Love Live! School Idol Whatever

Eryn

I can't be the only person here who's into this shit. Bring out your waifus, kids: who else enjoys this all-consuming multimedia empire?

Personally, my favourite moéblob overlord is Eli. Hanayo is p. cool too.

Also, apparently making videos about Love Live is a great way to get more views on YouTube right now. My School Idol Festival videos quickly became my most popular content by far in a very short span of time. Methinks the audience is super potent and super under-served on the English-speaking YouTubes. Not a lot of variety yet outside of "Watch me full combo this song!" and "Check out this AMV and/or song remix!", which is weird considering how popular the show and the mobile game are.

Daikun

Maybe embed one of these videos so we can see what you're talking about?

Churba

I've never played it, but what the hell. After I've re-finished spec-ops, I might give it a crack.

Eryn

Sure. These are my two most recent:





Edit: Hope you enjoy, Churba! Though I won't blame you if you don't. The rhythm game portion is actually quite challenging at the higher difficulties, which is probably the biggest positive from a pure game design perspective. The card collection/optimization and pseudo-dating-sim portions definitely won't appeal to everyone, though. Works on me at least, so take that as you will, lol. At least it's fun when you realize that you must make your moéblobs literally engage in cannibalism to get stronger.

muppet

My daughter is full speed into this thing. Sigh.

Eryn

muppet said:

My daughter is full speed into this thing. Sigh.

My sympathies. It is definitely a huge time sink once you get into it. Such addicting. Many idoru. Wow.

Ruffas

Several of my students play it (I'm in Japan).

Victor Frost

I played for a while, then had to factory reset my phone a few weeks ago and lost my progress. Never picked it up again. My Team A was all full-on idols to get high scores. My Team B, was a crack military unit with no idolized members (to preserve their military costumes) and Hitomi Shiga as Leader. They were like the A-Team for me. I have a little head-backstory for them. Had.

I should play again.

Apreche

NOPE

Churba

Eryn said:

Edit: Hope you enjoy, Churba! Though I won't blame you if you don't. The rhythm game portion is actually quite challenging at the higher difficulties, which is probably the biggest positive from a pure game design perspective. The card collection/optimization and pseudo-dating-sim portions definitely won't appeal to everyone, though. Works on me at least, so take that as you will, lol. At least it's fun when you realize that you must make your moéblobs literally engage in cannibalism to get stronger.

OH! Soon as you posted the video, I recognized it - I have played this just a little, but it annoyed me at the time how it kept having to download for a minute or two every time I went into the game, so I stopped. I might give it another try if you recon it's worth it.

Victor Frost

You know what I don't like.When you first get the character cards, each character has a unique personality that makes them special. One is shy, one stoic, one... well, slutty. But they all look more or less happy being themselves. And they have hobbies! One is a painter, the other a saxophonist, one is into airsoft, etc.. Once you idolize them, they become cookie cutter and generic. But, more disturbingly, some of them look really uncomfortable. Like this one.


I mean, she looks totally uncomfortable in a dress that short. Who decided this would be a good design decision?

MATATAT

Why is she sweating?

Victor Frost

She's embarrassed.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

Oh, I didn't realize there was a rhythm game part to it - I might give it a whirl.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

After half an hour of play, there's a decent rhythm game surrounded by ruthless skinner box and candy box mechanics. Also moeblobs everywhere.

ThatGent

It's an allegory for how the Japanese idol industry destroys the would-be futures of women.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

Welp, the Skinner box has me. Hanayo makes an excellent moeblob overlord.

Eryn

Victor Frost said:

You know what I don't like.When you first get the character cards, each character has a unique personality that makes them special. One is shy, one stoic, one... well, slutty. But they all look more or less happy being themselves. And they have hobbies! One is a painter, the other a saxophonist, one is into airsoft, etc.. Once you idolize them, they become cookie cutter and generic. But, more disturbingly, some of them look really uncomfortable.

