What Makes: Medley Festival Awesome

School Idol Festival's (SIF) Medley Festival is great! It's easily my favorite of the three event types available for the game and today, I'm going to share with you just what makes it so great. Before I start, a little introduction into this game mode. For those of you new to SIF or who are unfamiliar with the series, Medley Festival is one of the three time limited game modes which is available in-game. SIF being a rhythm game means that the game modes revolve around playing songs sung by Love Live's Muse. Medley Festival in particular allows you to play up to three songs in succession in variable difficulty levels.

Speaking of difficulty, we come to the first factor which makes Medley Festival so awesome!

1. The Challenge/Difficulty

As I've mentioned earlier, Medley Festival allows you to play multiple songs in succession ranging from the novice "Easy" difficulty all the way to the seasoned "Expert" difficulty. To top it all off, you get to select the number of songs you choose to play. Obviously for those who love the challenge, 3 Expert songs are the way to go. But for others, they can cater the difficulty accordingly to suit them best. Be it, 3 Normal or 2 Hard songs. This makes it very accessible to new players as well as challenging for those who have played for some time already.

As incentive, the harder the difficulty, the better the payoff. In this case, broken down into Bronze, Silver and Gold prizes. Bronze being the most common, Silver uncommon and Gold the rarest. Even on the hardest difficulties, Gold prizes are hard to come by occurring less than 10% of the time. And that's the great bit about of it all! Inevitably, you'll find yourself playing harder difficulties outside your usual comfort zone in pursuit of better prizes and, unknowingly, improving your proficiency at the same time. If there was any game mode which has the biggest push to make you try harder, it's this one. For that alone, it's awesome!

2. The Randomness

Moving on, we have the random nature of song selection which adds to the whole suspense (and fun) factor. After selecting your difficulty and number of songs, the game randomly picks three songs (of the same attribute) from the event's song roster. While it comes from a pre-determined pool of songs, you never really know what you'll be getting and which order. In this case, you may be really good at "No Brand Girls" and bad at "Darling!!" or vice versa.

 Now remember, you have to successfully play all the songs in order to complete the stage. It doesn't matter if you fail the on the first song or the last. If you fail, you're out and so are your precious time-earned Live Points (LP). Unless, you spend one of your hard earned Love Gems (premium currency) to continue. Even then, that's no guarantee that you'll pass. Sounds terrifying doesn't it?

3. The Boosters/Value

Well, this third factor aims to mitigate that but, makes it no less fun. For starters, all songs cost 20% less LP to play which in itself is great value out of the box. Then, there are boosters that you can purchase with in-game Gold to assist/improve your play-through. These boosters range anything from the essential Stamina Recovery Booster all the way to the luxury Reward Chance Booster. Based on your account balance, you can budget accordingly. 

As a rule of thumb, I always advocate getting a Stamina Recovery and Event Point Booster. Both these boosters are fairly cheap and Gold in SIF comes quite easily too. If you have a little more in the bank to spend, an EXP Point Booster is great too for moving up the ranks faster.

3. The Friends

With so much done, it should be time to start playing the songs already right? Nope, not quite yet. Right before you begin playing, there's a chance that a friend of yours might randomly appear to help you out. These assistance can come in the form of increased Gold, score points, EXP, rewards or even "Perfect Lock" support. 

They don't occur all the time but, when they do, it's always a welcome boost. Especially for those which grant additional rewards.

4. The Rewards

Which leads me to my next point, the rewards. Oh, how lucrative they are! Among all the dozens of Bronze rewards you'll be getting, it's the handful of Silver and Gold rewards to which you hang onto the most. Silver rewards can take the form of rarer N(ormal) members, additional Gold or training partners. Gold rewards, on the other hand, are much more lucrative and can be R members, SR members or even a Green Scouting Ticket. The scouting ticket alone is a potential SR/UR waiting to be scouted which makes them extremely sought after.

One particular reward I got for this event was a R Cocoro Yazawa, one of Nico's younger sister. She serves as a training partner with an added bonus of raising the Skill Level of an R Cool attribute member. It's a first of its kind for me and I don't think I'll be using it anytime soon.

What I will be using though is the large zoo that I have been amassing. Just two days through and I already have 5 new Alpacas and this will only continue growing. 

5. The Fun Factor

Lastly, and there's no better way of saying it, is the "Fun" factor. The culmination of all the four factors above serve to mix up a cocktail of fun that is the Medley Festival. Thus, when you take a look at all of the above, it's no surprise how Medley Festival is so popular among SIF players.

That's all for today's write-up. I hope you've found it helpful. For those of you who have yet to try out SIF and are fans of Love Live, I would strongly recommend it. The games is available on both Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store for free. Until then, thanks so much for reading and I hope you're having a great day!