Another Japanese mobile game have received a worldwide debut. Revue Starlight Re Live is now available everywhere. Someone unfamiliar with anime, manga, and Japanese version of the game might not know what’s going on and wonder what sets it apart from other Bushiroad games that feature high school girls who are also performers. But those who give it a chance may find themselves enjoying this turn-based RPG.
The first thing to know about Revue Starlight Re Live is that it isn’t a music game. Yes, all the heroines are high school girls who are performing arts students. Sure, you collect songs that you equip to provide different sorts of boosts to your up-to-five person parties. The main and side stories are told through kinetic visual novel elements, like games with similar situations. However, it isn’t like Bang Dream! Girls Band Party! or Love Live! School Idol Festival, the other two Bushiroad titles with high school girls who take to the stage. Instead, these young women learn that the stories they love are disappearing. They need to gather brilliance and restore starlight to keep the stories they love alive, while also working to become stars.
All of Revue Starlight Re Live‘s battles are turn-based, which means you are putting together a party of heroines and fighting through campaign, side-story, or versus fights. Your current level (or rank in versus) determine the point limitations on your party. Each group could have up to five characters, each equipped with one Memoir that offers a supplemental buff for that character, and a song that offers a passive effect for the whole party. Characters have standard forms, but you can acquire different versions of them in costumes from various roles in performances with different skills. Parties are organized with characters with high defense in front as tanks, general attackers in the middle, and ranged attackers in the back. AI fights involve three waves of enemies (or one fight against a major boss in specific event battles), while battles against other people have each person coming in with a party that meets requirements and attempting to survive.
What really stands out with Revue Starlight Re Live is how easy it is to get these parties together and have viable characters. To start, there was a beginning gacha that allowed you to reroll as long as you kept the window open. This meant it would be possible to keep rerolling until you received a ten-pull that had, say, two four-star units in it. It is a good way to build up a strong starting party. The launch celebration also involved login bonuses and missions that made it easy to start accruing the 3,000 gems necessary to keep earning more gacha pulls.
More importantly, Revue Starlight Re Live makes it relatively easy to promote characters of any rank so they can be stronger and more viable party members. There are two factors in particular to work on. One is the Skill Panel. Here, you can take materials earned from campaign battles and use them to boost girls’ stats and the strength of their skills. Many of the initial Skill Panels require items from the first three chapters of the story, making it easy to build people up. Even more important is the Potential Bloom section. Each character can be built up to a six-star rank. You can earn the materials and money needed to build up the ranks easily, either by buying them in the in-game shop with Creation Points or to fight through specific battles with that one heroine to earn the items needed to level a character up. I was able to take the four-star Sun Nation General Maya Tendo and make her a six-star over a weekend, just to show how easy it is to already have an amazing unit.
Revue Starlight Re Live feels like a rather manageable mobile game. It starts off by giving you an array of different heroines from the Seisho Music Academy. There’s an initial gacha that allows you to reroll multiple times to get a good array of starting characters. It isn’t difficult to trigger blooms to get characters to higher ranks, making them more viable warriors. Also, it features plenty of visual novel segments to establish characters and help introduce players to the world. If someone gives it a chance, they may have a good time.
Revue Starlight Re Live is immediately available for Android and Apple iOS devices.
