Love Live! School Idol Festival

I was hesitating for a while as whether or not I should pour it here but the fact that this freaking game had gotten me hooked for over 3 months now surely left me with no choice. Since I’m pretty much a late bandwagon jumper (as always) bet most of you are already familiar with the title, or maybe avid players of it as well.

Yeah it’s called *drum rolls* LOVE LIVE! School Idol Festival (LLSIF), a mobile rhythm game for IOS/Android developed by KLab and Bushiroad. It’s completely free to download along with tons of content in it; however there will be items like love gems that can be bought with real cash too.

On a brief note, the game itself is based on Love Live franchise which has been expanding in forms of anime, manga series, and music CDs. I haven’t managed to binge watch it yet but the main plot in general revolves around a group of school girls who become idols in order to prevent their school from shutting down. These lovelies consist of Honoka, Rin, Kotori, Umi, Maki, Nico, Nozomi, Eli, and Hanayo. They later declare themselves as μ’s (read: muse).

WHY IS IT SO ADDICTIVE? Okay, again, this comes from someone who barely even follows the series whatsoever but for me LLSIF aced in excellent choice of songs equipped with simple gameplay and cumulative goals to achieve just like the generic system of most rhythm games out there. Not to mention the characters look adorable and engaging, even other rando girls outside μ’s circle, that I personally favor even more. The gameplay requires you to train these girls through practice mode with numerous song collections that can be unlocked whenever you raise a rank or complete the goals given. For every new cluster of rank there will also be a main story about μ’s and their path to stardom. It is indeed THAT simple that you want to play more and more, unlocking new songs you haven’t listened to, new stories, new members to scout, and the list goes on. Especially during events where you gotta keep playing to maintain your rank otherwise other players might snatch up the position you've been working hard to reach while you're off.

When you already get used to playing it then it’s time to step up your skill by clearing the goals for every song, mainly full score and full combo goals. This is also where the interesting part lies because instead of giving up when you fail one you will become more curious and passionate in overcoming it (that thrilling feels when your fingers are dancing carefully for the sake of tapping the correct notes though!). It has come to the point where my phone screen literally reflects a row of finger print marks forming circle notes when it is placed under the sunlight *soulless laughs*

LLSIF's events are held periodically to provide newly released cards with certain level of rarities. In Japan LLSIF app, there are 3 event variations so far: Token event (collecting as many points as possible until maximum goal is reached), Scorematch (competing with other random players on randomly selected songs), and Medley Festival (playing three songs in a row with selectable difficulties). Since I’m a newbird in LLSIF Japan I’m really looking forward for the next Medley Festival event! It will be my first time joining it, also so far it’s still only available in the original Japanese version of the app. Well, everyone sounds excited about new events but when the actual thing starts, it will be another Hunger Games kinda world; sleepless nights and super tight competition until the event is over lol (usually it lasted around 10 days). But the satisfaction of getting special rewards like SR cards of your favorite Love Live! Character and many other prizes are just irreplaceable.

Here's a look into the gameplay. It's one of my favorite songs in the game, called 'Loneliest Baby', and this is the Hard mode with full combo:

While below is a sneak peak of my current LLSIF account. I used to go with the English version since it was easier to grasp the game's details of course, but somehow I find better luck in JP version. It's way more generous in handing out love gems, and most importantly better songs and characters variations for it is the first version to ever release.

That’s all for the bigger picture of the rhythm game. I still barely even recovered from the last SR Umi scorematch event which I was quite butthurt with because my rank flew away at the very last minutes. Those hours spent seemed so far away because people were competing like there's no tomorrow!

Afterall LLSIF is a well-made game though there are still rooms for improvement in the future. Simply prepare yourself before freefalling into this hole because once you’re sucked in escaping wouldn’t be an easy story.


Download Love Live! School Idol Festival Game (Japan/English ver.) Here