Very fun, but...

There are a couple of things that bothered me about Miku Flick, but it didnt stop me from having a great time playing.

For starters, the game is extremely difficult once you first start playing. For someone like myself, who has 0 knowledge of the Japanese language, I was very confused trying to figure out where all the notes were even located.The notes are set up in 3 rows of 3, with one more at the bottom, similar to what you would see on a cell phone for the numbers 1-9 and then 0. Each note can be tapped, but also swiped in multiple different directions, which count as completely different notes. For example, if youre supposed to tap the note but accidentally swipe it left, itll count as being missed. This means there are a total of 47 different notes to play, which is a huge change from most rhythm games Ive played like Guitar Hero, which only has 5 and a strum bar. You also have to go to the options and set the notes to be shown in "Romaji" if you are an English speaker, otherwise everything will be shown in Japanese characters during the gameplay. With Romaji, youll at least see English letters telling you which notes to play, but it still gets confusing trying to remember where everything is placed because of all the different possible notes.

Secondly, I dont think there are enough difficulty settings, or a large enough difference between difficulties. When you first get a song, you can play it on easy or normal. Once you pass that, you unlock the next song, as well as a hard mode for the song you just played. From my experience, hard mode is only difficult to 100%, but I went through the whole game on hard mode without ever actually failing anything. After you beat it on hard, you unlock "Break the Limit", where you have to play every single note that Miku is singing. This is so difficult that they dont allow you to fail, and you never lose your combo. I wouldve liked to see something between hard and Break the Limit, where it maybe took a few tries to get a passing score, or maybe even just giving you a harsher penalty for missing a note.

Lastly,there isnt a practice mode. Im the kind of person who really likes to try getting 100% on songs, but the only way to practice is by playing the song regularly. This isnt usually a problem for the beginning of songs, but it makes playing parts at the end of the song perfectly mostly about your reflexes, and if you can remember how to play the notes quickly enough. There is a helpful orange arrow that tells you what note is coming up next, as well as translucent blue arrows to tell you how to play the notes that are coming afterwards. I almost relied 100% on that orange arrow when I was still new to the game, but when you get to very quick parts on hard mode or play Break the Limit, youll run into parts where literally every note has a blue arrow on it, making it very confusing to figure out which one is actually coming up next.

One feature I really enjoyed is the PV section, where you can watch the official music videos for the songs youve unlocked. They are in pretty poor quality, but they do allow you to make a playlist if you want to listen to multiple songs in a row, as well as including functions like "shuffle" and showing the lyrics in English, which is a very nice touch.

I have not played Miku Flick 2, because I heard from the reviews that you have to pay to download extra songs, while on this game you just have to unlock all the songs. Thats why this version is more expensive.

Overall, Id say that its worth the purchase if youre a fan of both rhythm games and Vocaloid music. You dont get the option to listen to the songs being sung by any of the Vocaloids besides Miku, but I truthfully dont like how a lot of the other Vocaloids sound. Theres also a little secret bonus for beating the game :)

Kusername about Miku Flick