It is quite weird to think that, for the most part, my experience with the Hatsune Miku franchise has been surprisingly positive, at least in the realm of gaming. I have reviewed two games featuring the vocaloid diva in the past, one being a picross title and the other being a rhythm game with a mind-boggling amount of content, both of them being pretty good. That means that, when I heard of yet another Hatsune Miku game being released for the Nintendo Switch, I was looking forward to playing it, knowing it would probably end up impressing me. Sadly, Hatsune Miku: The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes (what a stupidly long name) is the weakest of the three so far. Not bad, mind you, just much weaker in comparison.

Hatsune Miku: The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes is a minigame collection, but it starts off in a deceiving fashion. It has a pretty long (and boring) introductory session, featuring a ton of (boring) dialogue and some small exploration in an overworld, complete with really impressive retro visuals. The game initially resembled a SNES-era JRPG/adventure game. One that took ages to let me actually play its minigames. Were they worth the wait? Well, not exactly, although some of them were pretty good.

They were your bog-standard, seconds-long minigames that were Mario Party levels of simplistic, with high score-based gameplay looks and more variety in their art styles. Controls were responsive, loading times were minute, and some of them were actually quite neat and addictive, namely the platform jumping one. There were three big problems with these games, though: first of all, they were all shallow as all hell, and not particularly memorable. As addictive as some of them were, there’s just so much single-button platform jumping a person can partake on before getting bored.

The second issue lied in the soundtrack, which wasn’t bad per se, but considering the fact it’s a Hatsune Miku game, I just expected a bit more from it, especially when playing a minigame. The third, and easily the biggest issue with The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes, is the fact that this collection of minigames featuring lots of different skins and playable characters… is limited to only one player. Why? Just… why? How do you want to market a borderline party game, one not exactly oozing with content to begin with, to a sole person?

I guess I expected more from it. My past experience with Hatsune Miku games has been shockingly positive, but The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes is just too shallow and brief to be considered a worthy purchase, even for fans of the vocaloid diva. Even though some its minigames were indeed fun to play, there’s not a lot to enjoy in this package, and you can’t even play them with a friend. Its boring story, dialogue, and mediocre soundtrack (again, a shocking thing considering the source material) weren’t enough to make up for the overall lack of content.

 

Graphics: 8.0 The overworld visuals are really cute, resembling a SNES RPG. The minigame visuals are more varied in style, but no less adorable.	Gameplay: 7.5 Each minigame is Mario Party levels of simple. They are all easy to learn, not exactly hard to master, and the controls are responsive. They are all shallow as hell, though.
Sound: 6.0 Yet another game featuring the vocaloid diva in which the soundtrack is as forgetful as it gets.	Fun Factor: 5.5 A shallow collection of minigames mixed with a very forgetful plot in some pseudo-adventure sections. Some minigames can be addictive, but the overall package is just aggressively average as a whole.
Final Verdict: 6.5

Hatsune Miku: The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Hatsune Miku: The Planet Of Wonder And Fragments Of Wishes was provided by the publisher.