I love Love Live. I love μ's
Redundancy aside, I enjoy all aspects of it quite a bit. The music, the game, and the show (Which is airing its second season now). It's all extremely fun, and the music is very good.
Not sure what I'm talking about? This can explain Love Live better than I can. I'll wait for you to take a peek...
Read it all? Let's get back on track.
I find idols to be an interesting concept. It's something I've never quite seen in the west. Sure, there are variations on singers and other performing groups, but I've never heard a song on the radio telling everyone to がんばれ. However, I don't listen to the radio much.
But we're not here to talk about that, because it's all about the games. And there is one, as I mentioned a few paragraphs up. A phone game, and it's all in Japanese!
I originally intended to make this blog so you, my very amazing readers, can figure out which English games have Japanese releases, text, etc...While I didn't plan to do a lot of Japanese exclusives, this phone game is coming out in English for the US apple store, so I'm safe! But we want to play the Japanese one, since we're learning it and all.
First things first is you'll need a Japanese iTunes account to play. If you're not sure on how to make one, I'll leave a link at the bottom to help you out. You may or may not want to use iTunes cards in game but you can find Japanese iTunes cards all over the internet. I'll leave another think for a site I frequently use.
So we've downloaded ラブライブ (Make sure you type in katakana just to be sure) and now we're reading to play. How much Japanese is needed upstairs to understand all of this?
That depends.
The game is pretty straight forward, since it's a rhythm game. Here is example gameplay footage. Don't worry, that's one of the harder "hard" songs, it doesn't start off that crazy. And with patience and time, you can be playing that song no problem. It isn't as scary as it looks after a few months.
This is worse than any Hard song
The main purpose of the game, aside from playing the songs, is to get rare cards of your favorite μ's members. There are various ways to do this, so please refer to the wiki for a complete explanation. You use said members to play songs, level them up, and get all sorts of goodies.
For someone at the beginning stages, or with a small knowledge of Japanese, it will be difficult to successfully navigate the game without a the help of the wiki. There is plenty of katakana which is very helpful. For example ホーム(Home)、ストーリー(Story)、ショップ(Shop). At the same time, you'll see 部員 (Club Members)、情報 (Information)、友達 (Friend). Depending on which member of μ's you end up selecting as your favorite, they'll appear on your main screen, and most sub screens to talk to you and give a bit of information regarding each screen. You'll also see a small text box below them just in case you missed out. If you still can't quite make out what's being said, you can lower, or turn off the background music.
One of the more useful (in terms of studying) features of the game is a story mode. You can play story mode right away, and as you progress with songs/gain levels, you'll unlock more chapters. These play out like visual novels. A character (or characters) will be on screen, with a text box at the bottom. Many of the conversations are easy to follow, but they are sprinkled with some advanced kanji or jukugo sometimes, so having a dictionary handy is a good idea.
There is also side stories for the generic idol girls (cards you pull, non μ's members) as well, which are also a very fun read, but unfortunately lack any audio.
The options menu and update screens in game feature the more complicated kanji and jukugo, since it's mostly pertaining to information about updates and other features. If you can't quite grasp it, the guide has translations of everything.
Now, I've only really scratched the surface of this game in terms of mechanics and how to's. If it seems interesting to you, definitely check it out, and it's great study material as well. If you've already heard of Love Live and still haven't played...Get to it! It's worth it, I promise.
Wrapping Up:
-Easily accessible. Game is free. Just make a Japanese iTunes account
-Easy to understand katakana words, some difficult kanji.
-Gameplay is fun, addictive collectable aspect as well.
-Story mode is like a mini visual novel, great study material.
-Wiki available for those mini roadblocks.
External Links:
Love Live! on Wikipedia - Read this if you want to know about Love Live!
Love Live! School Idol Festival English Wiki - Tons of Information regarding the game. Everything you need to get an idea of how to play is here.
How to register for Japanese iTunes Account - Comprehensive guide on how to register an account without a credit card.
iTunes Japan Cards Store - Best I've come across. Based in the USA so time difference is minimal, and they ship fast as well. Prices are also the lowest I've seen.
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