Join Jacob for a tour of the Love Live! School Idol Festival mobile rhythm game, recorded just hours before it was discontinued!
English-language official website for the game: https://lovelive-sif-global.bushimo.jp
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English-language official website for the game: https://lovelive-sif-global.bushimo.jp
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Join the Nerd Club: http://nerdclub.nots.co
Official website: https://nerdonthestreet.com
Discord server: https://discord.nots.co
Subreddit: https://reddit.com/r/nerdonthestreet
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E-Mail: jacob@nerdonthestreet.com
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GamingTranscript
00:00 Hello everyone, I'm Jacob Kaufman with Nerd on the Street Gaming today, and we are taking a look at the Love Live! School Idol Festival mobile game.
00:07 [intro music]
00:13 Alright everybody, so I don't normally make videos for the gaming channel on YouTube anymore, the Nerd on the Street Gaming channel.
00:19 I don't normally make gaming videos for the Nerd on the Street website anymore either.
00:23 The reason I'm making this video today is because it is currently March 30th, 2023, and it is currently 1016pm Mountain Standard Time.
00:32 In about 2 hours and 45 minutes, the Love Live! School Idol Festival mobile game will be discontinued.
00:39 They are taking the servers offline. I think it's 4pm Japan Standard Time, midnight Pacific Standard Time, which means I have until 1am here in Mountain Time to enjoy this game.
00:49 Now, I'm not actually the biggest hardcore fan of this game or anything, I just started playing it last year. The game's been around for like a decade.
00:56 Like I said, the game is called Love Live! School Idol Festival, abbreviated as SIF.
01:00 And this is a mobile game that originally had characters from the Love Live! School Idol Project anime, and then later the Love Live! Sunshine anime.
01:08 Since I am somewhat a fan of that franchise, I've written a blog post on my anime blog, mountains.moe, about it.
01:14 Since the game is literally going offline, I don't like, you know, dead software or dead games any more than anyone else.
01:20 This game requires a server to function, and people might reverse engineer it later, but there's no guarantee of that, so this might just stop working altogether.
01:27 I did play School Idol Festival a really, really decent amount. I played it really hardcore for like a week or two last year.
01:36 There was an event that was going on, and I was brand new to the game, and I didn't realize how much you actually had to invest to succeed in these events.
01:44 And so I saw an event that was going on, started playing to try and earn a reward from this event that I'll show you in a minute.
01:50 And this was when I was, you know, I was working full-time and doing my master's degree in college full-time, so I was very stressed out during the day.
01:57 So at night I would basically just spend, you know, an hour or two in bed playing a rhythm game.
02:01 And yeah, that event really was my main exposure to this game. I've played it every now and then since that event,
02:07 because it was basically an event that was going on when I joined the game, or shortly after.
02:12 I've played sporadically, maybe once a week or once every couple weeks since then. Once a week on average.
02:17 But yeah, for that week or two that the event was going on, I needed to earn a certain number of points to get a reward in the game.
02:24 And yeah, like I said, I was not familiar with the ridiculous amount of time that people actually spend on these.
02:29 And I think you can spend real-world money to like speed that up, but of course I'm not going to spend real-world money on an anime game on my phone.
02:36 But yeah, in just a minute, I just wanted to make a quick video for the gaming channel and for the blog,
02:41 showing what this game was about, since it will no longer be available to play.
02:44 Now I've got my Android phone right here. I guess I'll turn the brightness all the way up.
02:48 Nope, gotta turn it lower down than that.
02:51 How's this? Alright, that's doing pretty well, focus-wise.
02:55 So you can see I've actually got two icons on my home screen. There's Love Live on the left, and that is School Idol Festival.
03:02 On the right it says... what does it say? It says Love Live AS.
03:06 That is Love Live School Idol Festival All-Stars. That is a separate game.
03:10 And when I first was trying to get into the Love Live games, and how this started was I watched the Love Live anime.
03:16 And the third Love Live series, Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club,
03:20 that was sort of a spin-off TV series that was using characters who were originally from these games.
03:26 So the games started off with the characters from the original Love Live series,
03:30 and then the games also added in a bunch of just sort of background characters that were original to the game.
03:36 So that was Love Live School Idol Festival that I'm about to show you.
03:39 Now eventually, Love Live did some sort of poll.
03:42 They started doing surveys with fans and players of the game, saying, "Who do you like the most?"
03:47 "Which idols from School Idol Festival, which original game characters do you like the most?"
03:52 And then the people who won the contests or the surveys for who people liked the most in School Idol Festival,
03:59 they basically made a separate game, All-Stars, which has different gameplay mechanics,
04:04 and then it's got a lot of story for the original characters from this game.
