DJMax Respect V is a port of the PS4 version with additional game modes and songs. This is a rhythm game and you can use either a controller or keyboard. Annoyingly though, the tutorial text refers to the keyboard controls, so it can be a little bit confusing. During gameplay, the onscreen prompts will show the proper controller or keyboard controls depending on which one you’re using. There are various difficulties, the easiest using only four buttons that map to two of the d-pad and two of the face buttons. The hardest difficulty will use eight buttons.
It has typical rhythm game gameplay and controls. On a vertical section of the screen, notes will fall from the top. As the notes reaches the bar near the bottom, you will need to use the button associated to that column. These note prompts are usually in time with the music. Additional prompts include ones where you hold a button down, or notes that you use the analogue stick instead. Unfortunately for newcomers, or players who haven’t gotten their muscle memory quite right yet, then it can be a pain to play in the beginning. The controls only show up at the beginning of the song and then fade away, so it can be a struggle to remember which button to press for which column.
The default note speed, which is the speed that the notes drop, is at the slowest setting of 1. Newcomers might not realise this but pushing it up will make the tracks easier because this will space out the notes rather than bunching them all up together. If you slowly increment upwards as you get used to a faster and fast speed, you’ll find yourself improving and your instinct will allow you to hit most, if not, all of the notes. You will need to find a balance given that a higher speeds, the starts start to have long tails and moves very fast so it may be even harder to view.
The note maps are designed well because the notes matches with the music extremely well. As you correctly hit the notes, it will effectively complete the song. Conversely, mistime it, and it will sound off. Even once you get used to the controls, the difficulty of the game is brutal. Yes, it will train you to get better and better but even with the songs that have difficulties at half of the maximum, it can already feel intense and crazy with hot fast and numerous the notes are. There is a health bar that goes down when you miss notes and you will regain some when you hit them. Lose all your health and the track will end prematurely in failure. On harder difficulties, if you miss one or two, it can be hard to catch back up and get back into the rhythm.
The game can be lenient though in that you can hit the wrong note, but since it is not the note you were supposed to it, it won’t register it as an error. You can actually save yourself from breaking the combo by pressing the correct note as long as it hasn’t passed the bottom bar. You’ll need this in higher difficulties if you’re not good but even so it’s a small reprieve. And of course, your objective is not to even do this in the first place as you improve your skills.
There’s a combo meter that increases as you hit notes, with even higher counts once you hit fever (triggered by hitting max 100% notes, aka perfect timing). The combo meter carries over from song to song so it only resets if you break it by missing a note. It’s quite a good implementation as it keeps you going and playing more and more songs to reach a theoretically infinite combo. Finishing a song will give you experience points ot level up. Each level up to the 99th level will unlock a new song. Unfortunately, after level 30 or so, it’ll be a massive grind.
In each song, an animation plays in the background. You can turn this off if you wish and remove the distraction. If you manage to hit all the notes in a track, it’ll unlock the music video that you can watch at your leisure. This is a good incentive to replay tracks and aim for those. Of course, you’ll also get a ranking at the end. Still, with how ruthless and relentless the difficulty can get, you wonder if you can ever improve enough to attempt the harder songs without getting overwhelmed. It can be frustrating in this aspect as it feels like it biases towards more experienced players. Still, newcomers can keep playing the easier songs to slowly improve but it really depends on how much patience and persistence you have.
The game has a ton of content, even in just the base game. This game has seemingly infinite DLC but even without those, there’s so much to do here from the sheer number of tracks available. There are a lot of different difficulties that completely changes the playstyle given it actually adds additional buttons to press and need to relearn your muscle memory. There are over 170 tracks in the base game before DLC. Most of the tracks are Korean songs, with vocals or are instrumental, along with a scattering of licensed songs. A big chunk are songs found in the previous games DJMax Portable and DJMax Portable 2, along with new songs for this game.
There are several modes available, the main one is Free Style where you can play any songs that you have unlocked. Mission mode has you play through a playlist and fulfil specific objectives. They start off easy but quickly become difficulty. Air Mode is a sort of weird online mode that has you playing a song, but you will be able to see player comments. You can also just let it auto-play and type in comments yourself. However, by this point, all the player comments are either gibberish or pointless rubbish.
Overall, DJMax Respect V is a great rhythm game that has a ton of content. It has so much value and will keep you busy for hours. It is perfect for experienced players but there is a high difficulty curve for newcomers. Even the easier tracks can be difficult so you will need to practice practice practice in order to improve and be able to attempt the harder songs. The way to unlock new tracks, which is by leveling up, is fine at first but the rate slows down to a crawl after around level 30 and becomes too much of a grind.
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