now, the distance between that and a perfect still seems far. The amount of notes and constant variations in the chart create an endless amount of chokepoints.

Yeah, between locking up on triples, hitting the wrong button on the note switches - and all of the other fun things that can happen - the chart is ripe with choke points. ? If you're getting one safe runs, though, then you're pretty much there. I've noticed with myself that I sometimes reached the point where I could "probably" have gotten a Perfect on a tough chart long before I end up actually getting the score. I think there's something about having a chunk of the tracklist out of the way that really clears the way for you let your skills loose on a hard chart. You might see something similar happen as you whittle down the list of un-perf'd stragglers.

5 hours ago, Cave Johnson said:

Project Diva X is a great choice for a milestone, especially since there's (unfortunately) no platinum for any of the Dreamy Theater games. Speaking of which, I've been wanting to boot up X again, but the only problem is going back and forth between that and F / F 2nd is very jarring due to the framerate difference. I assume by then you'll have completed F 2nd, so that shouldn't be a problem in that case.

This has been one of my bigger motivators in keeping up the effort to go ahead and get F 2nd wrapped up. I'd prefer not to be jumping between 30 and 60 FPS Diva on a daily basis. It's comforting to know I'll be completely done with 30 FPS Diva pretty soon, and it'll just be nice to go all-in on PDX when it's finally time to start. Keeping the bulk of your time in F/F 2nd for now might be the better play anyways, since Perf-ing all the boss songs will give you the building blocks for the 10☆ Medley when you come back to PDX.

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