04:08 So, like I said, I was very confused when I first went to get into the games,
04:12 because I heard these terms on the Love Live subreddit.
04:15 I heard the term "School Idol Festival" and I heard the term "All-Stars, SIF, and SIF-S" for the abbreviations.
04:21 And I was always just kind of like, "There's two games?"
04:24 You know, I was unclear on it, until I actually went to download them.
04:27 And yeah, they are indeed separate apps entirely.
04:30 At this point, they're owned by separate companies,
04:32 since the original School Idol Festival game got licensed out to a different third party.
04:37 Those licensing rights were sold a couple years ago, and some people predicted it would be the death of the game.
04:41 And a few years later, here we are.
04:43 Basically, if I was going to describe these to somebody today, before School Idol Festival is discontinued,
04:49 I would describe it like this.
04:50 Love Live! School Idol Festival is a rhythm game,
04:53 and it's got some very, very basic fluff story to it.
04:59 And then Love Live! School Idol Festival All-Stars is a story game,
05:03 and it's got some very, very basic sort of rhythm game stuff to it.
05:08 But the original School Idol Festival that's being shut down, it was really a skill-based game.
05:12 It was a rhythm game.
05:14 And you're going to see it in a minute. It's difficult to play.
05:17 You're using basically all of your fingers if you want to, depending on how you hold your phone.
05:21 And you have to hit these notes basically in time with the rhythm that they're displayed on the screen.
05:27 Rhythm games aren't really an indication of how good your actual rhythm is.
05:30 I was very frustrated. My first rhythm game that I ever played was the open-source osu! on my Linux PC.
05:36 And I was frustrated because I've got good rhythm, and I've got experience in background and music,
05:42 and I was like, "Why am I so bad at this game?"
05:44 But when you think about it, the beatmaps for these rhythm games, it's not like playing an instrument.
05:48 They don't actually correspond to notes.
05:50 The position of beatmap entries do not correspond necessarily even to rhythms that individual instruments are making.
05:58 The beatmap is sort of synchronized to visually coincide with the rhythm,
06:01 but it's really, like I said, nothing like playing an instrument at all.
06:05 It's a completely different skill set, and I'm not great at it.
06:08 But yeah, the School Idol Festival All Stars that is still around, it uses a much different mechanic,
06:13 and basically it's very, very easy, except it actually limits you based on how far you've gotten through the story
06:19 and how much you've interacted with other aspects of the app.
06:21 And if you haven't gotten far enough in the story in All Stars,
06:25 then it won't actually let you pass songs when you're trying to complete them.
06:29 Even if you're hitting all the notes perfectly, you can still fail the song in All Stars.
06:33 So that's how it works in the original School Idol Festival.
06:35 School Idol Festival, like I said, it was skill-based.
06:37 So if you play a song on Extreme, if you've never played that song before,
06:40 if you open the app up for the first time, set it to the hardest setting,
06:43 if you are good enough and you hit all the notes, then you will pass it.
06:46 But that's very unlikely because it does get very difficult, like I said.
06:49 So yeah, I don't want to talk about it too much.
06:51 I just wanted to give a brief background of what this app is that I'm showing you.
06:54 I'm going to try to record this on the phone.
06:56 I'm also going to have the camera pointed at the phone so you can see how I'm holding it
06:59 and how it actually looks like to play it.
07:02 Also because I'm not sure how the screen recording is going to work with this app.
07:05 It's interesting, when I installed these, this is the first phone that I ever played this on.
07:10 I installed these apps when I put this installation of Android on this phone.
07:13 This is a Xiaomi Mi 10T, and I got it for free when I was doing my Yoday review
07:18 on the tech channel here at Nerd on the Street.
07:21 But right now I just have plain lineage OS with Google Apps on it.
07:24 And it was really interesting. I've got this phone rooted,
07:27 which if you're not an Android user, rooted means I've got access to modify app details,
07:32 copy app data off of the phone, so I can back it up in case this phone gets broken or stolen or lost.
07:39 You know, I like to have my phone rooted so that I can actually make complete backups,
07:43 but some apps don't actually want you to be able to make backups,
07:46 so you need sort of escalated privileges in order to do that.
07:48 But it was really interesting. Both of these apps are installed from the Google Play Store.
07:52 However, unlike this Fire Emblem game that I also have installed,
07:56 that one I actually had to sideload because on Google Play they've got it marked
07:59 where it won't even let you install it if your device is not meeting all of Google's security requirements.
08:04 But I can still get it just by downloading the APK. It works fine, so it's clearly not a technical limitation.
08:09 But yeah, the Love Live games, I was able to install them both from Google Play.
