The portable music/rhythm genre is an odd one. Its dependency on trying to reproduce an experience normally accompanied by an accessory ends up taking a turn for the worse in most cases and it’s rare that standout titles in the genre come to fruition. Elite Beat Agents and Rhythm Tengoku come to mind, but from the days of the Gameboy to the now-present era of the DS and PSP, nothing is really the equivalent of today’s Rock Band or DDR on the portable consoles. Well, Korean developer Pentavision has given a shot at that with the 3rd iteration of the DJMAX franchise and I’ll blunt since there’s really no use holding out the suspense of the verdict: this game is fantastic.
Originally a PC title, DJMAX is very similar to Konami’s Beatmania series. Akin to Beatmania, notes fall from the top of the screen and you have to hit keys in time to the notes when they reach a line at the bottom of the note chart. While Beatmania’s custom-built controller had players mashing on 8 notes (7 buttons and 1 turntable), DJMAX’s PSP port had the analog stick act as a turntable while the other six notes are mapped to the face buttons. When a turntable note approaches, a warning pops up on screen to prepare you and you’re required to rotate the analog in any given direction for the duration of the note. The control scheme is the same for DJMAX 2.
DJMAX brings it’s own key features to the gameplay, however. Much like Beatmania, DJMAX judges you on your score, your MAX rating and how big of a combo chain you can accumulate. Your MAX rating is the essentially your accuracy rating for every note hit. Depending on the game mode, combos can transfer over to the next song in your set list and let you mass combos that can go up to more than 80,000 hits. New to the series and unlike its Bemani competitor comes the inclusion of “Fever”, a meter that will fill up for every note hit with 100% accuracy. Similar to how the “Overdrive/Star Power” meters work in Rock Band and Guitar Hero, it can be activated when full to not only help you gain your life back when you’re close to failing a song but also to start a multiplier. Multipliers, however, work differently than most other music games. Hitting notes perfectly when a 2X multiplier is active will refill the meter and, while your 2X multiplier is still going, triggering Fever again will make your multiplier go up to 3X. Notes start scrolling down faster and faster per multiplier and you can repeat the process until you reach a 5X multiplier.
That essentially encompasses all of DJMAX’s gameplay. It’s easy to
understand but, much like every rhythm game out there, it’s incredibly
difficult to master. Make no mistake here, this is an Asian music game
to its core and that includes the punishing learning curve and
difficulty. There are 4 basic modes of control in DJMAX 2: 4 buttons, 5
buttons, 6 buttons and 8 buttons.
The first two modes are pretty simple to get into since most of the first-tier songs will be pretty forgiving. Once you get into the two last modes, though, it’ll take some time before you hit every note– especially with the 8B’s inclusion of the L and R buttons. All four control schemes previously mentioned have their own game mode, though each one works the same way. You’ll start off at round one, pick a song and move on to the next round until you reach round 4. Each round has their own song list and they increase in difficulty as you approach the last round. There are other games modes to catch your attention, such as the “Mission” mode, a much different take on the original DJMAX Portable’s “Club Mode”. Instead of playing through preset set lists, you’re given an objective like “Get an 800 Combo” or “You can only miss 2 notes”. Each mission is played on a set list of 4 songs, though they aren’t listed in the menu like the first game. You’ll unlock new missions just by playing through the regular game and it makes for a fun distraction when you’re not in the mood to just play a normal round. Also included is multiplayer, which I can’t unfortunately comment on seeing as how I seem to be the only person in this province to own a copy of this game. Quebec residents, I hope this review gets you to import this game. I need opponents!
Every game mode will earn you gold that can be traded in for special items that customize the appearance of the note screen. The first game gave you a variety of Gears and Notes that you could unlock and this remains mostly the same, except you have to purchase them with in-game currency. Gears are the note chart where your notes will scroll down. Notes are the notes themselves and new to the series is “Characters”, an icon that, for the most part, is useless since you never see them. Each Character, Gear and Note has their own attributes, such as +5% Gold (You’ll gain 5% more gold after each song) or +1 Auto (1 free pass when you nearly miss a note. You’ll get a MAX 1% instead of a Miss.) and it makes for a good incentive to get each one since they’ll help during missions and such. It’d be fun if they didn’t cost an arm and a leg since Gears and Notes quickly go from approximately 22000G to around 80000G. A song will get you, on average, a few hundred Gold so it can get pretty tedious to accumulate a large amount of money.
What matters, though, is the meat and bones of DJMAX Portable 2: it’s magnificent soundtrack. Each song is composed by in-house and Korean/Japanese composers and there’s a really good variety of music genres. From anime-pop to rock, from rap to classical jazz, the variety is dazzling and out of a soundtrack of around 50+ songs, it’s stunning that there are only a few duds. Some of the songs from DJMAX 1 have also made their way into Portable 2. If you’re a purist, there’s a “Link Disc” mode that lets you play DJMAX Portable’s songs with DJMAX 2’s gameplay additions. Much like the first game, an OST mode is included for you to listen to the soundtrack while on the go. All the game’s original songs are on it and throughout playing the game, you’ll unlock remixes and songs from DJMAX 1 to listen to. The OST mode holds somewhere around 150 songs for you to listen to.
The praise doesn’t stop here, either. I have literally no idea where Pentavision gets its funds to make this game the remarkable experience it is but not only is the soundtrack brilliant, the presentation is above top-notch. A gorgeously animated intro video and just-as-good looking music videos to accompany in-game songs, really good graphical effects, everything about DJMAX 2 just looks like an extremely polished game. You’ll start feeling like you’re playing a game a true nightclub DJ would be playing and it makes DJMAX 2 even more appealing as an import.
It always takes the little guys to come out big and thankfully, Pentavision has made what is without a doubt a landmark title for the PSP platform. The terrific soundtrack, easy to learn gameplay, near-endless replayability and fantastic presentation makes this a true gem. Easily at the top of the portable music/rhythm genre and the best the PSP has to offer, DJMAX Portable 2 is a game absolutely worth importing. If you like the music/rhythm genre and you don’t own a PSP, this game is as good of a reason you’ll get to buy one. It’s that brilliant.