Game Review: Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage
An in depth review of one of the most popular Japanese Rhythm mobile games at the moment
Disclosure: The author has played Starlight Stage since 2015 and is currently level 226 in the game. He is also a staff member of Cinderella Producers, a website that keeps track of the cards collected by the different producers (players) who play the game. You can check out his twitter @ElysiaSakura or his Cinderella Producers page.
Introduction
It is the second anniversary of Idolmaster Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage. I have to admit, I didn’t really expect to play this game for a long time, thinking it would be just a time passer in between writing philosophy papers and playing pc games like DotA2 or Starcraft or w/e. In fact, I never even imagined to play Starlight Stage and stick with it for a long time, having played Love Live: School Idol Festival (LLSIF) for a year. I have achieved a lot of things during the near two years of stay in this game, from full combos of master level songs (especially level 28 songs) to achieving the coveted SSS rank. Things I’ve never thought to have achieved back in LLSIF. Now that it is almost the second anniversary of this game, I think it would be best to give a full review of the game I know and loved for so long.
Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage (or deresute, as some of the players have called it) is a spin-off rhythm game of the original Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls, a social network game, developed by Cygames (developer of Rage of Bahamut, Granblue Fantasy and Shadowverse) with the blessing of Bandai Namco and was released on September 3, 2015 for Android and September 10, 2015 for iOS. The game features a huge cast of characters; 183 characters not including the producer himself and Chihiro Senkawa, the secretary. Some of them are already voiced, while others remained unvoiced. The objective of the game is to clear songs by pressing buttons and helping your idols grow in the process.
Before anything else, you may want to check out the beginner’s guide to starlight stage right here: http://cg-starlight-stage.tumblr.com/let-me-be-your-guide However, since this will be an in-depth review and would cover both basic and advanced stuff in starlight stage, a lot of the stuff covered there will be covered in this review.
Also, do take note though that the game is MOSTLY IN JAPANESE. This game is made with Japanese players in mind, so do not expect an English version in the near future. It may be possible that they might add English text in the game much like what they did in Granblue Fantasy, but it is highly unlikely. This is one of the few gripes I have in the game, although I can read some hiragana and katakana. However guides and translations, such as the one linked above, are plenty and available in the internet so you may want to consult those if you are starting up. Eventually you can access the menus with ease even with little knowledge of Japanese. It would still be nice if they can add some more english text to help guide players through the game, especially newbies.
Gameplay
The gameplay of the game is surprisingly simple, you press buttons on or slide your fingers across the lower part of your screen. There are 5 buttons, corresponding to the 5 members of your idol unit, which I will expand on later. The game has 5 difficulty levels: debut, regular, pro, master and master+. You can play debut to master using stamina, while master+ songs require master+ tickets to play. Unlocking master requires you to clear at least pro, while clearing master allows you to view the song’s music video, which can either be in 2D or 3D depending on your settings.
Seems simple right? Well, some songs in starlight stages are quite difficult to clear, especially in master. The image shown above is part of the master difficulty chart of the song “Trancing Pulse” by Triad Primus, one of the sub units of the game. It gets a lot worse…
Yup, this game has zigzag slides. They may look easy but don’t be deceived, these things ARE tricky to clear. Fret not though, this game has a practice mode wherein you can practice songs using practice tickets, or 500 gold if you run out of tickets (you can only have up to 3 practice tickets per day.) Plus most of these advanced charts only appear in Master or Master+, so if you are a casual and dont want to deal with difficult charts, you can always stick with debut — pro.
But for me at least, these Master/Master+ charts are what keeps starlight stage entertaining and fresh. From zigzag slides to massive notespam to a mix of slide and single/hold notes, starlight stage never ceases to amaze me when it comes to the creativity of the charts. Heck for Master+ songs, they even added a new type of note, which is a mix of hold and slide notes. The video below shows an example of a Master+ chart which shows examples of all the note types:
This may look intimidating, even to newbies, but for me at least this is part of Starlight Stage’s way to keep content fresh.
