Okay so, I’ve been asked a few times about the 100% completion guide that’s out there (JP only, but it’s not too difficult to machine translate enough to get the gist of things as long as you can figure out what the names are meant to be) and wanted to write an intro guide to it because it is, frankly, a behemoth.
To be clear, you absolutely do NOT need to reach 100% unless you’re looking for the challenge or determined to see every last inch of the game. You can easily beat all the routes and finish the cg gallery without coming anywhere close and that’s perfectly fine. Towada, the lead writer who writes novels for a living, said the game script is longer than 20 books. And to get 100% you need to read every. single. line. This includes a lot of variations depending on both the class award status (1st/2nd/3rd/4th) and Kisa’s individual award rank (1st/2nd/3rd/4th). The class awards you can skate through a bit since they’re based on how you do on the rhythm games so it’s easy to save and reset, but the individual awards are based on Kisa’s skill points which is far more difficult to manipulate to be just high enough but not too high. When I refer to gold/silver/bronze routes, I am referring specifically to Kisa’s award level.
There are different lines for every LI for the various scores and some of them are a fair bit after the play has ended which means that it requires going through every character route a minimum of 2 full times with lots of strategic saves and reloading. In all honesty, I am nowhere near close to completing this thing, but finishing it might take me years and I feel I have a decent grasp on how it works now so I wanted to break it down.
The rhythm games expect for you to get SS rank on every song, but I think as long as you get the right class award it’s not a big issue if you get an S-rank (the only exception might be for Chui’s ending which may require all SS).
Important note: The guide itself is not currently in a 100% complete state. Mona’s route guide is missing. The site owner is aware of this but cannot find the contents of the page so she said she will need to rewrite it from scratch which could take quite a long time. His ending isn’t hard to get if you hang out with him every possible weekend, but there may be small choices missed here and there. I would strongly advise keeping notes as you play! Particularly for any missed dialogue choices or weekend events and for keeping track of your save files.
General Advice:
-Keep a close eye on your stats and Enishi’s predictions. The guide should list at different points where your stats should roughly be. There’s a bit of wiggle room given the random nature of the stat bonuses (if you don’t hit 30 by the time the guide does, it tells you to keep with the skill until you reach 30 anyways, then you can switch back). You may need to reload to an earlier save if your stats are too low or high.
-Stay consistent to the guide as much as possible
-Keep running notes of where your saves are and any other issues you may come across (eg. if you were forced to deviate from the guide)
-Ion has a ludicrous amount of dialogue. You must talk to him every weekend he’s available about the same song for every single song because he has unique dialogue for each one (unsure about final play songs). These are split up between Suzu’s gold route, Ion’s route, Mitsuki’s bronze route, and Neji’s bronze route. Mona also has different dialogue for every single day he’s available.
-Generally you only pick one option per playthrough but for some that might be hard to get again, you should save before the event, play through it fully with one option, then you can load and replay it with the other ones, using skip read to go through the old dialogue. To be extra safe, you can save in a separate slot after completing the event then reload.
-Keep Kisa's name as the default. I've seen people say online that this can affect completion metrics for lines where her name is said.
About save files
You should be prepared to give up at least a good 30 save slots. If you’re gonna play it super minimalist route by route you could maybe get away with around 6, but 30 seems like a good amount to play comfortably and not risk missing things. I would strongly advise you hold off on collecting those special save slots until you are close to finishing as they use over half of your slots (50 is nowhere near enough ahhh). There is a list of all the numbered save slots at the end for reference.
Overall Guide
Step 1: Finish playing the game however you would most enjoy playing it
The guide will dictate all your choices and some of them would feel pretty unfulfilling for a first playthrough of a route (eg. spending all your time with Mona or Ion instead of the LI). It’s best not to deviate from the guide choices as it can create more issues later on in not remembering what was picked or not. There are a small number of choices with lines of dialogue much later and those can be a tremendous pain to go hunting for.
Step 2: Gold Runs
I call these the ‘gold route runs’ where basically you play through each of the LI routes with both Quartz and Kisa winning gold. As you play you will set up save points to pick up later for the silver runs and for the bronze runs. This will probably retread a lot of the same content you saw in your first playthroughs as it’s mostly Kisa hanging out with the specific LI and raising his skills and not much else. Skip read is your friend. You do NOT have to play these routes in the designated order. You can if you find it easier, but as long as you keep track of which saves are where, you should be okay.
On these routes, you will make saves on the following dates (exceptions noted):
*6/1 (pickup for bronze runs, not for Mitsuki), 7/13, 9/21, *12/1 (*11/27 for Kai)
There’s also a 12/25 save for Mitsuki.
Suzu | Sou | Mitsuki | Kai | Fumi | Neji
Some of the routes also set it up for other endings. Suzu’s gold run 12/1 save is the pickup point for Ion’s route and Mitsuki’s 12/25 is the pickup for Chui’s. So it’s recommended to keep those saves still until you complete those endings as well.