08:12 The All Stars game, the new one that is still going to be around,
08:16 it works perfectly fine on a rooted device.
08:18 The original School Idol Festival does not work if your phone is rooted,
08:22 if it can tell that it's rooted.
08:24 Now I'm using Magisk here for root on my phone,
08:27 and Magisk has a feature where you can go in and basically check some apps
08:31 that you don't want to be marked as rooted, and you don't want to use any root options with them,
08:36 and it will also keep the app from being able to tell that the phone is rooted sometimes.
08:39 Now this doesn't always work. For instance, the LG ThinQ app,
08:45 that app, it still knows the phone is rooted even when I'm using this list feature to try to hide that.
08:51 It checks if the phone is rooted using other means.
08:54 But the Love Live app, it actually started working when I added it to this deny list in Magisk.
08:59 So if you don't allow the Love Live app to get root privileges, then it doesn't know the phone is rooted.
09:04 And I do think I know a different workaround for that LG app,
09:06 I just didn't want to apply it because I don't actually need that app.
09:09 But Love Live, I really wanted to play. It was a whole deal getting it working.
09:13 This was back when I was living in an apartment.
09:15 And yeah, just the loading screen music is kind of nostalgic,
09:18 just from how much data I had to download the first time.
09:20 I finally got it to start working.
09:22 I had it sitting there playing the downloading, loading music for 20 or 30 minutes maybe.
09:27 And yeah, I assume part of the reason why it did not like rooted phones is because
09:31 School Idol Festival, since it's skill-based, it is competitive sometimes.
09:35 All-Star is not as competitive since it's not skill-based, I guess.
09:38 That might be why they dropped trying to figure out if your device is rooted or not.
09:42 But yeah, because of that sort of extra layer of protection,
09:45 I'm not sure if it's going to let me record this.
09:47 Japanese companies also get weird about copyright.
09:49 I'm sure this video is going to get a copyright claim on YouTube.
09:52 If it doesn't go down altogether, that would be good.
09:54 I have not found a whole lot of Love Live songs on YouTube,
09:57 so it's possible the video could actually get a strike, rather than just a claim.
10:01 But I might still have the video up on my blog if that happens,
10:04 because my blog does not have Content ID.
10:06 But yeah, we're going to go ahead and I'll start screen recording.
10:09 I'm going to show you this game, because we only now have two and a half hours to play it.
10:13 Alright, so I'm here. I've got the camera actually pointed at my bed,
10:17 just so I don't have to worry about the phone scraping around and making noise on a desk.
10:20 And I've also turned the screen brightness way down.
10:23 The phone is actually darker than I would normally use it at when the lights are on in a room to me.
10:28 But for the camera, it looks like that's good.
10:30 Actually, you're getting glare from the light.
10:32 Here, we'll just turn the light off.
10:35 I've still got light from the computer in the room with me here,
10:38 and it looks like the camera can still see this phone okay.
10:41 And I can see it better now, too.
10:43 Okay, so I'll just start recording.
10:45 Alright, so I've got the screen record here set to record device audio.
10:49 And three, two, one.
10:52 Okay, we should be recording our screen on the device here.
10:57 Swipe away VLC. I was playing some awkward music in theme for this video.
11:02 So we'll go ahead and open up Love Live.
11:04 It does operate entirely in landscape mode.
11:08 You hear one of the characters says "Bushy Mo" every time you start the app.
11:12 And I've got no audio.
11:15 Interesting. There should be sound right now, actually.
11:18 So I wonder if that's a thing with...
11:21 Okay. Why do I not have any sound?
11:24 I'm actually restarting.
11:26 It says "Bushy Mo."
11:28 Okay, does this have to do... Is it not going to play audio if I'm recording?
11:34 Let me stop recording on the device.
11:36 And then open it up.
11:39 [Bushy Mo]
11:41 Huh.
11:46 I actually don't know what's going on here.
11:48 Normally there would be menu music, and I wanted to capture that.
11:51 Since this was a, like I said, a pretty nostalgic experience, particularly on the menu for me.
11:58 But for whatever reason, we are not getting any sound out of the app right now.
12:02 We're getting sound effects, but no music.
12:06 Hoping that doesn't mean that the app is shut down early.
12:09 Oh, here we go.
12:11 Okay, so...
12:13 This is one of the two songs that plays when you're downloading things.
12:21 And yeah, like I said, I listened to the downloading music for a very long time, the very first...
12:26 It was maybe 10 or 20 gigabytes.
12:29 The first time I tried to boot this.
12:34 So as you can see, every time you log in, you get a log in bonus.
12:37 Total log in... Oh, I logged in 69 days.
12:41 Almost 70 days.
12:43 Total. So like I said, I wasn't a huge expert at this game or anything.
