New Player Guide
This page is currently a work in progress. (Progress on hold for a while due to university exams)
Contents
Introduction
Welcome to the fantastic world of Idolmaster Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage!
Since you have already come this far, I assume you already have a vague idea about the Idolm@ster genre, an interest in anime or manga or you might already be a veteran at those and are now looking into taking it a step further and diving into this fantastic game. But many of you might have a hard time getting into this game, be it due to language issues, since it is completely in Japanese, or due to the fact that this game is only available on the Japanese app store, which many people don't know how to access.
With this guide I will try to give you as easy of a start as possible into your bright producer career, so let's get started!
Installing the app
As mentioned in the introduction, you are not able to install this game from any other app store than the Japanese one. There are undoubtedly many methods to achieve this goal, but since I'm an Android user I can only help you with a way to access the Japanese app store on an Android OS. I will look into IOS and alternate methods for Android in the future to include in this guide.
Android
Proxy-Method with Psiphon
I personally used this method to get my app installed. It was easy to do and doesn't require much effort. I will try to add pictures for the steps later on.
- The first thing you want to do is download an app called Psiphon from the Play Store.
- After installing launch the app and if prompted agree that you trust the app.
- Go to the options tab and select the Japanese server. Also make sure to check the tunnel your whole device option.
- Connect to the VPN
- Next go to your devices account settings and add a new Google account. Make sure that Psiphon is still running, which is important for your IP to appear as a Japanese one. Go through all the steps. Now you have a Japanese Google account, which will be necessary to access the Japanese app store later. I would recommend turning all the synchronisation off except for apps, to not sync your contacts and other files you don't want to the new account. Note that it is possible to have multiple Google accounts registered on one device, so you don't have to meddle with your other ones.
- Making sure Psiphon is still running in the background and go to the Play Store now. In the main menu of the Play Store you should now have the option to switch between all your registered accounts by clicking the profile pictures associated with them at the very top of the menu. Select your Japanese account there.
- Congratulations, you should now be in the Japanese app store if you did everything right! Now find the Starlight Stage app and download it to your phone. After this point you can switch off Psiphon and won't need it for any future updates of the app either. To play the game it is not required either.
Setting up the game
Now that you have installed the app, it's time to get going! Since I have started the game quite a while ago, I'm not too sure if I remember the beginnings correctly, but it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out.
There will definitely be a text box popping up at some point. This is where you enter your player/producer name. You will also be prompted to choose one out of the three starting Idols. This choice has no significant effect on your later game, since you will get all three them anyways and your choice just determines who will be set as center initially. So feel free to choose whoever you like most!
After all your downloads are done, you should find yourself in the home menu. At this point you should have access to all functions of the game. I encourage you to go to the settings first and make sure to check a few things there. If you think you have no need for that at the beginning, skip this chapter and move on to the next one.
You can find the menu screen as shown in the picture, by navigating to the rightmost tab in the main navigation bar, which is located at the bottom of your screen. There are a lot of buttons, which might be confusing, but for now we only need the settings menu, of which there are actually two. They are the blue buttons located in the second last row, first and second from the left with the wrenches on labeled システム設定 and LIVE設定.
System Settings
I'm not gonna go too indepth with the system settings, since there shouldn't be much you need. The only interesting option is located near the bottom of the menu called 音質 which is the sound quality setting. Since Starlight Stage is a rather ressource heavy game you might want to change this setting if you are not playing on a high spec phone or tablet. The left option is normal sound quality and the right one is high sound quality. Also feel free to adjust the soundvolume sliders to whatever you are comfortable with.
If you don't care much for system notifications you can turn them off in this menu by switching to the notifications tab in the top right corner of the system menu.
Live Settings
This is where things are getting interesting, since these settings will directly affect how the game will play later, be it appearance or mechanics.
The first option you see in the above picture is the option to mirror all rythm-icons. I haven't really found a good reason to use it so far, but if you ever need it, this is where you can find it.
The second and third options are for turning on cut-ins and effects. Those pop up during live-play if turned on. I personally find these very distracting when playing on higher difficulties, which is why I have turned them off. They might also potentially have an effect on your games performance, so turn them off if you don't feel comfortable with your specs.
This is where things get really tricky. This slider basically adjusts how the rythm icons are lined up with the music. If this is adjusted wrong you will most basically tap out of rythm, which is definitely not what you want in a rythm game. The thing though is, that this is probably not set correctly from the beginning and might be off. If you tap the button below that slider you will get to a calibration screen, where you tap to the rythm and the game tries to adjust the slider for your. Let me tell you that this is not working very well. I tried it and it set mine to over 30, which was completely wrong. What I would recommend doing is just leaving it as it is and play the game, then see if something feels off and then adjust the slider manually by 1 or 2 steps at a time. If you repeat this several times you will find the perfect setting for you eventually.
This should be self explanatory. With those options you can adjust how your rythm icons look. The default option is Type 1. That said I would recommend taking Type 3 or 4 over type 1 or 2. The main reason for this are the changing backgrounds of the songs. Some are very colorful, which makes the rainbow colored rythm icons very hard to see, especially on higher difficulties when there are a lot of them on the screen. Type 3 and 4 are not transparent and are very easy to spot. The difference between normal taps and slides is also much more visible than it would be if using Type 1 or 2.
The last set of options on the first page. The first button takes you to the LIVE tutorial, you probably won't need this anymore since you should've already done it. The second option is one that I don't fully comprehend. The Japanese tells you that it changes the the intervall of the tapping point above the line and you can set it to normal or wide. I assume it changes the area where it actually registers your taps but I've not seen myself in need of this option until now. Last option disables or enables the back-key during live-play.