Clearing master, as said earlier, does allow you to unlock the song’s Music Video mode (MV mode), allowing you to watch your favorite idols dance to the music in either 2D or 3D. Below is a sample of a MV in starlight stage:
We’ll talk about idols and units in a bit, but this is another strong point of starlight stage. The introduction of 3D MVs in rhythm games was revolutionized by starlight stage and is primarily one of the key features of the game when it was launched. It allows you to watch your favorite idols sing and dance in full 3D, with 3D rich being the highest setting. However 3D rich or sometimes can be intensive to the tablet or phone especially if it is an older model, which is a big downside. Plus, if you play a song outside MV mode with 3D enabled it can cause some phones/tablets to lag really hard, so it is generally not recommended to play in 3D mode unless you have one of the more recent phones/tablets or if you just watching in MV mode.
If your phone can’t handle 3D mode, you can always switch to 2D mode, that shows very cute and small versions of the idols called “Puchis”. Below is a sample video of a game played in 2D high mode:
Although there is a 2D standard mode wherein the idols are just static, the 2D high and even rich modes allow you to watch the puchi idols dance as you play the song. Really cute! Plus unlike the 3D modes, the 2D modes are less processor intensive so expect less lag when playing in 2D mode. Really convenient especially for those with low end phones.
The game also has options to set the note speed, or how fast the notes come to you, before you can start the live; the slowest is 1.0, while the fastest is 10.0. You can increase or decrease the speed by 1 or 0.1. I personally use 9.5 since I want to see all my notes go faster. Really convenient, instead of going to the options menu and looking for the setting there.
Overall, the gameplay of starlight stage is pretty solid. Although the 3D MV modes is not for everyone, even in 2D mode you can still play the game, though you might end up crying about how you couldn’t full combo a certain Master or Master+ song often because of the note chart. But overall the rhythm game aspect of the game is challenging and be glad that cygames releases new songs and charts once in a while to keep the game fresh.
We’ve been talking a lot about the gameplay. But you might be wondering at this point, who are these idols? What are units? The next section will cover these things.
Idols, Unit building and the Gacha
This is where the game gets a bit more complex. The game has 183 idols and almost every idol has several cards of certain rarities. Each idol card has is assigned an attribute (cool, cute or passion), a rarity (Normal/N, Rare/R, Super Rare/SR and Super Super Rare/SSR) and certain amount of stats (vocal, visual, dance) and health. The idol also has bond points. When you reach a certain amount of bond points through playing lives with them (depending on rarity, SSRs need 200 bond points) and if you have the items for it, they can evolve (or awaken, in starlight terms) into their stronger forms and gain more stats. You also gain bonus stats if you max out their bond points after they are awakened.
Normal and some times rare cards can drop in lives. But for the most part you will get your cards through a function called “gacha.” While I will discuss the gacha aspect of the game later, to briefly summarize it this is where you get your SRs and sometimes SSRs if you are lucky.
Cards of Rare or higher rarity have skills attached to them. Skills help the live in many ways; some skills increase the overall score you get per perfect hit, some increase the combo bonus points that you get after every hit. Others can heal you or protect you from losing life. The maximum level your skills have is 10, which increases the chance of the skill to activate and lengthen the skill’s duration for a considerable amount of time. However, the catch is that the rarer the card, the stronger the skills’ effect is. So ideally you would want more SSRs since they have the strongest card effects. Unfortunately though you will be gated by the gacha.
Rare or higher rarity cards also have center skills with them, which increases either the amount of a given stat or all stats by a certain percentage. Some center skills also increase the health of the cards, or increase the chance of skill activation. But again, the higher the rarity, the stronger the card effect, so obviously SSRs will take precedence. Thus you are once again gated by the gacha.
Also, certain SSRs are “limited”, meaning they can only be obtained at certain times of the year. There are two types of limited SSRs: monthly limiteds and cinderella festival limiteds. As the name implies, the monthly limiteds are available for a given month and follows a theme. Afterwards it will disappear for at least a year and will come back as a rerun. These SSRs contain coveted combo up cards and the infamous princess center skill cards that raise all the stats of the idols in a unit by a lot (provided they are all of the same attribute). The Cinderella Festival cards on the other hand appear every 3 months and contain cards that have either a center skill that increases a given stat of all idols in a unit (provided they are of different attributes) or a center skill that increases the skill activation chance of cards. Such cards are coveted by the community and it is not surprising that people will go to great lengths to obtain them.