12:49 But as you can see, it's got a calendar that shows you the days that you've gotten the log in bonus just for logging in.
12:53 They do that to try and get you to log in every day.
12:56 I was actually getting the bonus every day when I was participating in that event.
12:59 For however long that went on.
13:01 As you can see, I haven't been logging in very much this month, just because I've been very busy with other things.
13:06 And playing phone games, playing any games are not my top priority.
13:11 But yeah, we can X out of that.
13:14 Calendar. Oh, okay, so log in to the game 79.
13:18 So I've done it 79 times?
13:20 Log in to the game 81. Okay, never mind.
13:23 It wasn't the original number.
13:25 Log in to the game 80.
13:28 82.
13:30 What's the highest number?
13:31 So maybe 82 times is the number of times I've logged in to Love Live! Skool Idol Festival.
13:36 You get this pop up that comes up, and you can ignore it and have notifications build up.
13:42 Or you can just read through all the notifications.
13:45 Oh, this is sad.
13:47 This character, Shizuku from Nijigasaki, her birthday event, I guess, started...
13:54 Normally birthday events go for like a week when a character's having a birthday, I think.
13:59 Maybe it's only their one day.
14:02 Because yeah, this was less than a 24 hour period you could log in, because the game is shutting down, like I said, 4pm at 3.31pm.
14:09 Normally they wouldn't, I don't think, end an event at 4pm like that.
14:13 At the top here, we've had these "Great Thanks" campaigns popping up for the past couple of months, since they announced that this was going away.
14:25 Yep, 1600 on March 31st.
14:28 JST.
14:30 And I have signed up to transfer my album over to the upcoming Skool Idol Festival 2.
14:36 There is actually a...
14:38 I'll zoom in a little bit here.
14:40 There is...
14:41 Oh, am I not in focus? I can't tell.
14:44 Switch this to auto-focus, maybe.
14:56 Alright, maybe that'll work.
14:58 And my camera on manual focus, since it was not working well on auto-focus for a different video I'm currently working on, and need to have done in 36 hours.
15:09 But yeah, there is an upcoming Skool Idol Festival 2, so basically a successor proper rhythm game to this game.
15:15 All-Stars was already kind of a sequel to this game, but it was, like I said, more of a spin-off with a different gameplay mechanic.
15:21 They do have an upcoming sequel that is going to be apparently more of a rhythm game, from what I've gathered.
15:26 And I have signed up to have my album from this game transferred over to the new one.
15:31 I think you only have to sign up once, I don't think you have to keep, you know, updating your sign-up when you earn new things in this game.
15:37 And the transfer was not available to people in the EU, because of the EU's data privacy laws.
15:44 I don't know what that says about the transfer process.
15:46 Some EU people were upset about that, I kind of laugh at it, because that's what EU gets for passing laws like that.
15:53 This was a very long announcement.
15:56 Honestly, I normally don't pay attention to these a whole lot.
15:59 I was paying attention to the events that were going on a little bit.
16:04 The type of event, there are multiple types of events that can go on.
16:08 The one that I sunk a bunch of time into was a medley event, where basically it would give you sets of three songs at a time.
16:17 I think you could choose one, two, or three songs, but you got the most points.
16:20 You got sort of combos if you did three songs at once.
16:23 And then sometimes it would give you an encore fourth song that would earn even more points.
16:27 And then you just had to build up points to earn things.
16:30 There's skill effects. So yeah, sometimes they have known issues, and that issue has been resolved.
16:39 They're probably not going to be too worried about...
16:42 Oh, plan to be resolved after midnight on 31st March. Okay.
16:48 Yeah, I was going to say, any major incidents they're having, they probably aren't going to be highest priority anymore, since they are shutting the game down in a couple of hours.
16:56 So this is the menu.
17:01 Yohane is talking there.
17:05 And yeah, it's interesting.
17:07 School Idol Festival All-Stars was very dynamic.
17:11 On the menu, for instance, Yohane would actually be sort of standing there.
17:15 Her arms would be swaying, and it would be a 3D model.
17:18 Everything in School Idol Festival, this older game, it was very 2D, very classic.
17:23 Game Data Transfer.
17:27 Yes.
17:32 Tap close to keep your settings. Yes, close.
17:35 That's the first time this has shown up, I think, right here in the main section, the Game Data Transfer.
17:41 As you can see, you have a sticker you can set for your user.
17:45 We also have wallpapers we can set. I only have one wallpaper.
17:50 Okay.
17:55 I'm going to turn this down just a little bit.
18:02 But yeah, basically, I'll show you what the live shows looked like.
18:04 Yeah, there's no events or anything. We can't swipe through anything here, can we?