Yeah, some of the early N idolizations really don't look that good. A few do, but most either look tacky, lazy, or like the example you posted. Thankfully, from the second round of N cards on, the idolizations fit their personalities a bit better, or at the very least look more interesting. My favourite is Akira, the biking girl. Her original idolization doesn't look that great, but the second version of her? This is the unidolized version:



And this is the idolized version:



Hells yeah, how can you say no to the Ishinomori scarf?

Incidentally, if Scott were into waifus, I would guess this would be his girl. :P

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee) said:

Welp, the Skinner box has me. Hanayo makes an excellent moeblob overlord.

All hail the ricelord



Seriously, though, nothin' wrong with bein' into weeaboo trash if you admit that's what it is. You are very right about the Skinner Box/Candy Box thing. No wonder I stopped playing Ingress. I really only need one Candy Box in my life at a time.

Apsup

I got to the point in game where I have unplayed hard songs with are too hard for me, but because it costs in game resources to just try the songs, the game seems to be encouraging me to rather grind easier songs rather than try to get good at the hard ones.

I don't like that.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

I've drawn two different Hanayo rares from normal draws the last two days. I think the game is agreeing with me.

Eryn

Yeah, I have no doubt that's by design. Probably is supposed to simulate the feeling that it takes a while to get good at those songs, and thus make it more satisfying when you do. Ingenious, but frustrating when you recognize it. I didn't recognize it at the time, so it worked on me -- it feels hella good to finally be able to full combo Hard songs, and then even better to do the same with a couple Expert songs. I'm still having enough fun with the game that I won't stop playing at this point, but the freemium model of limited HP is definitely what keeps me from recommending it more whole-heartedly to people.

At the very least, it's one of the easier freemium games to not pay money for, which I appreciate. Most players are free-to-play from what I can tell. You can get enough of the game's fake currency naturally, do well in events, fill out your teams, gain rewards, and unlock all the songs without paying money, so it's at least a more full game experience than some games that use this model. Still.

Anyway, if you do want to get around the freemium BS and practice the songs more, there's a great channel run by a guy called Oktopaz. He has really well-done assist guides for all songs in the game, and you can watch/listen to/tap along to them and get used to all the note patterns without burning LP. Just search YouTube for the song you want + the difficulty level and his videos will almost certainly show up in the results.

And speaking of Oktopaz: I was planning on posting one of his videos here anyway because I'm curious what people who play harder rhythm games like DDR or Osu! think about it. This is "Soldier Game" on Expert mode, and full combo'ing it is widely considered a major milestone of skill in this game (one which I am not even close to passing). I was wondering how it compares to expert-level songs on other games, since I don't really have an advanced rhythm game reference point outside of Elite Beat Agents. I know I've heard SIF tends to be easier overall than those games. Thoughts?

Victor Frost

I am not convinced I didn't just watch a machine do that.

Churba

If some motherfuckers can do things like this with their feet, I've no doubt someone can do it on a tablet with their hands.

Casa Vino

That consumed a Sunday afternoon!

GreatTeacherMacRoss

I want to look at all the character art, but once I grokked what that game was about:

Not enough candy in that box.

Eryn

100% fair.

Also, if you just want to see all the card arts, you can go here: http://schoolido.lu/cards/

Eryn

Can I just say something to the current event song's Hard mode?

"ffffffffffffffffffffffff--"

My brain and my fingers start to scramble around 1:05:

Casa Vino

Solidarity.
Also, how long did you play to earn 300+ hearts ?

Eryn

About four months, and for some of that total, I do admit to the cardinal sin of paying money in a free-to-play game so I could do more draws. ;_; The majority of it was saved through in-game play at least. Next time I do a video like that, the total is going to be in-game gems only. Planning to do that later in the summer when the English servers get voucher recruitment.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

I may have to burn through hearts in order to get enough points for this event SR.

SuperPichu

I don't know what the friend thing does but my code is 490088328