You can group 5 idol cards into a unit, consisting of a center and 4 other members. At least one stat(or all depending on the center skill) of each card will be multiplied and then summed up then, and then the totals of all 3 stats will be added to be your total appeal which is used to determine whether or not you can reach a high score in the game. Obviously, you’d want SSRs with the same main stat as your center’s center skill in your unit to maximize the total appeal, which in turn increases your score. Again, you will be gated by the gacha for this.
But hold on, I’ve been mentioning time and again about the gacha. What is this gacha?
The gacha is where you will get most of your SRs and SSRs. There are two gachas; one that uses friend points (hearts) and one that uses star jewels. The one that uses friend points does not give out SSRs, but has an extremely low chance of giving away SRs. But often than not you will use it for training tickets which you can use to level up idols and if it is silver tickets, skills as well. The more important gacha is the star jewel gacha. You need 250 jewels for a single pull, so 10 pulls costs 2500 jewels. You can get jewels by clearing story commus in the commu page (3rd button from the left at the buttom menu), clearing and full combo master difficulty songs, events and achivement rewards. You can also buy jewels using your credit card or iOS/google play credits. The rate to get SSRs in general is decent too at 3% (up from 1.5%), however if you break it down, the chance to get the SSR that you want is much much lower. The rate to get SSRs in general does increase to 6% whenever there is a cinderella festival on going, but to get a specific SSR is still low. If you want an SSR so bad, you might end up having to spend A LOT of money to get it.
This is one of my biggest gripes of the game. Yes it is possible to get the cards you want through sheer luck (Happened to me on multiple occasions, thank God.) but unless you spend a lot of money, especially during monthly limiteds and the cinderella festival, it would be very difficult to get the cards that you want. This kind of design is intentional to a degree though, for there will always be people who will go to great lengths to get the card that they want, and Cygames, through the gacha, will be able to milk their wallets because of that. Those are using nothing but free jewels will have also hard time, depending on their luck, because the amount of jewels they have is limited by the amount of free jewels they can obtain and their luck as well. It is fairly uncommon to see players who have less than 5 SSRs due to poor luck at the gacha, more so if they use nothing but free jewels.
There is a form of relief though for those who spent a lot in the gacha though, in the form of star shines. (or as we call it in Granblue Fantasy, sparking, in reference to cerulean sparks which do a similar function.) Everytime you pull from the gacha you earn a star shine, so 10 single pulls would mean 10 star shines. If you are able to collect 300 starshines during the duration you are able to pick a card from the star shine pool. This is a consolation prize for those unlucky enough to get the card that they want. Very useful especially during limited/cinderella festival gachas. But to get 300 pulls means having 75000 jewels, which, unless you saved for a long time or you have a ton of money, is extremely difficult to obtain. If they can lower the amount of pulls to get a guaranteed card that would be great, but thay may lower cygames’ profits so I doubt that will happen UNLESS someone in Japan complains about it.
Another form of relief comes through scout tickets. Scout tickets comes with a 10 pull ticket and are released every 4 months. The catch is, Scout tickets only allow you to get a non-limited/non-cinderella festival card so if the cards that you want are limited or only available during the cinderella festival, you cant use the scout ticket to get those cards. The ticket is useful for getting non-limited cards though, and you can use the 10 pull ticket anytime within 6 months so you can use it for your cinfes/limited pulls.
Overall, the game’s reliance on the gacha can be a huge nuisance for those who are gunning for the high score. If you want to get the best cards in the game you have to be prepared to spend a lot of money or free jewels in this gacha. Of course this is a given for any game with a gacha-like function, and at least starlight has some ways to alliviate the pain of not getting the girls that you like, though those too involves spending money and perhaps free jewels.
We are now done with the idols and gacha, now let us go to other functions of starlight stage, starting with the beloved room function.
Rooms, rooms and more rooms!
