I decided to play this game because the concept sounded interesting and something I had not seen before. I would love to write that it was fantastic and a great experience; however, I cannot. This game promised so much and then it fell flat.

Summary:

Pros:

• It is a band management sim, albeit a fairly hands-off one.
• It does live up to the fact you can make songs with different band members and raise your band to stardom.
• You do have the chance to customize your band and rework the band as needed to fit your vision.
• There is some dating (very little, but there are some nice moments with the guys that felt organic and flirty).
• The mini game for gigs was fun, if a bit easy to play. It was still well done and probably my favorite part of the game.
• If you bought it: The cheat codes help and make the game somewhat playable, but it makes the long periods where grinding would happen even more dull since you can just put in the cheat code. (Optional of course, but worth the mention).

Cons:

• All the grinding. Constant, endless, and little reward grinding when you do not have the cheats.
• Long periods of time with nothing happening. Not in the story, not with your band's growth, and not with your relationships.
• Character development… where art thou? Robin grows a little, but mostly she just decides to be a decent human being with some common courtesy. The guys (as far as I could tell) remain pretty much the same with hardly any growth that the player sees.
• The time it takes for things happen. The pacing is a bit sluggish and while that may emulate actual band development in the real world, I'm playing to try to experience something new with bent real world expectations. So some faster pacing would have been helpful.

This game was a great effort. I just wish it had delivered and did not leave me feeling like I'd wasted my time. If you've read to this point, congrats. You've seen the summary of my review. However, I go into a bit more detail below as to what I thought about the game. Feel free to read but the heart of my review is above.

Art:

I would like to preface that I'm pretty lenient when it comes to the art from indie developers (I think any one who has the courage to post their art, no matter the quality, is an awesome person). When playing, I just want to say that some of the art for the sprites would vary. While not a bad thing, it can be a bit jarring for the character sprites to have different styles when they are all on screen. It can make it feel like the game did not fully come together.

** This is not including when the art changed for the mini-game! That made sense. **

Speaking of the mini-game, that was my favorite part of the game. The chibis for this part were well done and their movements were cute. Very well executed. I wish there had been this amount of consistency with the rest of the game.

Overall, the art in the game was decent. I wish more of it looked like the game's banner or that the sprites all had a matching art style. It would have just made the experience more cohesive.

Characters:

I wish I had liked even one character enough to remember them. However, the main character (Robin) is so frustrating. I don't mind when an MC is feisty, hot-headed, and have a "take no prisoners" attitude, but Robin is just a b****. I feel for her plight (dealing with a jerky bandmate and getting kicked from the band she helped build), but she is just plain rude or mean to the people trying to help her. I'm honestly surprised she is even able to get a new band together long enough to have the bandmates care on some level.

The bachelors also leave me wanting more. We do not learn much about them through the story, and even "hang outs" or "talk with the band" leaves them feeling a little stale. I tried to like them, I really did. However, they just do not go much deeper and when we are teased with more depth, we are cut off or something happens to make it difficult to gain that information/closeness. I also ended up feeling bad for these guys since they put up with Robin's constant barrage of meanness. Why do they put up with it!?

The characters just leave me wanting more or feeling frustrated. I don't think I would have minded as much if Robin was just a smidgen nicer. Even if that niceness only extended to one person. Just knowing she could be nice without being coerced into it would have helped.

Story and Gameplay

So the game claims to be a band management sim with dating elements. The band management is very minimal. It's there, but you don't really have a say (especially in the main story) who you select for the band or what they do. While this is prefaced to make the story linear, having the illusion that we could possibly select someone else would have made the story more interesting. Additionally, if you try to focus on one stat when it comes to planning the week, other ones (that seem completely unrelated) drop. Like, why do I get worse at writing when I practice my instrument? That seems counter intuitive to me. It does make sense that your fame would drop if you don't make appearances, but why do other stats drop as a result? It just keeps the grind train going without the reward of maintaining your stats. Additionally, it takes forever to get your band to do anything. This means the constant grinding has little to no tangible reward.

As mentioned, the story is linear for the main game. Focusing on the linear story, that's great. I love having a path to follow when there can be lots of little nuisances that would make having a clear story difficult. This game would definitely have had that without the linear story. Just one thing… this linear story is as dry as saw dust. I understand that we (the player and MC) are trying to "get back" at the band member that kicked Robin to the curb by making a better band, but… there is so little that happens. Like with making the band the best. Getting to the "we beat them!" point takes forever, and the reward for succeeding in this endeavor is lack luster and minimal. I felt dissatisfied even when the goal was achieved. 

So while the linear story kept us on track, there just wasn't much to keep my attention during the downtimes. No mini stories to break-up the time between… just band practice. The one mini-story I feel that I stumbled across creates a jumble of confusion and nonsense. Then, once the mini-story is complete, the actions taken during that story do not have any lasting impact. No reference back to it and no repercussions or changes to how you all interact with each other.