I have about 100 hours on mobile and about 16 minutes on PC on this game, and I can confidently say that I do NOT recommend this game to anyone. This game is unbelievably greedy, stingy, and not well-developed. TLDR at the end.
One of the biggest problems I have with this game is how abhorrent the economy and the gacha system is. The game's economy is based on consumable upgrade items (like beads, crystals, "lesson points", hololium, colored cubes and hexas, and hologold) and red diamonds. Red diamonds are a general-use item for skipping mission pass tiers, reviving on failed lives, and, most importantly, pulls on the game's gacha system. The gacha system, like other gacha games, has a standard banner always running and a special banner for newly released units. Both the standard and special banners have a pity system that allows players to pick a 5-star unit of their choice after 200 pulls (or 50,0000 red diamonds). However, these special banners are not permanent and coincide with the times the corresponding event runs for. These special events are very frequent and incredibly short (around 10 days at most). After these special events are over, the corresponding special banner and whatever mileage points accumulated from pulling in the gacha disappears; the points are not carried over to the next special banner. Each special banner has at least 3 separate new units that the banner focuses on, and, with its release, there is a substantial score boost associated with those units. To stay competitive, you need to be constantly trying to pull for the latest units and collect multiple copies of them to "bloom" them, so they can be at their highest potential. This game, however, is very stingy with its red diamonds to its free-to-play audience. And when I mean stingy, I mean extremely stingy. Trying to accumulate red diamonds for a 10 pull in the gacha after the initial, beginning phase is like trying to find water in a desert: few and far between. Any meaningful amount red diamonds is guaranteed during the starting phase where you are starting the game to hook you in. After that, the only way to get a reliable amount of diamonds is from event rankings; however, you have to be playing constantly and be damn near the top of the leaderboards to get a meaningful amount. I had to play everyday during the Summer Gamers event for about 3-5 hours while getting Full Combos constantly on expert difficulty event songs only to be ranked silver and rewarded 700 diamonds. This rhythm game is unique in which your score is heavily dependent on the composition of the "units" you bring in. For example, when I first started a game, I got a D-grade on a song at the expert level. Once I optimized my team set-up, I got an S+ rating for the song, even though my skill had stayed relatively the same. Because of this, you constantly need red diamonds to pull for 5-star units, because using anything below a 5-star is self-sabotage, to build a team composition that you are comfortable with. However, the lack of red diamonds for the free-to-play players have left them at the mercy of luck, so all they can do is pray that they get a specific unit to fill out a specific team that they are stuck with because there is nothing that accounts for the player's say in choosing what unit they want. It should also be noted that new units keep players competitive in the leaderboards, so a constant stream of red diamonds is necessary to be a top-player. Is there any way to consistently get diamonds? Well, the game has an achievement system that gives a measly 20 to 50 diamonds per achievement completion. It isn't a meaningful amount and a lot of them feel like a drag to do (which is something I will touch on later). Is there any other way to consistently get diamonds? The answer is coughing up a few buckaroos for Big Cover Holo corp. Through real-world money, you can get yourself a separate currency specific to the gacha system: blue diamonds. Because blue diamonds are its own currency, you can NOT combined the red diamonds you earned with the blue diamonds you bought for some extra pulls, you are REQUIRED to cough up $20 USD for a 10 pull. This is above the standard in gacha games, where it is typically a $10 for a 10 pull. There is also a constant push for extremely small discounts and cuts for blue diamonds, incentivizing and pushing for people to purchase blue diamonds. I deeply understand the game has to make profits, but the abhorrent distribution of red diamonds ensures that free-to-play players do not have many opportunities to have a say in what units they want to have in their collection or to optimize their scores.
The economy of resources like consumables to level up units is quite questionable as well. In the start of the game, new players get flooded with a lot of resources that is used to upgrade units. However, leveling up and especially training those units eat up a lot of those resources. After the initial flood of consumables dies down, players are left to scavenge for any way possible to get the smallest amount of beads and crystals to upgrade their units. It does not help that each unit has a classification of cute, pure, and happy. This division of units also applies to beads and crystals, which are used up to increase the level cap each unit naturally has, allowing them to have higher levels and higher scores in general. Because of this division, free-to-play players, who already at the mercy of the gacha system, are furthermore at the mercy of whatever crystals and beads they can scavenge out of a minigame, hoping that it is just enough to train their unit a little more to get higher levels. The distribution of consumables like beads and crystals, and also hexas and cubes (used to upgrade a tech-tree style board) are scarce and forces players to try to do whatever they can to get at least a little bit of it in hopes of being able to get a higher score. So, these players turn to minigames and story episodes/quests.
Story episodes and quests are reliable ways in the beginning to around mid-game to get quite the significant amount to get red diamonds and consumables for upgrading. But, the story, in my opinion, is very boring and very superficial. It is a rhythm game after all, I am not expecting a literary classic. But, when there are literal cutscenes that span 6 minutes long with very bland dialogue and storytelling, which show up frequently, it turns me off from the story immediately. Granted, there are skip buttons, but it is way more conveniently to drag the slider all the way to end, and honestly, it's a bit annoying to skip every single cutscene that shows up in the 2 main story arcs and the quests. I would have preferred it the story to be interesting and engaging, but it is literally just a V-Tuber model just bouncing around, making the occasional "Hey" noise. The little minigames the game has is not for me, but it is satisfactory. My only gripe is really just Mega Circuit. It's a cool addition, but some quests and episode lines force you to play the minigames and all of the sudden you are now -3500 coins in debt for a season all because a Hololive character forces you to play basically Mahjong against your will. Higher or lower is cool though. It really is a drag going to the map constantly to quick travel to a location, skipping through the pointless, empty dialogue, and play some random song/minigame and do that over and over again.
Another gripe I have is that this rhythm game has a meta??? Like it's better to play certain songs over others. Because of this system, a lot of players in multiplayer will pick a specific song to farm event points and will dc if the song is not chosen. Just promotes a bad way of playing the game. The rhythm game itself is really fun though, which is why I have 100+ hours on it. Also pc ports sucks. game's not meant for pc.
TLDR: Too few resources, story's a drag, game promotes bad playstyles, very fun rhythm game though
