#and it turned out to be basically what I wanted SIF2 to be

[ratherboogie]

I should probably mention that I fell down an Ensemble Stars-shaped hole at the start of May, so expect a lot of that. Especially expect a lot of

Mama

[ambisweetiepie]

Love Live SIF2

Don't mind me while i rant about Love Live.

I'm so annoyed!!!

I already knew I wasn't going to enjoy SIF2 as much as All Stars, because I had downloaded the japanese version to try it out.

Now that the global version is here, I was able to link my all stars and SIF account. SIF2 is only going to be around until May, but it's supposed to be available afterwards as basically just a gallery for the cards you got. You won't be able to play it at that point.

So I linked my old accounts, and they give a nice gallery for your old SIF cards, but nothing for All Stars??? Just give you some gatcha tickets??? You couldn't at least give me a gallery for my All Stars cards that I loved and cherished?????? You were able to do it for SIF, so why weren't you able to do it for All Stars???

Also! I know All Stars' game play wasn't for everyone. It relied on having good cards rather than having skill. You could play and switch between teams while not actually doing the rhythm game part. I really liked that!!! Even with the rythym game, there was a lot to keep track of (swapping teams, your SP gauge) but as a result they only made you tap left or right sides of the screen for the rythym game.

This was great for me because I can't actually play SIF's dumb rhythm game layout. It has nine buttons all over the screen. It hurts my hands if I try to do it much. It may have been more playable when the game first came out, because phone screens were smaller at the time. None of the buttons were a reach. But screens have gotten bigger and so there's no comfortable way to hold my phone and reach each button. They could've changed things to be like other rhythm games. Bandori, Proseka, and D4DJ all have the tapping section at the bottom. They've all managed to implement gameplay in that that still makes it fun and engaging.

More complaints:

When chatting, the text from the person you're chatting with goes by very fast. There's no way to adjust the speed of this. Once they're done talking and it's your turn to reply, everything other than the reply screen is dimmed out. So you have to struggle to finish reading what they just said.

My BIGGEST PET PEEVE OF THE GAME is that when picking out songs, they give you 8 seconds of song audio. So while you're deciding, and picking out your team, it's replaying over and over and it's so obnoxious. The only way to turn this off is to turn ALL background music for the entire game off. I'm not asking much, I think LLAS had it be like 15 seconds? Just a little longer makes the loop a little less annoying.

Small annoyance, is they tried to improve the mouth movements while talking to make all sorts of different shapes? This was unnecessary, and more immersion breaking than the simple open/close mouth movements they had previously.

Also, the old card art. I understand you don't want to have to start from scratch for cards, but including the old art means a few things: 1) You're asking people to try again for cards they already got in the past 2) A lot of that artwork is OLD OLD. And it makes things look less cohesive, and cheap. 3) When adding Nijigasaki to SIF, they never bothered to draw regular cards for them, instead just using their in game sprites from the visual novel sections. This also looks cheap. Other games have done the same thing (Like Obey Me) and it looks cheap and lazy there too.

I really liked everything about All Stars. It really improved a lot from SIF, but was different enough to warrant keeping both around.

They could have just had SIF2 be a replacement for SIF. If they're going to keep everything around from SIF (playstyle, cards, etc), that would've been acceptable. They've improved they UI by a lot and added features SIF didn't have. I stand by what I said from the "it's rude that people have to re-earn cards they already had" but other than that, it more or less seems an improved version of SIF. If they had let SIF players transfer their accounts over, and not closed down All Stars, I don't think they would've gotten near as much backlash as they did. Since All Stars was such a different game, and had those nice 3D graphics, it can't be considered a replacement the way it can be for SIF.

I like the texting with girls feature, even though it has issues. I like the "Daily Life of School Idol" feature, it's a cute alternative to the normal visual novel style and has nice illustrations.

All of that being said, some of my complaints are things that could be fixed. The game didn't have to close down. It's so disappointing to play a game knowing I'll only have until May. While they've mentioned this publicly, they haven't mentioned it in-game. I feel like it's important for anyone who plays to know that we're already months away from EOS. I don't want people spending big money in a game without knowing that it's not going to be around for much longer.

All of this being said, even though I'm upset, I don't want it to go. It fills that love live shaped hole in my heart. It's not the same having a PNG of Kanata tell me hello, compared to the 3D version of her saying hello, slightly being able to interact with her. But it's something. I don't even know for certain if they plan on making a new mobile game at this point.