When more and more otome game is getting ported to the Nintendo Switch, the 2013’s Uta no Prince-sama All Star visual novel game makes a perfect addition offering an interesting perspective for you to learn more about the idols.
First released in March 7, 2013 for PSP, Uta no☆Prince-sama♪ All Star is the fifth game in the Uta no☆Prince-sama series to be recently ported to the Nintendo Switch, preceded by Uta no☆Prince-sama Debut. The story this time focused on debuting the newly formed unit at Shining Productions: QUARTET NIGHT.
▍Help Your Senpai Make A Debut!?
QUARTET NIGHT is, well, a quartet of veteran idols. You have the energetic Kotobuki Reiji (CV: Morikubo Showtaro), the stoic Kurosaki Ranmaru (CV: Tatsuhisa Suzuki), the cold and closed-off Camus (CV: Tomoaki Maeno) and finally, the analytic and cool-headed Ai Mikaze (CV: Shouta Aoi). An additional route of Ryuuya Hyuuga, your teacher in Saotome Academy, will also be available.
After choosing your partner in Uta no Prince-sama All Star, the story will begin. As far as I could tell from playing the game, there is no particular order that you must play these routes–you can play them from whatever order you like. Listing all of their routes would take quite a while, so I’ll just be talking about my personal favourites in this review: Ranmaru Kurosaki, Camus and Ryuuya Hyuuga routes.
■ Ranmaru Kurosaki – Keep Out of my Territory
Prior to this, my only knowledge of Ranmaru’s past is that he had been betrayed…once. But, All Star help me discover a side that I’ve never notice from the franchise’s other media, such as the anime or the mobile game, Utano☆Princesama: Shining Live.
Ranmaru’s your typical “tsundere”. As you increase his affection, he’ll slowly (but surely) open up to you, and once you get to know his past, I’m pretty sure you will perceive him very differently, making his route one of my personal favourites.
■ Camus – The Icy Approach
Camus was always, to me anyway, a man full of question marks, and fortunately Uta no Prince-sama All Star could help unveil all, if not, some of his secrets to us. But the game also created new ones that require you to read all of his side stories at the Library.
Camus’s route keeps you in the dark most of the time. I’m sure you may be wondering like I was: Why Camus doesn’t have a surname like the others? There’s a good reason for that, and not only will you learn more about him, you’ll also learn about his home country, the Silk Palace.
■ Ryuuya Hyuuga – The True Meaning of “Worth”
Ryuuya Hyuuga. Y’know, the only thing I knew about him was that he was Nanami (the protagonist)’s teacher and that Syo Kurusu (CV: Hiro Shimono) was a big, and I mean BIG fan of him. When I started playing his route however, I finally understand one.
I was confused as to why the words “girlfriend” were said out as early as Chapter 1, and later found out that the reason is that the Teacher Routes are half the length of the Senpai Routes, and the game will already cut to the chase and say that they’re lovers.
This route also made me hate President Saotome WAY more than it should, to be honest. I mean, I already disliked him a bit, and I get it they were trying to be comedic, but if the idea was to make you really hate him, as some sort of “antagonist”, they succeeded. Oh well, good thing he’s not on any of the mobile game aspects, I suppose.
▍Tricky Rhythm Gameplay
At one point during the chapter, you’ll go to a Performance Lesson, which consists of a rhythm game where you must tap the buttons to the rhythm. This is by far the trickiest part of the game, because while LV 1 might sound easy, LV 3 is VERY hard, with double notes and complicated button combinations that might take a few retries to get it.
LV 1 is fairly simple, but when I got to LV 3, the button presses got to the point where they were quite messy to follow, and I had to keep retrying again and again, because the game is rather strict with its grading. I wish they had simplified the controls somewhat because even though the difficulty I selected was EASY, it was far from being EASY.
▍Final Thoughts on Uta no Prince-sama All Star
I had a really good time with Uta no Prince-sama All Star. The routes drastically changed how I view each of the characters, and it certainly showed me a different side of the idols I would never be able to figure out from the mobile game alone.
I’m super glad that I got the opportunity to play the Uta no☆Prince games in a higher quality thanks to this Nintendo Switch port, and I recommend that anyone willing to dip their toes from outside the scope of the Shining Live mobile game into the series should definitely get into it.
The only negative point is that the rhythm portion is unbalanced and very complicated compared to the PSP counterpart. I really wish the developers had made them a bit easy, but it is what it is.
Uta no☆Prince Sama All Star for Nintendo Switch gets a 4.2 out of 5.
