New Player Guide
This page is currently pending updates.
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!
/support.apple.com/en-us/HT201389 this guide].
Setting up the game
Now that you have installed the app, it's time to get going!
As of 2019 you will require a VPN in order to set up the game for the first time. See above for instructions on how to set up Psiphon for Android, or use another VPN app if you prefer. Once the game is set up the VPN can be switched off.
Start the app and touch the title screen to begin. On the initial screen there will be a box with two buttons. The left option starts a new game, while the right option allows the player to load data that has been bound to a Bandai Namco ID. Press the pink option on the next screen to accept the game terms and conditions.
Next is the tutorial. As part of the tutorial you will 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 of them anyway and your choice just determines who will be set as center initially. So feel free to choose whoever you like most! At the end a text box will pop up. This is where you enter your player/producer name.
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. Alternatively, you may wish to do some rerolling for good cards.
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 resource 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 rhythm icons are lined up with the music. If this is adjusted wrong you will most basically tap out of rhythm, which is definitely not what you want in a rhythm 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 rhythm 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.
