Love Live! All-Stars Review

Kawaii

Love Live! All-Stars is the latest installment in the Love Live! School Idol Project franchise. Developed by KLab, Love Live! All-Stars follows a group of 9 high school students who turn their lives upside down to become idols in an effort to save their school. Not only does this franchise span an entire anime, but it also has quite an impressive discography of songs. Love Live! All-Stars’ popularity rests heavily on the appeal of its cute characters. Luckily for me, the most recent game is no different.

One of the best things about Love Live! All-Stars is the level of interaction with the characters. From the very beginning, you get to pick a girl who acts as your companion throughout the game.  Love Live! All-Stars introduces you to a myriad of adorable and unique characters. You steadily learn more about them and integrate that knowledge into how you play the game. Each girl has her own unique personality and character design that is very elegantly expressed in the game. Not only did the developers create the facial expressions and body language differently for each character, but the voice acting also reflects each girl individually. Immediately the player gets sucked in by meeting and interacting with each of the new characters. You don’t have a chance to grow bored.

The Club is Shutting Down?

KLab ingeniously creates a storyline that engages existing fans while also acting as a great introduction to the franchise. You recently went to go see an idol performance and feel moved to join your school’s Idol Club. Unfortunately, upon arrival you come to find that most of the members are gone and the club is on the verge of being disbanded. However, due to your stick-to-itiveness, you decide to help recruit members, old and new, to keep the club from shutting down.

Boogie on Down

Though Love Live! All-Stars is half story-driven anime game it is also half finger Dance Dance Revolution reflex game. Despite the differences in mechanics, they fit together in a way that I didn’t initially anticipate. Throughout the story, you complete, what the game refers to as “Stages”. Stages are essentially performances in which the characters you’ve recruited perform a song in order to gain prizes and level up. You go from clicking through story screens to actively helping the idols through a performance. The fact that it actually matters how you level up your characters is quite refreshing for a mobile game. There is also a section of the game where you use songs you gained in story mode to compete against other players to see whose lineup is better suited for each song.

All in all, Love Live! All-Stars is a quality game that engages players with its dance action. Despite knowing that the story was going to turn out the same regardless of what I did, I felt genuinely invested in each of the characters and the plot overall. Love Live! All-Stars will keep you engaged as you tap your fingers to the beat.