Probably one of the best parts of the game, the room function is unique to starlight stage. It is pretty much a room wherein your idols can interact with most of the objects in it. What the idol does depends on the objects inside. Beds make them sleep, the treadmill can make the exercise, they can also stare at the trophies. You can also claim items such as trainer tickets or awakening items in some of the items in the room. There are also items that help increase the stats of all your cards, such as the treadmill that increases the stats of your passion cards. You can buy most of the furniture using gold that you can obtain by playing the game or selling cards or other items. Chihiro’s desk and the piggy banks also help increase the gold you gain from lives so you can buy them as soon as possible. Some items are also upgradable, but it takes time and sometimes star jewels to upgrade.
The best part about the room function is that you can decorate your room in any way you wish. The game has a plethora of room items that you can use to decorate your room and arrange it according to your taste. The game’s events also give out free items if you reach certain thresholds so the possibilities are endless!
Whats more, once you reach level 50. you gain access to a secondary room! Meaning more space for you to decorate and personalize! You can also visit the rooms of other players and like them for friend points! They can also visit yours too!
Personally, the Room function is one of the reasons why I play starlight stage. The high degree of personalization allows me to make all sorts of rooms, from a coffee shop to a school classroom, to even a vacation house. The way the idols interact with the items in the room are fun to watch as well and sometimes really cute! Overall a great addition to the game.
Other Things
So far we have covered 3 big aspects of starlight stage, but lets go over the rest of starlight’s features.
The song list for starlight stage is really big. Including duplicate, attribute specific versions of songs, the game has 121 songs spanning multiple genres, which is an impressive feat for a nearly 2 year old game. Some of the songs are actually worth listening to, like Tulip, that was linked above. If you have the money, you can go online and order the starlight master cds. A lot of them are well worth it. Do note though that you need to be at least level 50 and have progressed through the main story to unlock some of the other songs.
The game offers multiple types of events every month to keep players interested in playing the game including token events, live grooves, live parades, live parties and cinderella caravans. Token involve playing lives to collect tokens, which in turn are used to play event songs to gain points for rewards. Grooves put you into a gauntlet of 3 songs which if you pass and go over a certain threshold will allow you to play the event song for bonus points. Live parades lets you “travel” from area to area to play lives and get rewards. Live parties pit you with other people to see who gets the highest participation in a live.
Token and groove events can be quite grindy at times, especially if the reward cards are popular girls. The rest of the events are generally relaxed and you dont really need to pressure yourself to play unless you really have to.
The idols themselves are very diverse in personality. One of them is as average as you can get, another very negative in her perspective in things, another is very sickly but she is able to cope up with the pressures of being an idol. The game covers if not most all of the possible kinds of idols which in a way is good because at least the game tries to cover all bases. Yet at the same time it is bad because not all of them are voiced and even within the voiced idols not all of them have songs. Given that out of 183 idols you have 67 who are voiced, 48 of which have solo cinderella master songs, it would still take a long time until each and every idol gets voiced.
The game also has several stories pertaining to the idols, as well as to the events. Unfortunately, as stated in the beginning, much of the game is in Japanese so unless you are able to read Japanese or just want to watch the reactions of the idols to guess what they are doing, you might as well just skip them and get the jewel rewards.
Wrapping Up
Overall Starlight Stage is a great game that is pretty much, I would say, gacha blocked if you are going for the high score. The fact that you are mostly reliant on the gacha to get the strongest cards to aim for the top can be quite excruciating at times regardless if you are reliant on free jewels or a person with lots of spare cash. However, if you are not gunning for the top and just want to play a fun rhythm game then this game is for you. The game has multitudes of ways to keep you interested, whether in songs, new room items and perhaps if you want a challenge, harder song charts. Also would definitely want to decorate your room. So many items to choose from!
To wrap things up, I would like to say that in my personal experience, the game is overall solid for me despite it being mostly Japanese and my experiences with the gacha. I’ve been playing for almost two years and for the most part I enjoyed playing the game. I met many friends along the way and eventually got the cards that I wanted. Despite it’s shortcomings, I would want to see what is in store in starlight stage. The future looks bright. Happy Anniversary, Starlight Stage.
Pros:
- Diverse song pool
- Many idols to grab
- The rhythm game aspect is fun… until you get to the very hard charts
- ROOM FUNCTION IS KING
Cons:
- Mostly in Japanese
- VERY GACHA RELIANT (unless you are extremely lucky)
- Be prepared to shell out some money for this game
