Let’s start positive. This game sells completely the strengths of Idolm@ster. All the idols are problematic students which for some reason or another are not realizing their full potential. Character-wise there are common staples of the genre: idols struggling with their gender identity or ones with self-esteem problems, but also other specific issues like a student who has given up on life after failing her previous dream, or one who has fallen into a self-hatred pit of isolation after breaking up with their previous idol unit. Not only are the character concepts here mostly interesting and likeable, but a school that encourages the alumni to be their best selves and clash with the other students is the ideal setting to explore these stories. In fact, the game is perfectly built around the idea of helping these girls to shine on stage and their personal lives.

You produce each of the idols and manage their schedules, constantly training and interacting with them through the visual novel sections to learn more about them, their insecurities, and their strengths, to see how you can make them the best person they could possibly be. Your first performances are terrible, your idols will not even be able to finish their song due to exhaustion and they will do an absolutely terrible job at it. With each produce run results start showing, learning the gimmicks of each idol’s gameplay style, using your resources correctly, and leveling up your cards all build to their visual growth on stage; they have memorized the entire song and choreography by now, a bigger audience will appear at their concerts, and more importantly, the girls start confidently smiling on stage, finally happy with themselves. Sorry to be corny but Gakumas absolutely understands why we love idols and why we want to support them. The game has been polished to a sheen to fully realize this idea. Even elements outside the game like the animated MVs for each girl make a great job on selling you on their individuality.

Sadly the game crashes and burns with the insipid writing, which is serviceable at best and God awful at worst. For some unexplainable reason Namco decided that the writing team would be helmed by Fushimi Tsukasa, from Oreimo and Eromanga sensei fame. You read that right. I was hoping time would prove me wrong but all of Gakuen’s interesting concepts are ruined by the writing. Main story scenarios get explicitly romantic with your idol of choice, and each route is plagued with the terrible tropes of your average LN, including the idols constantly reading the situation as sexual, feminizing the aforementioned idol struggling with their gender identity or your horny self insert constantly flirting with any near minor (even the teachers aren't excempt from this). The relationship between the idols and the self-insert skews from passable to creepy as shit at the drop of a hat and it’s really hard getting invested. I feel like I have to make up my own story in my head to not roll my eyes out of my skull.

Look, I wouldn’t be as frustrated here if this shit didn’t feel crowbarred into a game that does not need any of these shitty tropes to shine and that CONSTANTLY pushes the story in your face. A professional producer character who manages the girls’ schedules and gets to know them better is a great idea! But it really clashes with the juvenile dating sim thing that this game is constantly attempting. It’s even more infuriating when these tropes ruin the characters themselves. One of the idols is a genius girl who has excelled at everything academics all her life and has basically guaranteed her entire future, but decided against all odds to train as an idol despite absolutely failing at it only because she wanted to dedicate her life to her weaknesses. Fucking inspiring, right? Well, do I need to explain why giving her the shitty fetish gimmick of being aroused by pain and suffering fucking DESTROYS her character? This is past just wanting to attract a creep audience, this is terrible writing.

As you can see, I have a lot of thoughts about this game. In many ways I think this is an absolutely amazing concept and I will continue playing the game for now. The potential here is frankly outstanding, the gameplay is addictive, I love the art, and I am very curious on the long term content as a gacha, especially because it has been lamp shaded pretty hard Gakumas will be a series with an ever expanding cast of new students joining the school, meaning the writers can (hopefully, for the love of god) see what works and is not working for future storylines.

Unlike Song for Prism I am not sure what will be the future of Gakumas. Will it be a success or a failure? No idea, but I am sufficiently in love with the ideas here to be interested in this branch for the foreseeable future. Personally, the writing here is so bad I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone except the most hardcore of idol fans. I can see myself falling off hard after a certain point. My personal head canons are far more interesting than the actual story events here.

Alas, people won't make all the right choices in their lifetime... Though luck always seems like it's on your side.

You will keep winning, having never lost before. But why you? Why... must it be you?

If all your luck is built on the pain of someone you love, on the loss of dozens more - if these windfalls, these jackpots aren't a gift from Gaiathra- if all they are is a long string of meaningless deaths...

I was walking in circles around my room for over an hour after finishing it last night and am still trying to collect my thoughts. A beautiful finale to the entirety of Xeno and everything I could have ever asked for.

I have never felt such satisfaction upon finishing something before and am so glad I played Gears and Saga beforehand. I played this series, especially 3 and FR, at the best possible time in my life, purely by chance, and don't think its themes would have resonated with me as deeply as they did had I played it at any previous point in my life. I'll never forget what it has taught me and will forever treasure it. Sagabros we won

P.S. DABURU SUPININGU EJJI

This game is complicated for me to really talk about. I think the main story is fine, it's short and does what it needs to do, and the game delivers some emotional gutpunches for Kiryu. But I played this game on hard, and the gameplay itself is some of my least favourite in the series. Before you upgrade, you're underpowered and the fights can be quite hard if you actually try to engage with the game's mechanics. Dodge behind a boss while they're attacking and start hitting their back, and the boss won't stagger and will instead slowly turn around and you just eat shit anyway. Spam charged light attacks in Yakuza style, though? The boss staggers on every hit and you do massive damage.
There were also some baffling changes to the starting kit, like being able to die in extreme heat mode until you get a specific upgrade even though you did not need to get an upgrade for that in every game prior. But ok, the game wants you to get upgrades or it's a pain to play. So I upgraded Kiryu's styles almost to completion, and now he's way too powerful, and bosses go down in a few hits. Even the final boss, which they attempted to make like the final boss of 5, having a massive healthbar and a lot of stage transitions, was way too easy because upgrades in this game make you way too strong. Once again, I played this game on hard mode.
I would also like to reiterate that actually trying to engage with the game's mechanics makes you eat shit. Try to grab an enemy and as you press the button they start their attack animation? Well even if your grab hits them before they hit you, you still rebound off them instead of grabbing (unlike literally every other game in the series), and the enemy hits you anyway. Even if you do grab an enemy, don't expect any crowd control. They are a terrible option, and they even removed small fun things like being able to change your hold on an enemy while grabbing them. They also gutted bounding throws, locking them behind extreme heat mode and making it so that you can't use them on strong enemies, once again different from every other game in the series. But if you're in extreme heat mode, why would you use bounding throws anyway? Unlike other games where any enemy in the vicinity will get knocked over, bounding throws barely stagger, so its use as a crowd control method is terrible, and it does very little damage. Meanwhile, you can just use the spider thread to throw a bunch of enemies at once and knock down any enemies they hit outside extreme heat, or you can use Agent style in extreme heat and just spam the light attack button and do way too much damage in a massive area. I do not understand what the thought process was behind gutting grabs and bounding throws so badly.
There was some fun to be had in the gameplay, like messing with crowds of weaker enemies in Agent style, but the game removed any options you did have in previous games against bosses, locking you into a few painfully easy options. I swear, Dragon Engine Kiryu's combat peaked at 6 where you actually had to think about your actions somewhat and from there it was only downhill. It was so boring to play that I didn't even bother doing the 4 kings side story.