After hearing all the stories about this game being the most controversial in the whole series, I knew I had to check it out and see what this game was about on my own. For the most part, I think that the criticisms that this game has are pretty overblown. It definitely sucks that idols that were producible in the first game are locked away for no real discernable reason, and I can understand why producers for those particular characters would be upset. The other big criticism I heard about were the villains, and honestly I thought they were pretty serviceable. Maybe times were different in 2011 and people just couldn't stand dudes in their idol games. Anyways, the visuals and UI have been very stylishly upgraded this time around as well as the core gameplay being entirely redone from the first game. Things are more about sales than fan numbers and you have to manage your popularity across the entirety of japan. There are also a lot of arbitrary geography questions that are thrown at you so better hit the books on those prefectures. While all the new mechanics are cool, I don't think the game does a very good job keeping the player informed about them, I think it just explains things once and then never again, so I'd rec a guide if you want to do well. There's also a lot of free agency in how you get your songs to perform on the sales charts, though again guides help in actually reminding you what the hell everything means. Near the end of my playthrough, sales were looking dire, I messed up the timing for my last song release and it wasn't looking like I was going to sell enough to get the good ending. So I naturally tried a hail mary revival of an earlier song that I hadn't done in a while in hopes of getting a revival break to bolster sales of the previous song, and it actually mfin worked, which was incredible. Idolmaster games are all about tension, after all. This game is way cooler than what I was led to believe by imas fans. F to all the azusa, iori, ritsuko, and mamiPs that had to sit this game out though. play if you like idols