Hello friends, and welcome to the first edition of The Weekly Rhythm Game Update, the weekly post where I talk about the gacha rhythm games I play!
Sorry about the delay in getting this post out — I kinda forgot what day it was since it was the holidays. Next week moving forward, I’ll be posting these every Sunday.
Anyway, let’s talk about those rhythm games — for those of you who don’t know, the games I play are BanG Dream: Girls Band Party (Garupa) in the Japanese (JP) and Worldwide (WW or EN) server, Project Sekai: Colorful Stage feat. Hatsune Miku (PuroSeka), and D4DJ Groovy Mix (GuruMiku). The latter two are Japanese only… for now.
One logistical thing before I get started: I’ll be putting each game into its own section along with the event(s) that occurred during the week. Hopefully that makes it a bit easier to organize everything, but since this is the first post I’ll be making adjustments as the weeks go on.
Anyway, let’s start off with…
Garupa (JP)
Events: TITLE IDOL / Red Ignition
As per usual, I’ve been playing until I get both event cards, then stopping until the next event starts. Even with the hyped up Pasta*Pals’ 3rd Band Story, I stopped as soon as I got both 3* cards (which was pretty quick thanks to the smaller event point requirements to get them). Doesn’t help that the cards didn’t look that great.
Well, after that event, we got an Afterglow themed event. Oh boy, my favorite band! Maybe? Unfortunately I saw the card art and hoo boy it’s… something.
First, the event cards. Normally, I don’t expect too much for them since the 4* cards are where the good art is, but what the actual heck was Craft Egg thinking with this Moca:
Look, I’m not gonna get into the whole debate about “sexualization” with stuff like this and Love Live, but let’s just say I’m not a fan of suggestive art like this. I’m not gonna directly post the images, but cards like this and this are some of my least favorite in the game. They’re high schoolers, man. I’m not about that life.
Anyway, the 4* cards in this set are Tomoe and Tsugumi. Even disregarding the card art, I already have a pretty good Pure Tsugumi card and Tomoe isn’t really a favorite, so I’m not too keen on spending gems for this set. And besides, Tomoe’s untrained card art is… derpy:
Just something about her face is off to me. Having said that, the trained art is pretty good all things considered:
Still not enough to get me to spend on the gacha, though. I’m saving up for better cards later.
Now, a story of hope: I recently scouted using a gacha ticket, which is basically a free roll for one card. Well, take a look at what I got:
Yeah, I know. What.
Actually, this isn’t the first time this has happened. I’ve gotten 4* cards on single pulls before, mostly during desperation pulls when I wanted the featured 4* card (only to get another random 4*). After the recent string of bad luck, maybe things are starting to turn around…? Maybe?
Garupa (WW/EN)
Event: Days of Topping and Fun
I love how every other rhythm game I’m playing is doing their holiday event right now, and then there’s Garupa, which did their holiday event three weeks ago. Not complaining, just thought it was funny.
Anyway, nothing too notable on the Worldwide server of Garupa. The only thing is that the Afterglow Christmas gacha from last year came back for a limited time, and I pulled once to get nothing from the set. RIP.
Project Sekai
Event: On A Holy Night, with This Singing Voice
Holiday event? Holiday event.
Speaking of which, this is the fourth event where a Wonderlands x Showtime (WxS) member is the featured member in the banner gacha. I say that with a bit of a caveat because out of those four events, only one of those was an event focused on them.
Still, the game has had an event for each unit, and according to my card tracker, Wonderlands x Showtime has the most cards out of every unit. Even more egregiously, not all of the characters have a 4* card, and Tsukasa (leader of WxS) already has TWO. It’s still early, though, so not complaining too much. But still.
Anyway, speaking of snubs, looks like MEIKO fans can finally rejoice — she got her 4* card in this event!
Context: a while ago when Vivid Bad Squad (VBS) had their event, there was a huge surprise when the game broke its usual pattern. Usually the gacha features two human characters and one Virtual Singer (the gacha cards are all 4*).
Since MEIKO is associated with VBS, everybody thought she would get a 4* card when that unit gets their event. Unfortunately, the VBS event gacha had three human characters. Thanks to that, MEIKO became the event 2* card. Fans were… not happy. And reasonably so.
Even with that, I was sure MEIKO would get her 4* card eventually since it seemed so weird that she would be shafted like that. Well two events later and here we are — with one human and two Virtual Singers in the gacha.
Oh, and the one human character is one of my favorite characters, Nene. Of course.
