I don't know what went wrong with Dingo when developing a music game based on the multimedia animated franchise, Love Live School Idol Project. The overall graphics are equivalent to the graphical style of MMD or a PSP music game with 3D graphics. It's an epic disappointment when we saw the game in action before its release last year even when the game was finalized. We expected the graphics to be the same as the ones in Project Diva series just because the game was developed by Dingo, right? When a music game like this is developed by Dingo, you expect the graphical level to be as equal as Project Diva series level. The gameplay doesn't have to be exactly the same though.
Another disappointing impression was that the total amount of songs. Getting at least 30-40 songs should be an acceptable requirement for me but this is not supposed to be an exception because there should be tons of songs available to choose from and by the time you've reached the game's end, you might have chosen the same song, few songs or maybe several songs. I guess this is what the flow of the Idolmaster franchise is about like choosing costumes, accessories, idols to manage and of course, the songs but what increases the replay value is the large amount of choices. Like the Idolmaster PSP games, Love Live School Idol Paradise is split up into three and you can choose various costumes, stages and the songs as well as to adjust the stage settings. I guess that Love Live School Idol Paradise is the closer answer to Idolmaster Shiny Festa as it is more of a rhythm game with storyline than the idol management simulation game.
Perhaps, there should be game called School Idol Producer or something but Love Live related or not , that will break the originality and rip off the former competing franchise that there will be lawsuits from Bandai Namco because its existence can cause a serious war over these two franchises despite their differences in concept even when the awesome collaboration of these two franchises took place this year. Hell, even one of the songs from Love Live School Idol Project franchise is playable in Taiko No Tatsujin but that's pretty much it as if Bandai Namco has no plans to put in additional songs from the that franchise at this moment and it's already a limited opportunity.
And of course, what's up with the part where you have to draw the on-screen symbol for a boost? That is unnecessary and it should belong to some kids game on the DS or 3DS. Sure, the game itself may be suited for teenagers and above and especially for the fans of the franchise but that feature is a strange move to me.
The game overall is pretty much a disappointment to the fans as if they may stick on to playing School Idol Festival on IOS and Android due to sufficient contents and replay value. As of this time, there are already songs in School Idol Festival taken from the animated movie that was already in theaters months ago in Japan and it was also in theaters outside Japan recently. I imagine that when the music starts, the fans at the cinema theaters may end up turning the whole place into a concert which may be strange to those who watch tons of movies but not the Japanese animated ones but be warned, there will be spoilers and I don't know the entire plot of the movie at this time. I guess that a huge amount of sadness awaits those who watch it provided that they know the plot of the TV animated series season 2. Again, you won't find information here about what went on in that show but there should be references to both seasons 1 and 2 in School Idol Festival game which is still on-going and I'm still lagging behind the latest chapters due to painful grinding that I have to face.
