The Level Design of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X

[WARNING: THIS ARTICLE PARTIALLY REVEALS THE CONTENTS OF A COUPLE EXTREME MODE CHARTS IN CASE YOU CONSIDER THOSE TO BE SPOILERS]

I imagine you read that title and thought, "Wait, did I read that right? Isn't that a rhythm game? How on Earth can this game have level design? And why only X?" Well, allow me to answer your questions in order:

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. That's the point of this article.
4. It's the only one I have, not counting the very different Project Mirai DX (which has Puyo Puyo as a minigame in it, by the way)

For the unaware, Project Diva is a series of rhythm games starring Hatsune Miku, the most well-known character in the Vocaloid series of voice synthesizers. So, how can there be level design in a rhythm game like Project Diva? Well, let's look at Calc. for an idea of what I mean:

Here, you can see one of the series of seven star notes in a straight line that Calc. loves to throw at the player on Extreme difficulty (and there is always more than one). Every song in the game has a "signature" pattern of notes, which is usually especially evident on Extreme difficulty.

No discussion of this topic would be complete without Kaito's only song in the game. Urotander, Underhanded Rangers is a song about a team of superheroes who always use dirty tricks in order to win. Naturally, the chart for the song itself contains a lot of dirty tricks designed to mess the player up, though this is most prominent on Extreme difficulty.

 It should be noted that:

1.  Recordings of Project Diva X which use the PlayStation 4's built-in video recording and streaming functionality do not include the music so players will not run into copyright issues.
2. I am not exactly the best Project Diva player in the universe. Though you can still probably see how much this song messes with the player regardless.

From these two examples, it should be quite evident that, while it may not seem like a game such as Project Diva can have level design, it does. And this is a fact that applies to all genres you may not think of as having level design.