Ion | Chui
Step 3: Silver Runs (can be done with Step 2)
When you’ve completed a character’s gold route, use the silver medal guides to get Kisa the silver awards based on picking up your previous save points and sleeping basically all the time until the performance day. The guide recommends that you complete the designated days, save the next morning, then you can load the next save point. These generally take far less time than the gold runs.
Suzu | Sou | Mitsuki | Kai | Fumi | Neji
Kisa (side characters) also has mostly bronze/silver medals. This route can be used as a basis for getting the hidden Christmas expulsion endings (will try to write a guide for this in the future).
Step 4: Bronze Runs (complete after 2 and 3)
These are where you will use those 6/1 saves. You’ll need to save over all the rest or you’ll likely run out of slots and confuse yourself. If you’ve been trying to play with as few save slots as possible, you can also just restart from the beginning using the gold run guides up to this point. (Note: Mitsuki’s bronze route must be restarted from the beginning)
These saves are on a wider variety of dates so it’s highly recommended you check with the guide or with the save number list at the end.
But generally they are around: 8/16, 10/12, 12/14, 12/25
Suzu | Sou | Mitsuki | Kai | Fumi | Neji
Step 5: Scenario Cleanup
Even after all this, you still aren’t done! In addition to the Mona route, there’s another Kisa route required. After this, you should have completed: every iteration of medals for Kisa with each LI, all the class medal ranks, all of Ion’s dialogue for every song, all of Mona’s events, every possible weekend event, every RNG event, and every branching dialogue option.
I didn’t see any link for the two expulsion events (this may be part of the bronze runs) but I did find an explanation about them here (JP) if you’re stuck at 99%. Basically, there are two versions of getting kicked out by the principal on 12/25, with poor grades and with both poor grades and poor affection scores. I tried to summarize it.
Grades version:
Newcomer/summer: Kisa comes in 3rd or 4th; keep your highest stat below 22 and your other stats 3 or lower
Fall: 10/26 dialogue with principal; overall score on individual awards for the year should be B or lower
11/24 dialogue with Enishi
Winter: if your cumulative individual awards score is C, you will be expelled after the winter play (I went with bronze, silver, 4th, 4th for this score)
Affection version:
Still seems to require ending with an overall C score but there’s additional dialogue if affection is also low.
10/26 principal dialogue if you have not seen any of the second character affection events. (note: if you haven’t seen the first one, all character affection event flags disappear after the fall play)
Winter: cumulative score of C and no affection events at 2 or higher
Hopefully, HOPEFULLY once you get to that point you will finally reach 100%. Again, I really do not recommend it unless you're really diehard about it. No idea if I'll ever get there myself before JJ2 comes out but at least having a path can help for whatever foolish souls (me) want to attempt such a feat.
List of Saves
Since the saves in the guide are referred to solely by number, I made a guide to keep track of them all for ease of reference. Saves should be made at the beginning of the day before any actions.
Ion songs: (plane tree, ms. robin, ghost party; Ion route: havenna)
1 - Suzu 7/13
2 - Suzu 9/21
3 - Suzu 12/1 (Ion save)
temp save before final song of last performance; get C for silver class award; can save over after (do this for all routes)
4 - Sou 7/13
5 - Sou 9/21
6 - Sou 12/1
*Mitsu’s doesn’t seem to pickup for bronze run on 6/1, have to restart
7 - Mitsu 7/13
8 - Mitsu 9/21
9 - Mitsu 12/1
10 - Mitsu 12/25 (chui save)
11 - Kai 7/13
12 - Kai 9/21
13 - Kai 11/27
14 - Fumi 7/13
15 - Fumi 9/21
16 - Fumi 12/1
17 - Neji 7/13
18 - Neji 9/21
19 - Neji 12/1
20 - Kisa 12/25 (side chara run)
21? cannot find - Mona route?
—
22 - Suzu2 7/13
23 - Suzu2 8/16 (before onsen)
24 - Suzu2 10/12
25 - Suzu2 12/14
26 - Sou2 8/16 (before onsen)
27 - Sou2 10/12
28 - Sou2 12/14
29 - Sou2 12/25
Ion songs - Mitsu2 (fortune color, great galleon, friend without a name, confession)
30 - Mitsu2 8/16 (onsen) *note there’s a typo that says save 1 but I believe it’s save 30
31 - Mitsu2 10/13
32- Mitsu2 - 12/14
33 - Kai2 8/16 (onsen)
34 - Kai2 10/12
35 - Kai2 12/14
36 - Kai2 12/25
37 - Kai2 1/31 (after reloading from save 36)
38 - Fumi2 8/16 (onsen)
39 - Fumi2 10/12
40 - Fumi2 12/14
41 - Fumi2 12/25
Ion songs - Neji2 (compass line, hallelujah, faded color)
