I've been playing this game quite a bit over the past few days. It's very addicting! So this is basically a review of my experiences.
Early game is a fantastic challenge!! Because of the challenge, it's very satisfying once you figure it out. Loans might even be a little too forgiving.
The late game is extremely tedious. Money becomes a complete non-factor, which makes things much simpler (in a bad way). I'm sure it will be sorted out in future balancing though.
I find that contrary to real life, first gen members in the game are generally trash. In game, not only can you find better girls later on in big auditions but you can promote them extremely easily with an army of managers. In real life, successfully producing a new younger group, or promoting a new generation of members is extremely difficult. So the game kind of has it backwards in this regard. Perhaps low fame members should have much greater weaknesses, or graduations could have bigger penalties to fame and fans. Anyway, as it stands, money being effectively unlimited in the late game trivializes most of these challenges.
Also I love the scandal points system! It should be more severe in my opinion, so that the tough choices (fire staff vs. fire idol vs. accept the scandal effects) would be more impactful. Then again, effectively unlimited money distorts our view of what's impactful.