18:10 Special comic series.
18:15 Interesting.
18:19 The main part of this game, like I said, I'll just look at the rhythm game aspects first.
18:24 Actually, we'll do a song first.
18:27 I'll go to Live Show.
18:29 Most of the songs that I did a whole bunch were Aqua songs, since the event that I was doing was a Ruby, Kurosawa, and Hanamaru-centric story.
18:41 I ended up doing just a whole lot of Aqua songs during that.
18:45 I'll try a couple of songs here just to show you what the gameplay was like.
18:51 We're going to do step 0 to 1 here.
18:55 You can only do a certain number of songs concurrently.
18:59 I have, it looks like, 235 live points, and it spends 15 every time you play a game.
19:05 You can't sit here playing it all day.
19:07 Once you run out of live points, you actually have to wait a while for it to regenerate.
19:11 You might be able to spend in-game currency to get it back.
19:15 I'm going to tap that song.
19:17 You can choose people from your friends list.
19:19 These are all actual other players that I have friended from collaborating in other events.
19:25 Some events you actually work together with other players.
19:27 Multiple players play the same song at the same time, and then it adds all your points up.
19:31 You try to have milestones that you all reach as a group with your points.
19:37 Then you can select one of your friends to give you a special bonus power.
19:41 This is my team that I've assembled.
19:43 On the far left, this is the avatar for Ruby that I earned from completing that event or getting enough points in that event.
19:51 This was the goal.
19:53 It wasn't even the highest reward that they had in that event, but it was the reward.
19:57 It was an S-rank character, which I knew was the most rare type of character, and I wanted that character.
20:03 It's Ruby, and she's wearing an outdoor outfit because they were looking for ladybugs out in some park.
20:10 Or ladybugs. Fireflies out in some park in this story.
20:14 I don't actually want to change that.
20:17 I've still got Yohane.
20:19 The character that I selected when I first signed up is my partner for the game.
20:23 That's why she's on the home screen. She's in the center there.
20:26 I've got some other people.
20:28 I've got someone from Nijigasaki in here.
20:33 I've got a couple people from Muse.
20:36 She's gone in there.
20:38 Go ahead and tap OK.
20:40 There are two different ways that you can play this game.
20:43 The first one that I did originally, I'll do here.
20:46 That is using your fingers with the phone set down on a surface.
20:49 There are one, two, three, four, five, oh.
20:52 It looks like nine bubbles here.
20:55 As the music's going, you have to hit these buttons.
21:01 You build up combos.
21:05 Which is really the only way to get good scores in this, is with the combos.
21:13 I've missed some. I've broken the combo, as you can see how that works.
21:25 [Music]
21:29 [Music]
21:32 [Music]
21:46 [Music]
21:52 [Music]
21:55 [Music]
22:02 [Music]
22:07 [Music]
22:11 [Music]
22:20 [Music]
22:23 [Music]
22:28 [Music]
22:32 [Music]
22:37 That's how it works. You can see my score bar going up on the top there.
22:47 Obviously, you try to get an S rank at the end.
22:50 I've gotten As a couple of times. Normally, if I get a B, I'm doing alright.
22:53 If I get an A, I'm doing very well.
22:56 It seems like my recording stopped. I wonder what that's about.
23:02 I'll start that again.
23:05 That's going again.
23:10 When you play songs, you get rewards.
23:13 Now it's going to tell me how I did.
23:16 "Special reward boxes appeared. Would you like to earn points for the special reward box instead?
23:22 Your progress with the current reward box will be saved short."
23:25 Your points build up to get you rewards as well.
23:29 In-game things, characters, items you can spend on things.
23:34 I never got too into all of it.
23:37 As you can see, I had 68% "perfect" notes in there.
23:41 Some of my characters have buffs that make the timing window to achieve a perfect note a little bit wider.
23:49 The perfect percent would be lower if I didn't have those characters in there.
23:54 "Perfect" and "great" count towards your streak.
23:58 "Good" does not count towards your streak. "Bad" and "miss" obviously don't.
24:02 When you hit the notes, as you can hear, it plays a tambourine sound.
24:05 It's slightly different based on how well you hit it and how well your timing was.
24:10 You can adjust using those audio cues as well.
24:14 But yeah.
24:17 It's got a performance meter, so it tells you throughout the song how well you were doing.
24:21 For me, it fell apart towards the end there.
24:25 Oh, I accidentally moved on to the next screen.
24:28 As you can see, you come across new characters.
24:30 This is an in-rank character, so just a normal, non-rare character here.
24:36 I've got the maximum number of club members.
24:39 The club member management is one thing I never fully understood in this game.
24:46 Now, the bond bonus. I'm going to show you how this works in a minute.
