Love Live! School Idol Paradise ~Vol.1 Printemps~

Well if you guys didn’t know, I recently got into Love Live! School Idol Project this year. Love live started out as some music unit which bushiroad started, but it wasn’t popular back then until they got an anime, which pretty much sparked out their phone game & now. their psvita game. I got into this series, and got the limited edition of this game as seen in my unboxing post. Unfortunately I wasn’t pleased with what I got. Post is image heavy so do watch out.

 

I’ll be covering the different sections of the game in detail, and you’ll hear my comments on everything. The game is divided into the Story, Free Live, Live Missions & the clubroom. The rest are the download contents and options lol what is there the review about that. The School IDol Paradise game is separated into 3 games, which are not supposed to be linked but the songs are pretty much different. I will have a tips section for each game review part, if there’s any common problems which I think people will face. I have a Japanese guide which can help you if any problems, but I’m just gonna translate/explain it in this review.

Story

The story system of Love Live ~School Idol Paradise~ is the same as any normal visual novel, where you go through a story of Muse’s daily lives at Otonokizaka Gakuen. They end up getting invited to the Akihabara Summer Festa where they perform their unit songs. This is is the part where it gets different for every single game, the units will end up performing separately have different stories as well. There’s nothing much to say about the story except for the fact that there’s 3 different routes which practically not too different anyway – just some scenario differences but nothing much. The stories are funny, but from I last checked, the story is pretty much the same, cept for the scenario differences in the other 3 games.

 

The other thing about the story is just that you have to plan their lives and play the music game throughout the story, and after the first run it’s pretty much really fast. The CGI models move here, so it’s kinda interesting cuz lol it’s better than the frozen sprites.

Tips:
– For the school route, just screw up all the songs on the first day and you’ll get into the route. Pretty simple.
– For the paradise route, just do well for all the songs.
– For the tropical route, it’s a different story as you have to score differently to get that route. The 2 lines below will tell you how.
– On the 2nd day, you either get Good, Good, Excellent OR Straight Goods.
– On the 3rd day, you have to get Excellent, Excellent, Brilliant to get the Tropical End.

Free Live – the music game.

The music game pretty mediocre as it’s not really that interesting. You have to set what song you’re gonna play, what clothes they’re going to wear, and the stage.

The songs you get here depends the game itself, and I shall say my complaints about those later. The game requires you to just use the left and right, and tap according the the notes there. The music also involves “Gimmicks” and “Features”.

The gimmicks are pretty much some extra showy lights and confetti, all those things at concerts and such lol.

The features is tracing a certain pattern with the girl of your choice, according to the units only.

Overall the music game was fun, but it got draggy and boring sometimes during the easy. Since the songs are only available in either Easy or Hard, the hard mode was more complex while the easy was too simple. The dances were pretty nice, along with the well done effects, stage and clothes. But I have one major problem. The song list. Let’s look at the song list on the official website then. This time, for printemps ONLY.

 

Wait, what? 10 songs? YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, YOU ONLY HAVE FUCKING 10 SONGS. 4 EXCLUSIVES FOR EACH GAME, THAT’S A TOTAL OF 22 SONGS IN 3 GAMES, NOT INCLUDING DLC. Then what are the other songs? The rest are just remixes for namely Start:Dash, No Brand Girls, Bokura Ima no naka De, Wonderful Rush, Music S.T.A.R.T!!, and the exclusive unit song, and most of them sound fucking terrible. No really, having 10 songs to play around with in every game ain’t funny you know.

Tips: 
– To get the I love (insert chara)! trophy you have to complete all their features, including the unit feature which can only be used with 3 stars. There are 2 patterns for unit, so don’t forget.

Live Missions

Live Mission are like, clearing a mission in a live. There can be special features like disappearing notes or reverse buttons which make it more challenging, and funny shit like by the end of the song you must have a “25” in your score. Those were really fun tho, but as I said, playing the same songs over and over is really boring, but at least the challenging stuff like random and reverse buttons were entertaining to clear.

Tips:
– For the “use feature 5 times” missions, try to get as much blue bonus as possible. When the girls reccomend you to use something, if is star, use it. Try to get as much star from the opinion usage and if you can’t, then keep exiting and entering until you get something good. During the song, keep using 1 star features and you’ll clear it.

Clubroom

In the clubroom you can view  several things, like the different episodes, and in a way, “check in” on the idols cuz you can listen to their voice collections that you’ve collected (e.g self-introductions, opinions, etc.).

 

You can even change their outfits as well, which is pretty cool. Also if you know it you leave it at the first page you arrive at the characters will sometimes talk.

Overall System

My overall reaction to this game:

I WAS EXPECTING SO MUCH POTENTIAL FROM THIS GAME SINCE LOVE LIVE WAS SO POPULAR. HECK, VOL.2 PREORDERS WERE ALREADY FUCKING SOLD OUT EVERYWHERE ONLINE WHEN IT CAME OUT. I HAD TO BUY THE ONE WITH THE AMIAMI BONUS CUZ THE ONES WITHOUT WERE SOLD OUT.  I am really disappointed with the game. Mainly the music list, but the story content WAS SO DAMN LITTLE I AM FUCKING SHORT. MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE EXTENDED IT TOO SEPTEMBER LIKE YOU ORIGINALLY DID AND PUT IN MORE CONTENT. THE CGI MODELS TOO. LOOK AT THEIR DAMN FINGERS. THEY LOOK LIKE FISH STICKS WTF. THE LIST OF SONGS IN THIS GAME IS SO LITTLE TO THE GAME MIGHT AS WELL YOU COMBINE FUCKING EVERYTHING TOGETHER AND MAKE ONE GAME BY ITSELF. WAY TO MILK THE SERIES AND MAKE THE FANS SPEND MORE MONEY. I CAN PAY THE SAME DAMN PRICE, AND GET A BRAND NEW PROJECT DIVA TO PLAY 20+ SONGS IN 4 DIFFERENT DIFFICULTIES. DON’T FORGET THE DIVA ROOM AS WELL. Wow I am just so damn disappointed with this game that I’m ranting so hard I wasted my money on the limited edition. The mini nendos were cute, but seriously, not the game.

Would I recommend this game to others as a fun music game to play? No. I don’t even recommend this to some minor love live fan, unless you’re hardcore and you need them literally dancing in your face unlike just the pretty illustrations in the phone game. IF you’d really like to get the game & you’re a love live fan, choose you’re favourtie unit and that’s it. Don’t spend more money on all 3 cuz it ain’t worth your cash. OR mayde just get your love live buddies to buy the other volumes so that you can borrow the other volumes from them and play it lol. Well apart from those negative things I guess you can enjoy Nozomi’s usual washi washi antics with all those screencaps I took.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.