After my favorite rhythm gacha game got shut down, I’ve been meaning to look for another rhythm game to fill up the void in my life… So I decided to play Ensemble Stars Music for this week’s critical play! Ensemble Stars Music is a Japanese rhythm gacha game available on iOS and Android that’s developed by Happy Elements. Designed for an audience that’s 12+, the game would appeal to those who enjoy narrative, expression, and sensation from the musical element as well as the abundance of stories.
Ensemble Stars puts player at risk of addiction by facilitating the creation and completion of self-directed objectives through the sheer amount of mechanics and idol cards. The centralization of idol cards in all aspects of the game creates a mechanic in which the randomness of the gacha is inevitable and integral to encounter, creating unavoidable intermittent motivators and demotivators that nudge players to play more, which create challenge as they progress towards their self-directed objetives. The premise of the game if that you (presumed to use female pronouns) are working at a talent agency and is trying to grow your agency by recruiting new idols through gacha pulls of chance. Each idol card has different stats and abilities which are the primary mechanisms to achieving high scores in the gameplay. The gameplay consists of beatmaps of various difficulty that you play through of various songs recorded by the voice actors of the idols where you try your best to tap each note at the appropriate time; before each gameplay, you build a team of idols to play with, and those idols will have special 3D animations playing in the background as you progress through the song. After each successful playthrough, you are rewarded with exp that helps you level up as well as resources that can be used for scouting and leveling up characters. Stories are unlocked by leveling up, acquiring specific cards, and participating in the time-limited campaigns that require more gameplay. In addition, the game also features a customization aspect where you can decorate your office, which affect how idols intereact with them.
Although players of Ensemble Stars may initially be drawn to a single mechanic of the game (beatmaps, card-collecting, decorating, narrative), as all these aspects feature/require a common resource — the idol cards, it’s easy to explore other functionalities supported by this resource. With each aspect of the gameplay, as you progress, you will gain rewards for meeting certain goals. These rewards helps players accumulate in-game resources that enhance the gameplay significantly. In trying to accomplish their self-directed objectives, players will very likely turn to other mechanics to earn rewards that in turn help them increase their stats and deck. The interwoven nature of in-game resources easily creates a cycle for players where players play to accumulate resources, spend resources to improve until they need to play again to accumuluate more resources.
In addition, the game has very clear indicators of progress and status for players ranging from the exp bar, performance on songs, showing what cards and chapters are still locked, and how shabby your office looks compared to the whales… All of these serve to motivate players to keep playing and invest more time into the game. Beatmaps have instant audio and visual status indicators of each tap, increasing the stakes of each tap and each playthrough, making the gameplay experience full of challenge. The vastness, freshness, and difficulty in beatmaps certainly continues to draw me to the game, and I’m looking forward to finetuning my tapping skills to full-combo harder beat maps.
Speaking of the randomness element, gacha is inevitable! On the homescreen, you see various visual design elements pointing the player to the gacha section of the game, which is filled with various exclusive and limited banners of attractive idols. This lures in both players who want pretty cards and also those who want to buff their stats. To get players addicted to the gacha aspect, sometimes the game will gift free pulls to stimulate and motivate players, and those “near-misses” have certainly got me and other players intrigued in spending money to get the cards that we want. In fact, gacha is presented as a crucial feature of the game; it’s even highlighted at the start of the tutorial. This priming of players normalizes them to scout throughout the game. Rates-up and guaranteed pulls serve as further encouragements to players, who may initially be wary of the possibility of pulling bad cards.
In League of Legends, where character skins are purely cosmetic and can be obtained from purchases or playing, the randomness is more visibly central to the gameplay since you’re paired with random individuals and have access to random champions every game. In contrast, randomness’ centrality to the gameplay of Ensemble Stars is more abstracted and pervasive. The experience of each playthrough of beat maps is not affected by randomness at all as players choose what song and team they want to play. However, cards as an overarching resource that enhances all aspects of the gameplay ultimately makes randomness an inevitable part of the gaming experience. In addition, most characters in the game are slim and fair-skinned male idols, which may be attributed to the developers’ background and target audience of female gamers, implied by the use of feminine pronouns in dialogue. League on the other hand has made active efforts in diversifying character design (sexuality, build, skin tone), despite backlash from the male-dominated community. Lack of diversity is not an uncommon issue in gacha games, as Genshin Impact has also received similar backlash for its limited representation. These patterns reflect broader industry trends where marketability often outweighs inclusivity, raising concerns about whose tastes and identities are prioritized in game design. I hope that the developers of Ensemble Stars can make more active efforts in creating diverse characters, especially if they plan on focusing more on a global audience.