So I rolled with my abundance of gems (AKA 10-rolled once), and got nothing. That made me realize — I haven’t rolled a 4* card since the second event. In fact, I don’t think I rolled a new 3* card in that span either. Gacha life, amirite?
Actually, that’s a lie. Plot twist! I recently found out how easy it is to raise the skill level of 1* cards, and that led to me getting hella gems. Complicated explanation below:
So, raising the skill level of characters helps because it gives points towards Character Rank (CR). CR is a system in Project Sekai where you get “points” based around certain actions based on a character. For example, you earn points if you play a song with a character as a leader, if you buy their stamps, if you raise one of their cards to max level, etc..
As you level up a character’s CR, you get rewards like gems, stamp cards, outfits for Virtual Lives, and all that good stuff. What’s important, though, are the gems. And yes, you get points by raising a card’s skill level — once per level raised. So if you raise a card’s skill level to the max of Level 4, you get three points. That’s a lotta points.
And the best part is that it only takes 5 gems to raise a 1* card’s skill level to max. For reference, I think you get 5 gems for every duplicate 2* you pull in the gacha. In other words, hella cheap.
So thanks to that, I amassed all the gems. And with those gems, I rolled again for Christmas Nene and got…
Wait what. That’s a lotta 3* cards. No 4*’s, but I’m not complaining — new cards! Maybe my luck is turning around after all…
Maybe.
That’ll be tested soon because in an act of generosity, the game is giving out 8 free 10-rolls during the New Year:
Honestly, this is amazing coming from Garupa where a free 10-roll is considered a miracle. And yes, I know that Garupa is still generous compared to other gacha games (but not Granblue Fantasy where, according to my friend, they’re giving out hundreds of free rolls. Wao). Could always be worse. Trust me, I know.
*flashbacks to School Idol Festival‘s 1% rates*
D4DJ Groovy Mix (GuruMiku)
Events: Mischievous Santa / New YearâCountdown Days!
Speaking of generous, how about D4DJ coming in with the FREE 10-ROLL GACHA TICKET. Not once, but TWICE — the first time I don’t know what for, but the second one is to celebrate the newest episode of the anime. Man, that’s generous as hell.
Anyway, event-wise, the Christmas event featured the unit Lyrical Lily, otherwise known as LyriLily or RiRiRiRi (ăȘăȘăȘăȘ) which is the best nickname next to Pasta*Pals. That was a Multi Medley event which I explained a while ago in a Rando Ramblings (so I won’t explain it again).
Now we’re in the New Year’s event, a mixed one featuring members from different units. In other words, what the heck do I do with my team? Hell if I know! Throw in random members and hope it’s an optimal team!
Man, I hope someone builds a team builder similar to Bestdori. Here’s hoping.
So the current event is a Bingo event, which I was super hyped for. For those who don’t remember, the Bingo events are the ones that gave hella generous rewards like 100 PLATINUM EXP TICKETS. That’s a big deal.
Unfortunately, I made a horrible discovery. Turns out the rewards you get for achieving a certain number of bingos/numbers hit/complete boards stack from the previous event.
That means I have to get a lot of bingos just to get rewards, and I don’t even think platinum tickets are available anymore. Huge bummer.
Still, Bingo events are arguably the easiest event to complete. In just two plays, I got the event card. Easy.
Actually, speaking of which, I wanted to mention something in the Project Sekai section that I’ll put here. It turns out it’s really hard to get the event cards in Project Sekai without having to play every day (sometimes multiple times a day). That’s a bit of a bummer.
Now I’ll admit it’s still early in the game and my cards are still under-leveled. Plus at least it’s not School Idol Festival‘s system where you compete against other players to get event cards (*shudder*). Still, compared to Garupa and GuruMiku, it’s noticeable. Even more so when I get the event card within minutes of playing in GuruMiku.
Another disclaimer: that might be on purpose, since you don’t need that many event points to get the event card in GuruMiku. In fact, I think they set it up so you can easily get the card to put in your team — the event card usually matches the event characters/type, so it offers a 40% event point bonus. How generous.
Anyway, I’m probably gonna try to get Top 1000 for this event, which is a huge task considering I’m hovering around the 2000’s right now. Here’s hoping.
And that’s all for this week’s update! Thanks for reading the first edition of these posts — we’ll see how they shape up in the next few weeks, but I’m happy with the format right now. Anyway, I’ll see you next week for the next edition of this post! Until then, see you!
Fractals and Recursion 