24:48 As you can see, all of my bonds are currently maximized.
24:53 You need to maximize the bond for a character and "idolize" them in order to unlock their story.
25:00 Every single character, even the tiny ones--
25:02 These two characters, for instance, second from the left and second from the right,
25:06 are not real characters from the anime. They're just original to the game.
25:10 They have two-second stories, very short stories.
25:14 Literally, less than 20 lines of dialogue.
25:17 Probably around 10 lines of dialogue.
25:19 Just giving you some interaction of these characters in whatever fictional Japanese high school they go to.
25:26 Talking about being a school idol.
25:29 They start out in casual clothes.
25:31 Once you play their story or once you idolize them in order to unlock the story,
25:35 then they change into idol outfits.
25:38 Songles.
25:41 There's all kinds of mechanics in this game.
25:44 You just have to tune out a lot of them.
25:47 To show you how those bonds work--
25:49 Oh, it looks like sometimes the game--
25:52 This is actually pretty rare, but sometimes the game will send a different character than your partner to the menu just to say hello to you.
26:04 Yeah, we're aware, Nico.
26:06 If we go over to "Members," we go to--
26:10 Special practice, I believe, is how you unlock the stories.
26:14 Now, if I can find a character who I have maximized...
26:20 I think I need to find her in my roster first.
26:26 "Members," "Team Formation," and who is this person?
26:31 Okay, so she's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 from the left on the top.
26:35 So now I'm going to go back to "Members" and "Special Practice."
26:43 She's not in the same spot.
26:46 Okay, well, if we just tap any of these...
26:49 Let's see.
26:51 This might actually work with regular practice and not special practice, now that I think about it.
26:55 "Practice."
26:59 Okay, well, this is--
27:01 It's giving me all the people who are in my team right now, flashing that indicator at the bottom, so that's helpful.
27:07 So this is how you unlock stories.
27:09 Once their bond is maximized, then you have to practice with them in order to idolize them.
27:17 Now, the "Practice Partners," "No Matching Members," this is what I had an issue with.
27:21 You basically have to sacrifice some people from your roster in order to idolize other members.
27:28 And I never quite understood exactly how you were supposed to 100% unlock all the stories if you're having to sacrifice characters who you haven't unlocked yet.
27:38 As you can see, I have unchecked "Include Members with Locked Side Stories."
27:42 And so the special practice, I think, is a way to get around that.
27:45 If you've got more than one of the same member, then you can possibly unlock the story by doing a special practice instead.
27:53 But... I'm not seeing the character in here.
27:59 As you can see, I've got a lot of characters in here who I have more than one of.
28:05 So I can, for instance, this character, Chiduko Sakamaki.
28:13 I can sacrifice the level 10 version of this person in order to idolize the level 15 version.
28:20 Special practice.
28:23 So yeah, when you hold a practice with a member, it removes them from your roster.
28:27 But now this one that I have practiced with, she just turned into an idol. She's been idolized.
28:33 Her bond is at zero, so she won't have a story yet.
28:38 But I can try to find her, add her to the team.
28:42 If you tap on the card, sort of just a collectible virtual card to show that you've collected and unlocked and idolized that character.
28:50 Chiduko Sakamaki.
28:54 So yeah, I'll try to unlock her bond or maximize her bond with the next song, because it only takes a song or two to do that for normal characters.
29:02 But if we go back to members, the way that it works with regular practice is... it's very similar.
29:09 Like I said, we're just going to sacrifice completely unrelated characters.
29:12 So I'm going to include members with locked side stories.
29:15 And it's actually going to suggest two Yohanes and a Niko? Why would I do that?
29:22 That is really weird.
29:24 Let's lock lower level members first.
29:27 Okay.
29:30 So yeah, it seems the higher level a character is, the more they'll count towards this.
29:35 But I'm just going to sacrifice a bunch of low level characters just to show how this unlocking process works.
29:40 I guess this means they won't carry over to the SIFT 2 album that I mentioned.
29:45 But I don't know what they're going to do for me there anyway.
29:48 So I'm going to tap practice.
29:50 So that is going to idolize this character.
29:52 Ultra success. I've never seen it fail since there is no actual mechanic to that.
29:58 Wait, level up. Level up. Level up.
30:02 Wait, I think if she reaches 30, that's when she becomes idolized.
30:05 So we'll see what happens here.
30:08 24, 25. I hope it gets to 30 and I don't have to sacrifice more people.
30:14 And this is kind of monotonous. Japanese games are just kind of a lot of waiting sometimes.
30:20 Okay, well, she's not idolized yet. That's strange.
30:26 So how do we idolize?
30:28 See, I never did completely figure it out, did I?
