REVIEW – I*CHU: Chibi Edition will brighten you day

The world of idols in Japan is very complex, bringing both a source of happiness for the fans and a bag of struggles for the performers. I*CHU: Chibi Edition is a great rendition of this dichotomy, presenting both a visual novel with an engaging story full of drama, and a fun rhythm mode with an immense variety of music. Even if the game has a handful of technical issues that keep it from being great, you will have tons of hours of fun alongside this group of young performers.

You are the producer for 32 aspiring idols, or “I-Chu”, from the Étoile Vie School, an academy where they will learn everything they need to succeed in the music industry. They will be separated into nine different groups, each with their own distinct style, and your job will be to help them grow.

Gameplay is separated into two main modes: visual novel and rhythm game. As you progress through the story, you unlock more songs, which in turn must be beaten in order to unlock further story segments. This method of unlocking chapters and songs creates a very addictive gameplay loop that will keep you engaged throughout the whole game.

In fact, the game has over 80 songs, with only a handful unlocked at the start, and the story is divided into three arcs, with a total of 105 chapters. Each chapter (except two) has three different episodes, which gives a grand total of 311(!) episodes to read through.

After finishing the game and reading all of their adventures, I can honestly say that the story is incredibly engaging. With the exception of a few chapters, I was always hooked and wanted to know more about the characters, their pasts, and their relationships with each other. For the most part, the writing was great (even if typos and unnatural sentence structures were common) and the struggles were believable, so you always felt willing to cheer for the characters and hope that everything could be solved.

The music was outstanding, with a great variety of styles – ranging from pop or rock to ballads or traditional Japanese music. The songs had 5 different difficulty levels, but you only needed to clear the easiest mode in order to keep unlocking story segments. Interestingly enough, you could also skip story segments if you were only interested in playing the songs.

I*CHU: Chibi Edition can also be controlled with the touch screen (although I preferred the traditional controls) and the timing can be adjusted so it matches your personal play style. In terms of objective, you want to get the best score possible for each song. If you hit a note at the right moment, you’ll get a “Perfect,” which influences whether you get an S-rank or not. The length of your combo and your overall score plays a role in the final result as well. Finishing a song is not that difficult, but getting an S-rank in each category is quite hard. If you do, you unlock Maniac mode for that song, which allows you to add more modifiers to the song, making it a more complex challenge. Additional options like Mirror Mode, Blind Mode, or Only Perfects Mode are also great and will test even the most seasoned rhythm game veteran.

That all being said, even with my vast experience in rhythm games, I perceived the notes to be a little bit off in regard to the music. I eventually got used to it, but you need a lot of concentration on harder songs since some of the beats don’t land exactly when you’d expect. Again, it may be only my perception, but it is something to be aware of.

I*CHU: Chibi Edition has its roots in the mobile space, and it shows. You unlock new idols for your group through gacha, albeit without microtransactions. Instead, completing a song grants you discs that can be used to try your luck in unlocking new idols. Sadly, this means that you may not unlock your favorite characters right away – however, there is an option to exchange coins or crowns for specific characters. You obtain crowns by “graduating” high-rarity idols. In other words, you can exchange some idols you don’t want, or have repeated, in order to get currency for scouting your favorite ones.

More evidence of I*CHU: Chibi Edition’s mobile roots is the Events system. In this menu you have seasons, each with certain events that grant currency or idols while completing them. Once a certain number of events are done, then a new season unlocks. Unfortunately, some events take a while to be completed, requiring you to play a song multiple times to get enough points. Without unlocking seasons, some characters are not available, so finishing events is important, even though they are not as fun as other modes.

Once you get enough idols, you can create your band, select their leader, and use their skills – but only as long as certain characters are selected as members. If you have repeated characters, you can combine them to get stronger idols, and you can also train them to level them up. As you complete your collection of 2436(!) characters, you complete achievements which award you discs to keep scouting for more idols.

Besides the previously mentioned issues, such as typos, translation issues, and off-tempo beats, there are a couple of more problems with the game. My cursor froze once while using the touch screen controls, so I had to restart. And although I love the story, some characters had behaviors that would be unacceptable in real life settings which were never addressed. What made this last issue more noticeable was that, for most of the story, wrong attitudes were pointed out and everyone made an effort to improve, so it was sad that some issues were left untouched.

Finally, my biggest grievance with the game was the unresolved storylines. I understand the mobile origins, so perhaps the game stopped producing new chapters before some stories were finished, but this port was the perfect opportunity to add some closure to certain important events. Perhaps this incompleteness hurt more because of how invested I was in this world and its characters. Nonetheless, even with all of these issues, the game is extremely fun and there were enough great moments to make up for some frustrating cliffhangers.

I*CHU: Chibi Edition is very fun despite its flaws. Although I came for the rhythm game, I stayed for the story. Most of the characters are endearing, and seeing them grow, learn, and succeed was surprisingly addictive – like reading a book you can’t put down. Not only that, the variety in music and personalities means that there is something for every fan of music games and visual novels, especially if you enjoy seeing characters change and overcome very real issues that we all may face in our lives.