Uta no Prince-sama ~Music 3~

I acquired this game in early Feb when it first released, and I played it so much that I unlocked all the songs within 2 days of playing, but I was holding back just because I wanted to finish the ASAS review first before heading on to this. That’s right, Utapri’s back with another music game with another round of songs, this time trying to ruin your lives with more tricky beatmaps that you can’t seem to play even when you remember yourself almost perfecting a Pro mode on the last game on PSP, Music 2. Oh well, more details and rants about the game under the cut.

Music 3 runs on the same system as Music 2 & Music, with the same concept of playing the songs to unlock other songs, followed by the short stories when clearing all levels in each mode with an A or above.

An Updated System on the Vita?

Music 3 carried forward most things from Music 2, with the character voices mid-song still available, but the system was still mostly the same from its PSP predecessors. This probably was the negative part about this entire system cuz EVERYTHING. WAS. THE. SAME. It’s like the moved the entire PSP game to the vita, except for extra touch functions on the menus. However they locked the touch for music game screens for everything, including the result screen, which was pretty frustrating cuz when you thought everything could be operated by touch, the music game result screen smacks you in the face reminding you they still exist. The song selection screen didn’t have touch either at some points which was pretty irritating cuz you could select the spot you wanted to change (like character/vocal on off) BUT YOU COULDN’T CHANGE IT. They locked off the top part of the might as well they made the entire thing touchscreen! You can’t even slide or something to change the character, or even change difficulty using touch which was pretty annoying when you’re a lazy bum right before the song starts. They kinda even made an animation for places where you couldn’t touch, so like if you touched outside the text box for the episodes, they’d make an animation as shown on the top right hand corner of the pic above. (this was annoying when it kept flashing at parts i clearly knew that weren’t touchable) 

The key configuration was actually pretty pointless to me. Mainly because I’ve been playing all their games, muscle memory kinda kicked in and my eyes were kinda used to the usual beatmap so it was kinda pointless in the end, but it was definitely useful for people who need it!

The move to vita was great apart from the fact that my fingers weren’t used to the smaller button on vita, but the lack of use for the touchscreen made it pretty dumb at certain points of time. I mean, you have touchscreen from the main all the way to selecting the shop, BUT YOU CAN’T USE THE TOUCH TO BUY THINGS FROM THE SHOP. WHAT WAS THE POINT THEN?! The choppy touchscreen made it really dumb as this game wasn’t just a usual otome game where the minimum was just uh touching the text to move for lazy souls, but it had more menus to go through but it was just so choppy.

The Music game

The music game wasn’t much to complain about, but I had lesser trouble with songs this time as everything was moderately easy. Except for the fact that it’s harder to full combo them compared to the previous game where I was literally FC-ing every single piece on the game. A few hard songs, just to name some, are like, Wild Soul & Emotional Life, where the BPMs were faster than many of the others. For beginners new to all the songs and the beatmaps, it may be harder for those to play them as I was struggling while trying to get used to the vita as well, although that doesn’t really count.

Customisation

Customising the characters and the backgrounds + note backgrounds were exactly the same, except for the fact that now there’s more options for accessories, like unique hats for each character, glasses & animal ears. For the backgrounds, I kinda feel that the designs for the backgrounds this time definitely look cooler and more appealing compared to the flat ones in the last game. At the same time, mid music game, when you hit rank A, they’ll make effects in the background, something like spotlights making the game more exciting. I’d love to show a video but it’s kinda hard for me to film one. Here are some screenshots I guess to help explain on how cool it is.

Plain background in the back. (this is Ranmaru’s btw)

Seeing the shining filter at the back on bg?

Bonus Content: Episodes, Memorials & April Fool’s Joke short VN

This time, after realising that the fangirls don’t just want ホモ  scenes for all the episodes, so they altered it to let all Solo songs have one-to-one scenes with the guy alone, and all the gay friendship scenes to the songs with multiple people in them. Surprisingly though, the episodes for the songs will multiple people were less gay, less funny but more on the technical side. I have no idea what’s going on but recently Utapri’s been focusing even more on the technical music aspect of be which kinda frustrates me a little because ROMANCE. Well the solo song episodes fed me enough romance, but because of Music 2 I expected the episodes to have more humour in them like all those funny scenes in the previous game’s episodes, but this round it’s just them sitting down and talking about themselves & their hard work towards being idols. I’m guessing that what they want from it? It wasn’t that bad, but watching so many stoic scenes kinda bored me out. The funnier/more lighthearted scenes were mostly pushed to Easy mode, which I didn’t play much even now when I’m writing this review, but oh well, the scenes I saw were great. So I don’t have much complaints.

For memorials, well, those are the huge chunks of short stories you get from clearing everything int the main games, and they consist of romantic/bromance scenes. They’re always good, so I have no comment for these.

Yes, the last line is sth like “yoshiku muachocho” in kanji

For Music 3, another thing which dragged all the girls in to play it was the transferring of last year’s April fool’s joke into the game, fully voiced. There wasn’t much changes to it though, except for the fact that you could play it with auto on and a backlog, with voice. It was pretty entertaining to see the joke sprites in higher quality, and the voiced lines made the game more appealing but that was it. I’m not complaining tbh as the content itself was just an funny AU with all the characters.

The PSVITA Trophies

Wow okay I thought this would be an easy run until I found 2 trophies on PSNProfiles saying that YOU HAVE TO PERFECT COMBO 3 HARDS & GET ALL CHARACTER TOUCH VOICES. The first trophy is fucking hard despite the fact that it’s a bronze trophy because wtf. Perfect Combo means not even leaving any leeway for goods, which is darn hard for a hard especially when you can’t get the timing right. I haven’t conquered this one yet because there’s always that ONE GOOD WHICH DESTROYS YOUR LIFE. (Ah, goods that destroy your life in almost every music game out there.) The 2nd one is hard too mainly because I haven’t found all the voices, and I don’t understand what they’re looking for. Is it the touches you get by poking their chibis? Is it all the system voices? I’ll never know. It’s the same reason why I can never get that last Amnesia V trophy because CG TOUCH VOICES UGHHHHH. If not, everything else is pretty doable as long you finish all the song levels.

The Conclusion?

Music 3 is a cheap game which is definitely worth your money if you just want some rhythm game fun with hot mans inside it, but definitely more enjoyable if you’re a fan of the series. There are a couple of problems I have with the game but those are mostly more personal problems after playing the older games, and although the game doesn’t fully make use of the Vita’s features I am completely fine with it. It’s a good game when you’re just sick and tired of playing through an kusoge or sth to use it to chill off, which is what I’ve been using it for while slugging my ass off in Dialovers the 50% overmilked kusoge. Besides, this game is technically half the price of a normal vita game. What was I expecting from it? Was I expecting to have to have this huge amazing improvement? Not at all. I was just expecting to be just another fun side Utapri games that I could enjoy. So if you need a relaxing music game with hot (customisable) mans inside, this is definitely the game for you! The price isn’t terrible and it’s a fun game, so you’ll definitely get the best out of it.