30:31 We've got training. No eligible members found.
30:35 Um...practice.
30:42 So she's max level.
30:46 Special practice.
30:51 I'm not seeing that character here. Oh, is this her?
30:55 One of these?
30:59 This might be it.
31:04 No, the level's not maxed on this one.
31:09 I don't think it's the same character.
31:12 But yeah, it just changes their costume when you idolize them.
31:15 And then what that does when you do idolize them and maximize their bond...
31:18 Do we have any side stories available? We don't.
31:21 We just have Nijigasaki stories.
31:23 I never bothered playing all of the Nijigasaki stories since the stories here in Original Skullhead Festival are very, very simple.
31:32 And Nijigasaki has an entire game to themselves with all-stars anyway.
31:38 Let's see. Okay, well, let me go to my team formation, I guess, and...
31:43 Replace this maxed character with...who's the character I just idolized? If I...
31:55 Restrict this to only idolized characters.
31:59 Who is the one I just idolized? Was it her?
32:01 If I go back to members now...
32:05 And then this...team...
32:14 Team members should be first. Okay.
32:17 Yeah, so her bond is at zero. Needs to get to 50.
32:20 She's only at level 15 of 40, but she's already idolized.
32:22 So I clearly didn't understand how the levels impacted idolization there.
32:26 But let's play another couple songs just to maximize the bond and show how it works when you get a story.
32:33 Trying to find songs that I've actually played. I normally play on the hard difficulty.
32:38 I only have two Aqours songs available on the B-sides.
32:49 Okay, this was a more difficult song. I have played this one before.
32:55 So for this song, I'm going to hold the phone in my hands. I know it's dark.
32:59 But you can see I'm going to be using my thumbs instead of my pointer fingers this time.
33:03 It's really difficult. My previous phone would have worked great with this because it was a little bit smaller.
33:07 The Xiaomi Mi 10T is just big enough to where it's cumbersome to reach a thumb all the way to the middle.
33:13 Especially if you're holding the phone all the way in your hands.
33:15 I had to sort of lower my grasp to actually be able to reach my thumbs all the way over.
33:21 I think I've played this song. Yeah, I have.
33:26 Looks like our recording has stopped once again. So we will start it once again.
33:36 Okay, and we'll just select any partner here.
33:40 Alright, so we'll play this song.
33:48 See how many bond points it gets us.
33:56 [Music]
34:08 [Music]
34:16 [Music]
34:26 [Music]
34:36 [Music]
34:46 [Music]
34:56 [Music]
35:06 [Music]
35:16 [Music]
35:23 Alright, didn't even make a B on that one.
35:26 Okay, the recording is still working. I wasn't sure if it stopped.
35:29 If I do cut and use any of the camera's audio for the phone here, since my microphone is not pointed at the phone,
35:36 you might have been able to hear I'm actually covering up the speakers unintentionally sometimes when I'm grasping the phone like that.
35:42 And I found actually the pointer fingers seemed like the easier way to do this when I first started playing on lower levels.
35:48 When I moved up into the harder difficulties, the thumbs actually got easier to work with in the pointers
35:54 for just the faster and more involved beatmaps or whatever they call those maps here.
36:01 So we should see here...
36:05 Okay, earning more new members.
36:12 Okay, so we got about halfway up that bond level, so we'll do one more song to get that all the way up.
36:18 The rest of the characters didn't change because they were all already maxed.
36:22 But yes, let me see if I can flip the phone over here to enable rotation.
36:32 Android gets more cumbersome every update. Okay.
36:39 So probably a good idea for me to restart the screen recording after doing that.
36:51 I didn't actually know it repeated the finish sound like that before today, because I've never stuck around on the results screen for that long before.
37:00 Okay, yeah, I'm not doing as well as I otherwise might.
37:05 Getting notifications for...
37:09 Just simply because I'm currently hunched over, leaning sort of over my microphone and around my tripod.
37:14 So yeah, I'm at a disadvantage here.
37:17 But...
37:25 I'm trying to find songs that I've played. I know I played a bunch of awkward B-sides, I don't know where they all went.
37:31 It's really weird all the B-sides are gone.
37:34 Team? Yeah.
37:36 Oh, some of these are just...
37:45 Huh. Yeah, I don't know where all of my songs went.
37:49 There's a bunch of songs that I think I would normally play are just missing here.
37:52 Why do I only have three songs available? This makes no sense. What happened?
37:57 Okay, well I don't know where all of my songs went. All of my awkward B-side songs.
38:04 Yeah, it's really bizarre that a bunch of them are just missing.
38:08 But we'll play... We'll play Yume...
38:12 Kataru Yori.
38:15 It's one of my favorite songs from the show.
