Near-perfect gameplay and a good song list makes for an excellent game, even if it recycles a lot from its predecessor.
Just like the previous game, it's a rhythm game prominently featuring the popular Vocaloid Hatsune Miku; except this time she's not the only one singing. The other Vocaloids have their own songs as well, ad they get unlocked when you unlock their first song. One of the new features is duets where two Vocaloids sing and dance with each other. The game features: Miku, Len, Rin, Kaito, Neru and Luka.
The gameplay has some changes. You press buttons in time with their images on screen and get graded according to whether you pressed the button and this affects the score you get at the end. Instead of using just the face buttons you can now use buttons on the D-Pad instead that are similarly positioned to the face button (for example, Right can be used instead of Circle.) Sometimes you have to press two buttons - one face and one on the D-Pad - together, and other times you have to hold a button. This makes some songs like Marginal which was extremely difficult in the previous game easier and a lot less straining to play. The graphics look better, although the animated PVs of the recycled songs are the same as those in the previous games.
Most of the songs are excellent like Sound, some are headache-inducingly and bad like Miracle Paint, and a good number are recycled from head to foot - PVs and all. This isn't a bad thing, but it does make the game feel like an expansion pack and considering that there's no shortage of Vocaloid songs, it's hard to figure out why so many were recycled. Worst of all, Last Night, Good Night isn't included in the recycled songs although Miracle Paint made the cut! (Unbiased review indeed, heh.)
Also, counting the songs that have to be downloaded, Project Diva 2nd actually has less than Project Diva - the latter had 77 while the former has 66. But since you can download songs and make PVs of your own to go with them in Edit Mode, I didn't mind too much.
8.5