#post love-live sif like. proseka just did not do anything to make its game play stand out and be unique

[starswallowingsea]

alright i'll put this in the post and not just keep it in the tags but basically idol mobages have to have some sort of gimmick to differentiate them from the others on the market. enstars has 3d mvs for all of its songs that you can put different characters into with different outfits, d4dj uses a dj booth layout for its game along with allowing for medleys of its various songs to be played, hypmic does like a record scratch thing as well as theming itself around rap battles. project sekai's gimmick is very obviously vocaloids and it uses this a lot in its marketing and such.

however, i think project sekai is trying too hard to be multiple things at once rather than focusing on what makes it different from the other games. they have 3d videos for some of their songs like enstars does, but because the bar layout for the game grays out the background by default, you don't see the video very well while you're playing. ensemble stars, to get around this problem, makes the lanes transparent against the video background so you can see the video while you play (and some beat maps do play on visual cues as well as audio ones if you play with the 3d mv on). ensemble stars is also meant to be easy to pick up since it was made with beginners to the rhythm game genre in mind, but it does have its own special beat maps that break several rules in map design that keep it interesting.

d4dj is another straight lane game that doesn't have music videos, but they have a gimmick with how their lanes are set up. you have the normal tap notes like you see in project sekai, but instead of flick notes you have the faders and disks which change the sound of the song as you play, which adds to the experience while you're playing. project sekai just has simple tap, hold, and flick notes and while the notes can vary in width, it doesn't really impact the game itself so it seems like an odd choice to make with their game design?

and hypmic is probably the most different from project sekai but it still has its own gimmick that it plays into. rather than a small game cut of the song like some of these other games, hypmic splits the songs into parts so you can play the entire song over 2-5 parts. they also utilize a ring style layout but have two different types of hold notes, yellow and green. the yellow ones are simple holds and green ones rotate the entire map to where the note goes, adding depth to the game play.

i've tried to play project sekai a few times and it just doesn't know what it wants to do. it has 3d mvs like ensemble stars and it has a straight lane layout which. those two don't really mesh. anything you can find in project sekai you can find it better in another game. d4dj does the world interactions and also just has the best live 2d of any of these games (in my opinion. its very very smooth), you can do office or club decoration in both d4dj and ensemble stars, d4dj has a more creative and inspired straight lane layout and ensemble stars has better 3d mvs in general and knows how to utilize them with its layout, and while hypmic doesn't really have any of these things, it does still manage to hold its own with its rap battle gimmick and the drama tracks and manga for the story. project sekai leans very very heavily on that vocaloid theming and doesn't really put any effort into actually making the game like. enjoyable or unique.

having thoughts about what makes an interesting idol rhythm game