Where To Play Love Live

• Play Love Live Clean Version

PGA TOUR LIVE is the only place to watch Featured Groups coverage of the best players in the world each week. Enjoy twice the amount of coverage in 2019 vs. 2018 (870 hours in 2019 vs. Luv 2 Play offers three types of indoor playground franchise opportunities & also includes ongoing training, support, & the ultimate name that says it all. Sep 7, 2015 - You will also suck on the first few songs that you play during any given. Easy to find them on places such as YouTube and the Love Live wiki.

EDIT: I'm back in Japan right now. Guide is still accurate enough, so it doesn't require any changes (yay)! Also as I'll be living in Tokyo until August 2018, I'm down to meet up (at a Tokyo game center) with anyone who comes and visits. I can help you figure out how to play if you need help, or just do sync play together, or even do some other random Love Live related thing. Just send me a message on reddit!

I just returned from a trip to Japan and I spent a lot of time playing SIFAC. I noticed people in a few threads mentioning that they had some confusion trying to play, so I figured I'd toss together an in-depth guide to playing the game for people with no Japanese knowledge. This is entirely from memory, so if anything is wrong please let me know!

Shout out to this thread. It was very helpful in getting me started when I first played, and it has a lot of useful information. I'll be going over a lot of the same info that's in this thread, just in more detail.

Note that the game is only available in Japan right now. Don't expect this to ever change.

Most game centers in big areas will have it. Taito, Round 1, Sega. I went in many game centers during my time in Japan, and only once did a game center not have it. My personal recommendation is the game center Silk Hat on the bottom basement floor of the DICE mall building outside Kawasaki station in Kawasaki. It's usually pretty dead and it isn't super cramped like most other game centers, so even when it's busy it's not as miserable. Don't go out of your way to play here though if you have a good game center closer to where you're staying.

There are 2 different machines related to the game, the game machine and the print machine. If a game center has the game, it'll have at minimum 3 game machines and 1 print machine. Bigger game centers will have 9 and 3. I've heard some have 6 and 2, but I've never seen it personally.

The game machines have a big screen in the middle surrounded by a bunch of buttons, and a smaller screen above. There's also a big red button (for cancelling) and a big blue button (for selecting). They also have a headphone jack and a volume control, along with a QR reader.

The print machines are just a box with a touch screen and a slot for dumping out printed cards.

Get a Nessica card. Every game center I've been in has a machine somewhere in them where you can get one. They cost 300 yen. This card will be used to store your profile along with all the songs and cards you unlock. You can use a single card for every game that uses Nessica, so if you already have one you're good to go.

To start you'll need to use a game machine. Go stand in line forever, then when it's your turn go up to the machine and toss your 100 yen coin in. Then take your Nessica card and hold it up against the glowing Nessica panel on the machine. From here you'll be creating your SIFAC profile, starting with your profile name.

Important Japanese to know:

はい (yes)

いいえ (no)

次へ (next)

For inputting your name, you just use the buttons on the machine to select each kana/letter. Use the top side buttons that say 次へ to change between sets of input. I'm pretty sure romaji is in there somewhere if you go far enough.

After choosing your name, you have to choose your starter girl. They're sorted by year, and you again use the buttons that say 次へ to change which year you're looking at. Your choice here isn't going to have a huge lasting impact on the game, so don't sweat it too much. You automatically get the HR Bokura wa Ima no Naka de card for your choice, but it's possible to get it for everyone eventually. Just choose your best girl.

Whenever you start up the game and scan your Nessica card, you'll have to go through a couple things before you start playing. First it'll confirm that you're using the correct card. It'll show your profile and ask you if it's correct: Just hit the blue button to select はい (yes). Then it'll spam some news at you, and then give you 3 choices. From left to right they're:

Ticket play - Single play - Sync play

Single play is what you'll be doing 99% of the time. You get to play 2 songs by yourself.

Ticket play is available when you have a ticket, which right now is gained from scanning in your SIF account (from JP servers). Ticket play lets you use the ticket to play 3 songs by yourself. (I don't have a JP SIF account, so I didn't experiment with this at all. I don't know how you scan your account, but I imagine you can get a QR code from the SIF app to scan using the reader on the SIFAC machine.) Note that you can only use the ticket one time!

Sync play lets you play 3 songs with up to 2 other people, playing the same songs and sharing a combined combo count. To do this, one person will have to select the sync play option and hit the blue button until they get to a dialogue box that says '1' somewhere in it. This is basically the lobby. From there, the other people who want to join select sync play on their machines and can join. As they do this, the '1' will change to a '2' or a '3' (depending on how many people you have). Once everyone is in you just hit the blue button and go into playing the game. The host selects the songs, but everyone can select their own difficulty.

After selecting your mode, you select the song you want to play. The 次へ buttons appear again on the top left and right, and you use these to swap between different sets of songs. There's also a button on the left that changes the sorting method. I don't remember what the different sorting methods are, unfortunately.

