THE NEW UI IS HERE AND I HAVE....MIXED FEELINGS!!!!!! But mostly positive!!!!!!!!! Overall, I like a lot of the new aspects...which unfortunately means most of my gripes are about the function, not the form.


WELCOME TO THE NEW HOME SCREEN!!!!!! I honestly love how colorful and fun it is- it reminds me a lot of original Love Live, in a good way! I love that it's not afraid to be bright and almost tacky, especially when so many games lean towards minimalism :D
HOWEVER................I hate that a lot of the important features are now hidden behind buttons, including things I'd like to be able to see at a glance. BP (stamina), work tickets, and diamonds are now accessed by clicking the big star in the upper left that displays your rank, which looks cool but they don't belong within a menu. They're the sort of things that should be right there when you login. I also don't like that Story and Cards are no longer on the home screen- they're within the big star in the bottom right that says Produce, which is where most of the important shit is.

okay okay okay I'm not trying to write a tutorial here XD I've had a lot of reactions since it came back online approx ~24 hours ago...and now it's down for pre-event maintenance, hence why I'm rambling here.

There's also just a lot of hiding important things that shouldn't be hidden, imho. In the office item purchasing screen, it no longer tells you how many of each item you already have, unless you click on yet another button. The theme here is "plz put that back where you found it so help me" I guess :T

Seriously, the new UI is already bright and full of a bunch of fun shapes, I promise that keeping a few numbers/small images on there won't hurt. It'll just add to the organized chaos that I'm pretty sure they're going for! IT'S OKAY TO SHOW US INFO I PROMISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't wanna just be negative above the cut, so lemme say some more things I like~


the MEGA PHONE screen is honestly delightful- I think it's so fun!!!! I just wish that MV fitting room didn't take quite so many menus to get to :T


new default colors for the notes! you can can still pick the old colors though, which is good~ I play with the heart-shaped ones and they didn't get the new color, so I guess I'm safe? XD


there's a new font and I actually quite like it, but it broke my profile text D: ALSO THEY TOOK AWAY THE PROFILE CARDS!!!!! apparently they're gonna add them back in, but I'm pretty bummed for now ;w; Ensemble Live is also gone for the time being, with promises of re-adding it. plz bring it back, I miss it already!!!!!


something I do like is part of the 10th anniversary: a chance to get 3k fans for a character!!!!! it's 3x a day and you get a random character each time, but I very luckily got Kohaku for the my second character ♥


playing each song nets you 1k fans, bringing it to 3k total, and there's a little comment "from the idol" about each song *w* it's all very cute!


also related to doing stuff with a single character: Solo Live!!!! you play ONLY with cards of one character, and the more fans you have for them, the more you can bring along as support~ if you get a high enough score, you can unlock their solo MV for BRIGHTEST STARS!!


which of course I did for Kohaku!!!!! I'm gonna do Madara next, since he's the other character I have a ton of fans for, but you can only do it once a day.

Alright, let's get into the other good stuff...like my various 5* pulls!!! They gave us a guaranteed one that pissed me off so much I didn't screencap what I got :T I have nothing against Kuro, he just haunts my fucking gacha pulls so much I've gotten frustrated. I got the 3rd copy of a second card of his, so...okay :T

WHATEVER. I picked MaM for my unit guaranteed 5* scout, and got a second copy of demon Mama + bonus FS2 Mika!!!!!!



very excited for the Mika, tbh!!! I have him in CN but nowhere else, so now he can hang out with other characters in similar-ish outfits (like Tori and Rinne's cross scout cards!)
And then...okay, I don't like that they're making the 10th anniversary limited scout cards fucking 5*, instead of 4* like in previous years, but I could not resist scouting in the first box. It was Subaru, Rei, and Leo, okay, I am weak.

AND I WAS REWARDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In the three 10 scouts I did, I got all of them!!!!!!!!! :D




and this included two copies of Leo!!!!!!!!!! I hope I'm this lucky with the next few boxes (since they'll be including Eden...)


also I picked this asshole for my "choose a 5*" because I've wanted him for the past year and he's eluded me!!!!!! now I just need Madara's FS2 and I'll have all his gacha cards (and most of his event ones!)

ALRIGHT, STRAP ON IN!!!!! Talking about gacha success reminded me of something else important that changed: the card design :O I actually noticed it before the maintenance was over, because the scout box preview images used it, but seeing it in full was something else entirely.

Honestly? I don't mind it. I kinda nothing it? Like...it looks pretty similar to the old card design and doesn't stick out in a distractingly bad way, so I'll call it a win!

However, there's another difference with them that most people won't notice, but I did. I rip resources for the wiki, which means I spend a lot of time in the file structure of enstars's data. AND THEY MOVED IT. It's now in the "xresources" folder instead of the "resources" folder, and cards are put together in a different way. Instead of the card being a single flattened image, all the various pieces are individual assets that the game presumably renders as needed. Which I like (because now I can use the bits and pieces to make the enstars card themed mood theme I've been dreaming of) but dislike because I can't just rip cards out of the game to easily share.

Originally I was gonna share in game screencaps for comparison but I'm stupid and actually put all the multiple pieces together in Photoshop to make this Madara card uwu


new on the left, old on the right!
So, initially I just eye-balled the placement of his name - since that's a separate asset now! - but when I grabbed the in game screencap to line it up, I was only a couple pixels off. MY YEARS OF STARING AT ICONS IN PHOTOSHOP HAVE PAID OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!


another issue/weird design choice: at the end of song screen, the numbers for my rank are on two lines???? it looks very weird :T


completely unrelated to JP: CN rolled over to the most recent birthdays today!!!! this is cool and all, but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh JP broke Makoto's birthday, so I'm just like I DON'T WANT THIS, I WANT THE NEWEST NEW BIRTHDAY XD
oh my god this post has been going on for SO LONG I have to finish it. I started it like 2 hours ago lmao I have a lot to say (and a lot of ADHD hahaaaaa I got lost in the chat and also Photoshop) BUT OVERALL IT'S GOOD! I'm sure I'll have more to say about it in the coming weeks.

omg also today is a good day for Leo- I just pulled my third copy of his FS1 in ENG, sobs I love him ;w;
OKAY. Okay. This was a lot of post, mostly about the JP enstars app, so lemme finish it off with proof that I actually left my house today: the boys at Costco~