Gameplay-
☐ You have to try it
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Okay
☐ Bad
Graphics-
☐ Masterpiece
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Will do
☐ Bad
Audio
☐ Amazing
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
Story-
☐ Lovely
☑ Good
☐ Meh
☐ Not great
☐ None
Grind-
☐ Nothing
☐ Only if you care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ It isn't necessary to progress
☐ A bit grindy sometimes
☐ Average grind level
☑ Heavy grind level
☐ Insanity
[h3] What the game does well [/h3]
The whole progression of the gameplay is done very nicely with their IP, you get to explore the world filled with vtubers and your oshis as you get to play with them. Follow them through the story and have fun with all the members and even those not currently active anymore is amazing to see. The main rhythm game and all the minigames or side games in the world all feel fun to play, even more so with friends online. This game is perfect for those who want to occasionally play a rhythm game connected to Hololive.
[h3] The reality... [/h3]
Even with the good quick review of the game and good remarks earlier, I still would not recommend the game to most people for good reason. I won't talk too much about the issues the game has on the pc port as I mainly play mobile. Once you start playing for more than just for fun every now and then, the reality about the game's unfriendly system starts to dawn on you. From poor optimization, criminally terrible gacha, poor resource planning, and quality of life missing.
[h3] Poor Optimization [/h3]
It's clear the game struggles with performance on all kinds of devices, which can be expected with brand new games to an extent. However what surprises me is the lack of settings to help mitigate the bad performance issues, there are a very small selection of options you can try to help boost your performance, but if your device still can't survive even with those changes then you are doomed to not being able to play. Being this big of a company you would think they would be able to have a big team to ensure performance issues are to a minimal, but we need bigger profit margins amiright.
[h3] Abysmal Gacha [/h3]
Now before anyone downplays the complaints about the gacha, yes there are worse ones out there and many popular gachas use something similar, but why would you not like to see better changes anyways. The gacha is similar to Umamusume or any other Japanese gacha using the pity exchange system which is set at 200 pulls. However this is by far less forgiving than the others.
First the wasted pulls that gets converted away after the banner is rotated is ultimately useless. There is nothing of much value that you can exchange once you miss the pity window, can't even use it to get something related to the gacha in any way, shape, or form. If you pull on a banner for an oshi and get unlucky, you get slapped in the face for missing out then spat on as you are handed out a useless currency.
Next is the banners are insanely quick given the expectation of currency to pull rate flow, yes the SSR odds are higher than other games in general, but that doesn't mean anything if you have less opportunities to pull than those other games. Say this game gave you 100 pulls with it's 5% and another game gives you 200 pulls with 3% chances, you have better odds on the second game statistically speaking. So the argument Holodori has better chances isn't in best faith to say at it's current state.
[h3] Limited Resources [/h3]
The only way to obtain resources for the gacha are all from limited avenues. You do [b]NOT[/b] get any diamonds for doing dailies, and the only main source of getting them is through player level or main story quests which both are limited (Note you only get 2500 diamonds or one 10 pull for max player level). There are some limited diamonds in the chests laid out across the map, but only a few give diamonds and you get very little in both the holo members or player achievements.
Combine that with the rate of which banners rotate you will be no where near the minimum requirements to pull on a banner without factoring pure luck. You need 50k diamonds minimum if luck wasn't on your side to get your oshi, and if you wanted to pay your way in, well good luck lmao because you get very little for swiping your money away. For $60 USD without the game release bonus pack you get about ~8k diamonds each time, that is pushing towards $400 USD for one card in your deck of five without getting any blooms (Limit breaks) for that card yet if you are unlucky. I would rather do 400 dollars worth of superchats/memberships to the holo girls themselves than get a virtual card in a virtual game that will be power crept over time.
[h3] Quality of Life [/h3]
There are so much interactions that a lot of them still involve bouncing between menus, loading screen, and physically moving to achieve an action. There are daily gifts and the more you progress the more daily interactions you get. There is no button to quickly obtain or do these actions, you are forced to go through menus then a loading screen to teleport to the location and physically move to it and interact with the holo member. The whole daily loop is clicking as many menus as possible and load constantly, to only then be required to move to it or sometimes even run all the way over, thank god my device can perform well so it doesn't take long.
[h3] Conclusion [/h3]
The game overall is very fun, and they do really well with getting the holo girls involved in a cohesive fun way. Very interactive with the girls and fun to play a really solid game with vtubers you like, but the system and management of the game holds it back so much, it's honestly not worth it to most people if it stays at it's current state.
The real unfortunate part of this game is, you can't truly enjoy the rhythm game as a casual player who doesn't spend, because you need good cards to increase your score/performance when playing. So you as a casual will be stuck at a lower rated score, can't even see the true reflection of your performance getting a report of C-A depending on how much you grind/get lucky cards. Where is the fun for a casual who doesn't have the time to grind and doesn't want to swipe, no matter how well or poor they finish the song they will get the same score just because they don't feed enough to the system.
[h3] TLDR [/h3]
The gameplay is amazing and works incredibly well with the vtubers involved. Would only recommend the game to those who can just enjoy playing a rhythm game just for the song and not the score with the bonus of it being hololive, since bigger score means bigger grind/wallet. Everything gacha related to this is so poorly done it ruins the game. Give money to the holo girls directly instead of this game, it's truly a waste, they probably get better percentages from superchats/memberships than this game anyways.