After selecting the song you select the difficulty. At first you can only choose easy/normal/hard, but after getting an S on a hard song you unlock extreme for all the songs. After getting an S on extreme, you unlock challenge for that specific song.

After selecting your difficulty you select the stage. If you select a stage you don't have unlocked, it'll say what level you need to be to unlock it. As far as I'm aware, the stages don't do anything other than contribute towards achievements (such as 'play X times on the school stage').

You're almost into the rhythm game! This is the last screen. On this screen, you can finalize your options and settings and start the live. You can also scan in profile cards using the QR card reader, to add 2 more characters to your team. I'll go into this in more detail later. For the buttons, from left to right we have:

Options - Card - Start - Skills - Member

Options:

From left to right you can change:

Note Speed - Background Dimming - Top Screen

Note speed is pretty obvious. Right = faster.

Background dimming is also pretty obvious. Right = dimmer

The top screen option lets you display your gameplay on the top screen, so you can better show off to people waiting in line. Normally it just shows the dance and your score and top combo.

Card:

Here you can change which card you're using for your selected girl. Keep in mind that these are character cards, so you can only select R's and HR's. Also keep in mind that R's cannot use red skills, so HR's will typically always be preferred.

Skills:

Skills are divided into three types, red (assist), blue (camera), and green (stage). These seem more complicated than they are. They all do different visual things, like adding extra shit to the screen, making the lights on the machine change color or focusing the camera on the girl who triggered the skill, but that's all just fluff. When you boil it down, they all do the same thing: Increase your score. Don't worry about what individual skills do, just use whichever skill cards are the highest level. Keep in mind that a girl can only use her own skills, and that R's can't use red skills.

Member:

Here you can choose which girl you're using. You can only use a girl if she's present in the song you're playing and you have an R or HR card of her.

Start:

Once you're done messing around with the options, just select start in the middle and hit the blue button to start playing.

If you've played SIF (which you probably have) then this is gonna be pretty obvious. Notes come out the middle of the screen and move towards the buttons. Hit the buttons in time with the notes. Notes with lines through the middle are double notes, so hit them together. Some notes have tails trailing behind them, and you have to hold them down. The similarities with SIF end here.

Team Bonuses:

Remember the profile cards I mentioned earlier? This is where they come into play. There are certain sets you can make to get extra points. Things like subunits, year groups, matching costumes, and using the song's center as your character. So if you use profile cards that have Umi and Nozomi on them while you're using Rin, you'll get a 'lily white' bonus. This will add these little white crystals to the middle of certain notes throughout the song, and you'll get a score bonus for getting them. You can also get team bonuses with the members that your partners in sync play are using, so if you're going for maximum high scores you'll want to do it in sync play and coordinate which characters you use.

Stars:

As you play you'll notice that some notes have stars in the middle of them. If you hit these notes, you'll start to spell out 'LOVE LIVE!' in the top right of the screen. Once you've gotten all the star notes and fully spelled it out, the notes will change color and will start to be worth a ton of points. These are pretty much the most important things in the entire game. If you just miss one star note you can't finish spelling out 'LOVE LIVE!', and you'll never enter gold mode. Without entering gold mode you'll be lucky to see a rank above B. Make sure you get all the stars!

Skills:

Some notes will be colored. When you get these, they will activate a skill from your selected girl or your scanned profile cards, doing a visual effect and increasing your score.

After you finish the song, you'll get a score and your profile will receive points and EXP based on how well you did. As you level up you will unlock new stages and new songs. You can use the points you receive here if you have a Japanese Square Enix account and register your Nessica serial number. There's a related smartphone app that lets you use some game features (customizing your characters and profile card). I haven't gotten the app, so I don't know too much about what you can do with the mobile points.

Game End:

After you've played through all your songs you will go to the rewards screen. Here you'll be awarded with a random card. This is going to be a skill card the vast majority of the time. I played this game at least 50 times and only 3 times did I not get a skill card (2 R's and 1 HR).

On the rewards screen you'll also be awarded a gatcha hint. You can have up to 3 at a time, and whenever you gain a new one it'll display all the ones you currently have. Your oldest hint will be discarded if you get a new one while you already have 3. I'll go into detail about what these are in the print machine section.

Rhythm Game Tips:

• Set the background as dim as possible.

• Use headphones.

• Unlike most rhythm games in game centers, do not use gloves.

• Don't jack up the note speed right away, even if you're a SIF god. Actually hitting the physical buttons is quite difficult, and takes a lot of time to get used to.

• Spy on other players to learn good technique.

To get started, just go up to the machine, plop 100 yen in and scan your Nessica card. Click through all the news messages and then select which mode you want to use. There are 3 modes.

Gatcha - Profile Card - Album

Gatcha:

Gatcha is where you go to get new cards. Select this, then select which member set you want to scout from. Use the arrows to switch between sets and then press the button below that says something like このメンバーでガチャする。At the time of writing this there's only one set you can gatcha from, but I'm sure that'll change in the future.

