there is a very unique feeling of dread that accompanies failure in this game. if haruka is sad it's a result of my own incompetence as her producer. when i detect even the slightest of frowns on her face i punch a hole or two through my wall out of frustration. every inconvenience i run into only proves to strengthen my resolve to always look forward and bear with the ever increasing number of holes in my wall until i can give haruka (and the other idols i guess) the happy ending she deserves. this level of emotional investment tying directly to gameplay makes each win or loss hit so much harder. it's genius. peak. kino

I watched the anime recently and loved it so I tried giving this an honest chance but these minigames suck ass!! Actually I tried the other game with Chihaya first but couldn't handle her being disappointed in me so I thought Yayoi would be easier instead. And since it's my first time playing an idolmaster game I was using savestates, fight me, but got into a commu where I was supposed to lose to rock-paper-scissors but it was impossible to not win no matter the choices I selected (I was only able to reload to before the 2nd of 3 dialogue choices though, I'll never know if that first one doomed it somehow, or I just wasn't supposed to select this commu at all) so I refused to play further if it's gonna be rigged like that lmao, I can't accept it. I also still have no idea what I was doing during auditions, I wasn't failing them at least. I don't think I have any fair rating I could give this though so it's staying unrated. I'm just going to play OFA instead.

Idolmaster SP is a demake of the original on Arcade/Xbox 360 and it's honestly an upgrade to the original.

The Idolmaster SP was released in a similar way to the Pokemon games with 3 games under the SP name: Perfect Sun, Missing Moon, and Wandering Star. They play exactly the same as how the original did but with some of the minigames tweaked up to be a little bit different and each of the 3 games has only 3 possible idols to raise instead of the 11 that were raisable in the original, and with 3 girls cut from the original roaster were turned into rivals for each of the 3 games.
This game is a whole lot more story focused with cutscenes with the rival and such and I think it's a welcomed addition to make the game feel more like an adventure rather than just grinding for stats with no idea who your idol is or how she behaves. The English translation does help a whole lot to get through the story but even how without translation it's still the same old idolm@ster gameplay.
There is a whole lot more indication of what to do and focus on which was one of my biggest grips with the original game as in I couldn't really know what I had to focus on. The only downgrade from playing this compared to the original would be the graphics and audio quality being a massive downgrade due to being a PSP game.

This is overall a fine raising game with a very basic story and repetitive gameplay but if that's your type of game I'd say go for it.