THE IDOLM@STER STARLIT SEASON: story comes up 2.6 times as often in Japanese reviews
Story comes up 2.6 times as often as usual in Japanese reviews. 371 Japanese-language reviews were counted, from 2021-10-13 to 2026-10-15.
Own research by 648 News. Every figure in this article was counted by us from 371 Steam reviews written in Japanese, collected between 2021-10-13 and 2026-10-15.
Collected reviews match Steam's all-time count
The collected sample contains 371 Japanese-language reviews, dated 2021-10-13 to 2026-10-15. Of them, 314 recommend the game and 57 do not, giving 84.6% positive. The 95% confidence interval for that share runs from 80.6% to 87.9%. All 371 collected reviews were classified, and the model classified 330 of them. The mean sentiment score is 73.7. Steam's own all-time figures, read on 2026-10-30, list 371 total reviews, 314 positive and 57 negative, with 84.6% positive and a Very Positive rating.
The numbers
Story and characters stand out against other games
Against the 109 other followed games, story, scenario, writing appears in 26.1% of classified Japanese-language reviews. The baseline share for a typical game is 10.0%, so this game's share is 2.6 times as high. Characters, character design appears in 18.6%, against a baseline of 7.3%, or 2.5 times as high. Graphics, art direction appears in 21.0%, against a baseline of 9.5%, or 2.2 times as high. No topic appears far less often than usual. In reviews that recommend it, story appears in 26.8%, characters in 19.7%, and graphics in 20.7%. Some recommending reviewers describe the story as extensive and say characters receive individual focus. They also praise live staging, camera work, and character models.
Gameplay and difficulty split the two sides
Gameplay, combat, core mechanics appears in 71.9% of reviews that do not recommend the game and in 49.4% of reviews that recommend it, a gap of 22.5 percentage points.
これはアケマスの再来だ
This is a return of the arcade Idolmaster.
Difficulty, balance shows a similar split. It appears in 31.6% of negative reviews and in 9.6% of positive reviews, a gap of 22.0 percentage points.
難易度が高く、所々UIの不便さを感じたが
The difficulty is high, and the UI feels inconvenient in places, but
Among reviews that do not recommend the game, story, scenario, writing appears in 22.8%. That is 3.0 times the baseline share of 7.6% for negative reviews. Graphics, art direction also appears in 22.8% of negative reviews, 3.0 times the baseline share of 7.7%. Reviewers who do not recommend the game often describe the live system and monthly performance structure as restrictive. They also mention slow pacing, repeated lessons, and progress being reset after failure.
久々にひどいアイマスを見た。
After a long time, a bad Idolmaster was seen.
Longer play sessions match higher recommendation
The Japanese-language reviews split sharply by play time. The quarter with the least play time contains 92 reviews, with play time up to 8.3 hours. In that group, 70.7% recommend the game. The topics named most in that group are gameplay, combat, core mechanics in 42.4%, graphics, art direction in 26.1%, and amount of content, length, replayability in 26.1%. The quarter with the most play time also contains 92 reviews, with play time from 72.5 hours. In that group, 95.7% recommend the game. The topics named most in that group are gameplay, combat, core mechanics in 58.7%, story, scenario, writing in 41.3%, and amount of content, length, replayability in 31.5%. The difference between the two groups is 25.0 percentage points, with p < 0.001. The median play time across Japanese-language reviews is 36.2 hours.
Methodology and sources
Data
Steam user reviews, retrieved with Steam's public review listing between 2021-10-13 and 2026-10-15: 371 written in Japanese. Steam's own all-time totals for THE IDOLM@STER STARLIT SEASON were read on 2026-10-30.
How the reviews were classified
Every review was read by a language model, which rated how positive it is, how much concrete detail it gives, and which of 15 fixed topics it talks about. The counts and percentages in this article were then computed from those labels in ordinary code, not by the model. Automatic classification makes mistakes, so single percentages should be read as approximate. Reviews of fewer than 15 characters were not sent to the model; they count as positive or negative from the reviewer's own recommendation and carry no topic.
Limits
People who write a Steam review in Japanese are not a representative sample of everyone who plays in Japan, and the language of a review does not establish where its author lives. Steam's default filter for off-topic review activity was left on, so periods Steam marked as review bombing are excluded from the counts in this article. Reviews that arrived after the retrieval date are not included.
Links
Data from Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.