Love Live! All Stars 4+

This game is absolutely gorgeous, especially the character models (I love Rina so much). I want to compliment the music as well but here’s where my problem with the game comes in: it’s been really difficult to play the songs, for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s difficult to get through any song when my health is constantly going down, I know that getting perfect scores can help it go up but sometimes it feels like even if I played the song absolutely perfect, I would still get a “failed” screen. Second of all, failing the songs means I’m not unlocking new ones, which means I pretty much have to play the same songs over and over to get stuff to level up my characters. This feels very tedious, especially in a music rhythm game where I have to listen to the same song over and over again. BanG Dream! does this a lot better, at least in my opinion. Right off the bat you have quite a few songs to choose from and still get things to progress in the game, it doesn’t feel tedious and you can easily unlock more songs that way. I don’t know, maybe it’s just not my kind of game but I get very frustrated each time I try to play, and I really, really want to play because the game is so beautiful. If you like grinding then I guess this is for you but if not then you might find yourself getting bored of playing.

The first thing to know about All Stars is that, as stated, it’s an RPG. This means your success in the game will depend much more on boosting your units’ stats than on your ability to tap notes on time, and there’s a little bit of strategy involved. If you want a more standard, non-RPG Love Live rhythm game, play the older School Idol Festival game.

The second thing to be aware of is that, if you are not familiar with Love Live, your enjoyment of the game may increase greatly if you first watch the Love Live! School Idol Project and Love Live! Sunshine! anime series. Not only are they good shows, they will also introduce you to 18 of the characters featured in this game, and having some attachment to these characters will just make this game more fun for you. However, the story’s main focus is on a new, original set of characters, so don’t worry too much about it.

I like this game quite a lot. There’s a good selection of songs, the story is better than expected, and I get good new units often enough (without paying) to keep me happy. My biggest complaint is that I’ve reached a point where it feels impossible to upgrade my units enough to beat any of the harder difficulty songs. I figure I’ll get there eventually, but it may take a while.

I had the game since launch and because of that I have a big advantage over new players because I have played every event and got the non gacha cards for free allowing me to get some nice cards and a big collection. I wish this game had a way of giving new players some more stuff and also I miss the old weekly challenges where you had to perform stamina skills or voltage skills. I still have my weekly challenges formations sitting on standby if they ever change it back because getting star gems back then was easier, now it seems like you HAVE to spend training tickets in order to get to the required amount needed to finish the weekly challenge and sure I may not use them, but I don’t want to use more than 9 tickets in a day for an extra 50 star gems. Yes it feels pay to win when the SBL event (i think) goes on because the challenges in that are impossible for me to get and i’ve been free to play since launch so I always miss out on the star gem rewards for all the SBL events. Rate Ups seem fake sometimes but other times are real, roll at your own risk. Overall great game, but something seems impossible to newcomers because they get some star gems from the training and stuff but not nearly enough to finish Story 1 and Intermission because the luck on this compared to Japan is a huge difference.