You'll then be shown 9 cards (1 of each girl). This is the pool of cards you can draw from. They'll then disappear into pink envelopes and be randomized. You simply select an envelope and pray that you get the card you want. After drawing a card it'll ask you if you want to draw another. If you don't, just hit the red いいえ button. If you do, put another 100 yen coin in and select the blue はい button. You can keep doing this until you've gotten all 9 cards, which means that you're guaranteed to get any card that popped up if you're willing to drop enough cash. They'll usually be mostly skill cards with a couple R's and (if you're lucky) an HR.

You can make life a little easier for yourself though by using the gatcha hints I mentioned earlier. Every time you play the rhythm game you'll get one, and they'll help you narrow down which envelopes contain which cards. For example: If you have a 'lily white' gatcha hint, then all the envelopes that contain an Umi, Nozomi, or Rin card will have a lily white logo on top of them. These stack as well, so if you have a 'lily white' hint and a '1st years' hint then you'll be able to easily pick out any present Rin cards, as they'll be in the only envelopes that have both lily white and 1st year markings on them. Be mindful though that the hints don't guarantee you anything. It's entirely possible to have an HR hint and then not actually have any HR's in your pool of 9 cards. Also keep in mind that any hints you have go away once you gatcha, so sometimes you might be better off gatcha'ing when you have just 1 hint related to whichever girl you're aiming for.

Full(?) list of gatcha hints:

• lily white

• BiBi

• Printemps

• １年生 (first year)

• ２年生 (second year)

• ３年生 (third year)

• Skill

• R

• HR

The Skill, HR, and R hints are special. They will only show on one of the applicable cards, not all of them.

If you get a dupe skill card it'll ask you if you want to level it up or cash it in for points.

Any cards you get from the gatcha will automatically begin printing. These physical cards do nothing, however. They are purely for collecting. The digital versions you use in the game are saved onto your Nessica card.

Profile Cards:

Here you can make a profile card to be scanned into the game machine to use on the rhythm game. I didn't use this screen much, so my memory of it is a little fuzzy, but it's pretty clear. You select from a previous song record, and then that girl and song goes on your profile card. So if the last time you played the rhythm game you used Rin to play shiranai love*oshiete love, and honoka to play wonderful rush, you'll see those 2 song records available to use for making a profile card. This is how you choose which girl goes on the card.

You then choose what you want the card to look like. You can choose between sitting through a song's animation and taking screenshots to use, or just taking a screenshot of the girl doing a signature pose.

It seems the intention here is to trade these around with other people. You can do that, sure. You can also just print out a bunch of profile cards on your own to make teams. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Album:

Here is where you can print out any cards you own. Keep in mind that profile cards and gatcha'd cards print automatically. This is purely for printing out extras, and for printing out cards that you won from end of game rewards on the game machine.

To print, you just simply scroll through your album until you find the card you want to print, then select it and hit the print button. As far as I'm aware, you can only print one card from your album each time you use the print machine.

Play Love Live Clean Version

Waiting for your cards:

After you've finished your gatcha, making your profile card, or selecting your card to print from the album, you'll have to wait for your cards to finish printing before you can exit. You'll see a counter on the top right of the screen listing how many are done. Once that goes away, you can hit the 終了(end) button on the top left to quit.

From this screen you can also mess around with stuff, like changing your profile quote, changing member cards and skills, and browse through achievements and cards you've unlocked. From any of these sub-screens, just hit the もどる (return) button in the top left to go back to the main screen.

• If you just want cards, don't play the rhythm game. You're going to get the R's and HR's you want a lot faster and more cheaply if you just spam the gatcha. An HR hint is useless if an HR doesn't actually appear, after all. The hints are just bait to get you to do the gatcha, not something that's crucial to whaling on cards.

• Don't just look for hints that help you find your best girl, also look for hints that exclude her. If your best girl is Rin and you have BiBi, Printemps, and 3年生 hints then you should probably gatcha, as Rin would be easy to find.

• Don't forget your cards!

I left right after the current event (Hanayo's birthday) started, so I'm not super knowledgeable about how these work. However, I think I understand it enough.

The event just requires that you play a certain number of songs under specific conditions. For the Hanayo event, you have to play specific songs using Hanayo. When you're selecting members, there's a 'Hanayo's Birthday event' banner underneath her, and underneath the applicable songs when she's your active character. Simply play songs with these conditions met to unlock the rewards.

You can see how far you are from the next reward when you're selecting a song. Somewhere next to the song's picture it'll say 'あと 4 回', with the number being how many more songs you have to play to get the next reward. For the Hanayo event, it seems like you get the skill card every 4th song, letting you level it up. However, at 16 songs you get the profile card frame instead of a copy of the skill.

Wow this ended up really long didn't it? I hope it wasn't too painful to read, and I hope that it can help someone out. If anything is unclear, incorrect, or missing please let me know!