Game Review - The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage

 

Genre: Collectible cards, rhythm

Theme: Music, idol

Rating: 12+ (Google Play)

The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage is a rhythm game developed by Cygames and published by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. It was released on September 3, 2015 for Android, and September 10, 2015 for iOS.

The gameplay is pretty simple. There are five buttons that needed to be tap/slide when a circle approaches. The more accurate hitting the circle will give higher score. Perfect is the best that can be achieved. Slight not accurate will give Great. Getting a bad/miss will decrease the stamina bar. Getting a nice/bad will break the combo. If the stamina ran out, the play failed.

There are over 200 playable songs, sung by different famous Japanese voice actors. There are four difficulties for each song. The harder the difficulty, the harder it gets. There are also Grand mode and Master+ mode.

The team consists of five idols, can’t have duplicate cards but can have same idol but different cards. There are 4 rarity of cards, which are Normal, Rare, S Rare, and SS Rare. Higher rarity has higher stats. Team building is also important in this game. There are three attributes of card, which are cute, cool, and passion. Each card have a leader skill, card skill, and four parameters. Achieving a high score requires leader skill that matches with the team. The skill of the card also can give higher score.

The songs have four different attributes, which are all attributes, cute, cool, and passion. Matching the attributes of the song with the team will boost the score.

The cards can be obtained from gacha and event. Event card are limited and only available at the time of the event. Star jewel is required to do the platinum gacha. Gacha rates are not bad, SSR rates is 3%, SR is 12%, R is 85%. 10 rolls will give guaranteed SR.

The art of the cards are good. Full art only available on SR and SSR cards. You can set the card to the home screen. When you tap the screen, there are several lines that will be spoken by the idol.

The graphics is pretty good. You can play Music Video mode, after clearing Master difficulty once for each song.

Each card have different costume. 3D model dress is only available in SSR cards. The design varies and are very good. The 3D models can be viewed individually. Some pose can be applied to the model. The model can also be viewed in Augmented Reality mode, which make the idol ‘exist’ in real world.

The songs available varies in genre. There are songs that give cutesy vibes, songs that give cool vibes, and also song that give happy vibes. The gameplay is simple but challenging. Building the right team to achieve higher score, and accurately hitting the circle when there is so many circles approaching.

The fun is this game is achieved by leveling and awakening the cards, seeing beautiful girls singing and dancing, getting SSR cards of the idol, sharing full combo play, sharing gacha results, and building team.

The cons of this game is that it is not easy to build the team at first. There are attributes and parameters. Each card has different attribute and parameters. To score a high score, the team is needed to be built carefully. Also it is dependable on gacha, but once you get enough for the team, you can constantly get high scores.

The game is in Japanese. But if you are familiar with Japanese rhythm games, it should not be a problem. The tutorial is very helpful to know which one is which.

Trailer (Japanese): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9HKtUOJ2Do

Play demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIbF2jIT6qA

Google play store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.bandainamcoent.BNEI0242 (Japan region only)

Rania Apsari – 02411740000101 – Teknik Industri