38:18 Season 1 credit music.
38:21 Oh, did I just pass on... What happened?
38:24 I don't know what I just clicked to exit the live show.
38:31 Okay, we'll play this, maximize the bond.
38:35 And we'll get moving here.
38:39 Try and get into a more comfortable position so I can...
38:43 Not mess this one up terribly.
38:46 [Music]
38:50 [Music]
38:54 [Music]
38:57 [Music]
39:07 [Music]
39:11 [Music]
39:15 [Music]
39:21 [Music]
39:24 [Music]
39:28 [Music]
39:32 [Music]
39:36 [Music]
39:40 [Music]
39:44 [Music]
39:49 [Music]
39:52 [Music]
39:56 [Music]
40:00 [Music]
40:04 [Music]
40:08 [Music]
40:12 [Music]
40:18 Alright.
40:21 Yeah, I don't know if some of the B-sides that I thought I had unlocked,
40:24 maybe I didn't actually have them unlocked, I just experienced them in that event.
40:28 Because that event, that medley event, had specific songs that were in the pool for it.
40:34 And that's why they were all Aqua songs.
40:36 Because it was an Aqua event.
40:39 The group name might actually be pronounced "Aqua".
40:44 But I refuse to ignore the spelling that much.
40:49 Okay, so we have unlocked that member's side story now,
40:53 since we just maximized her bond points and she was idolized.
40:56 And those are the two conditions to unlock a side story.
40:59 Idolize them, maximize their bond points.
41:02 Normally I do it in the opposite order, but...
41:05 Yeah, so we'll go and take a look at where that is.
41:08 [Music]
41:13 Just checking that my recording is still going on the phone here.
41:17 Alright, so we'll go back to the home screen, and we'll go into the story section now.
41:21 Now it's interesting, the main character's stories, they're split up into groups.
41:26 We've got main story with Muse, main story with Aqua,
41:29 and then side stories for Muse, Aqua, Niji, and Layla.
41:32 And then other stories for Muse, Aqua, Niji, and Layla.
41:36 It's interesting, they have side stories and other stories, which sound like the same thing.
41:40 I don't know if that's a translation quirk.
41:42 Now in the side stories, they're all flashing new.
41:45 And none of them were flashing before.
41:47 The reason they're all flashing new now is because, for some reason,
41:50 if I go into Muse here, they've got the Muse girls, and then under "Others",
41:54 they just have all of the side characters in there.
41:58 Now if we go into Aqua, once again they have all the Aqua characters,
42:03 and then under "Others", they've got all of the side characters,
42:06 because the side characters aren't from any of the anime shows.
42:10 And so they don't have anywhere to sort them into.
42:12 So instead of putting them in their own separate section,
42:14 they just put them in all of the other sections.
42:16 It's a really weird UI.
42:18 But we can go in here, when you play a story, it has to download the sprites in the story.
42:23 But yeah, this is how unsubstantial these side character stories normally are.
42:32 And they're not even voiced for the side characters, they don't have voice acting.
42:36 "I'm happy you came to see me off. I'm always searching for you in the crowd when I'm on stage."
42:40 "Time always flies when I'm with you."
42:45 "Why the long face?"
42:48 "You don't want to be apart. I feel the same way."
42:50 So this is, I think this is five lines?
42:53 Six lines.
42:58 "You should go back to your seat in the audience."
43:04 Wow. Normally they're not this, uh...
43:07 Do I have to sue your lips so you can't say another word?
43:11 Okay, that was about ten lines of story.
43:17 And it wasn't really a story.
43:19 As you can see, that's what these side character stories really are.
43:21 They are nothing substantial whatsoever.
43:24 Just a very brief interaction.
43:27 Just out of context.
43:29 And I get a love gem for clearing a side story.
43:33 But yeah, now there is no more new side story showing up for any of the teams.
43:38 There is a new main story showing up somehow.
43:41 What's a school idol?
43:46 Boy, I don't know how I missed this story, uh...
43:49 Until right now.
43:51 Alright guys, and this video actually went pretty long.
43:53 It got a little bit cumbersome to upload.
43:55 So I'm going to go ahead and split it in half right here.
43:57 In part two, we're going to take a look at a much longer event story with Ruby and the Fireflies.
44:02 And I'm also going to play a couple more songs.
44:04 So tune into that next time if you still want to see a little bit more of this game.
44:07 But for now, I hope this is entertaining to people who might not have known about this game.
44:11 Or nostalgic for people who did know about it.
44:13 I'm Jacob Kaufman with Moe and the Mountains and Nerd on the Street Gaming.
44:16 And I'll see you guys in the next part.
44:18 [outro music]
44:24 (chimes)