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is a Japanese raising simulation video game in ''The Idolmaster'' series developed and published by Bandai Namco Games. It was originally released on February 24, 2011 for the Xbox 360 in Japan, and later for the PlayStation 3 on October 27, 2011. The story in ''The Idolmaster 2'' is told from the perspective of a producer in charge of leading and training a group of three pop idols to stardom and receive music awards. Its gameplay, while remaining similar to the previous title, features several improvements and differences, including changes in the roster of idol characters and the removal of online multiplayer elements. The game is developed as the centerpiece of the franchise's next stage called "2nd Vision". Its production began before the announcement of the series' first 2nd Vision game, ''The Idolmaster Dearly Stars'', and its staff proceeded with the goal of earning the franchise's fans' continued support and the mindset of creating the game from scratch akin to the original arcade game's development. Yurina Hase, the voice actress of the character Yukiho Hagiwara, opted not to return for the role, and Azumi Asakura was brought in by the development staff after several failed auditions. The game's Xbox 360 version of the game sold 34,621 units in its first week of release in Japan, while its PlayStation 3 version sold 65,512 units as the third best selling game in Japan in its first week. ==Gameplay== ''The Idolmaster 2'' is a raising simulation game in which the player assumes the role of a producer who works at 765 Production (765 Pro), a talent agency that represents twelve pop idols who made their debuts half a year before the beginning of the story. At the beginning of the game, the player meets Junjirō Takagi, 765 Pro's president, and is tasked with creating a unit of three idols—a leader and two members—from nine of the agency's members: Haruka Amami, Miki Hoshii, Chihaya Kisaragi, Yukiho Hagiwara, Yayoi Takatsuki, Makoto Kikuchi, Mami Futami, Hibiki Ganaha, and Takane Shijou. The player and the selected idols are also tasked by Takagi to become nominated to the Idol Academy music awards festival and win awards within 52 weeks; the prerequisite of receiving an invitation from the academy is to attain a ranking of 20th or above in the singles sales chart by the 36th week of the year. Also working toward this goal are 765 Pro's Ryūgū Komachi and 961 Pro's all-male unit Jupiter.〔 The unit's vocal, dance, and visual competency is represented by three statistic points called image points, and their overall ability is generalized as their image level, which increases as the idols train in the three image categories. The game depicts the idols' activities of each in-game week in a single day. At the beginning of each day, the player first greets one of the unit's idols, and is given multiple responses that he or she may respond to the idol's reaction with. Depending on the player's response, the idols' affection for the producer and intimacy with each other may change. The player is only given a few seconds to make a selection, and if no decision is made, a random response will be selected. The idols may prompt the player to prepare a new single if a period of time has passed since their previous release, and the player may either ignore the request or select a song for the new single. The player must then organize the idols' schedule for the afternoon, which is divided into three segments.〔 The player may schedule activities such as lessons, promotional work, stage performances, shopping for costumes and accessories, and taking the day off. Each activity costs and reimburses the player varying amounts of in-game money, and may take up either one-third, two-thirds, or the entirety of the afternoon to complete.〔 The player may schedule up to two tasks if time is available, and may change the idols' costume and accessories before they begin work.〔 The lessons are instructional sessions that idols partake to raise their image points and level, and are in the form of three minigames. Each lesson type corresponds to one of the three image categories: vocal, dance, and visual. Each lesson is timed, and the idols' overall performance in the lesson is ranked as bad, normal, good, or perfect. The player can also choose to do a long lesson, which provides a longer session.〔 Promotional work are jobs that the producer and the idols can take to further their popularity in specific regions. The jobs can either compensate or cost the unit with in-game money, and earn the idols differing amounts of fans in the region the job is conducted in. The gameplay of promotional work mainly deals with the player talking with one of the three idols, an aspect known as communication.〔 Like when greeting the idols before, the player is given multiple responses to choose from over the course of a conversation. The player's choices affect how well or poorly the communication is received—ranging from bad to normal, good, and perfect communication, and this in turn affects the unit's memory level. Communications also occasionally occur at predetermined points in the story or after the end of a week.〔 The player can also shop for additional costumes and accessories, and along with taking the day off, reduces the idols' fatigue. In addition to the auditions found in previous ''Idolmaster'' simulation games, the idols can also perform by participating in music festivals and live performances. These three types of performances are together referred to as stage performances, and share the same basic gameplay with differences in their conditions of completion. To successfully pass an audition, the player and idols must receive a passing ranking among the auditioning units, while a predetermined rating representing the audience's excitement must be achieved to successfully complete a live performance.〔 In a festival, the player and idols compete against a computer-controlled opponent, and must obtain a higher score than the opponent to successfully complete the festival.〔 Similar to games in the rhythm genre, stage performances' gameplay takes place as the player listens to the idols performing a song. During the performance, the player must guide the idols to appeal to the judge or audience in the three image categories by continuously pressing buttons that correspond to the categories along to the rhythm of the song. The player and the idols are scored by the accuracy of these presses in timing, for which he or she is given one of four ratings: Perfect, Good, Normal, and Bad.〔 The points that each appeal rewards is dependent on the idols' statistics and the song's tempo. The points of each appeal are also multiplied by the category's interest rate, which represents the audience's interest in the image category and increases or decreases as the idols continue to appeal in other categories or the same category.〔 The idols' performance are also represented by the voltage meter, which increases as the player successfully hits a note. The player also has the option to use memory appeals to reset each image's interest rate and receive a boost in the score and voltage.〔 The player can use as many memory appeals as the idols' memory level. Once the voltage meter is completely filled, the player can choose an idol to activate a burst appeal. During a burst appeal, the player must follow a sequence of specific image appeals, which are given an adjusted, higher than average interest rate.〔 This also halts the opponent's ability to use appeals, and causes a reduction in his or her voltage meter. After the burst appeal, the voltage meter is reset, and the voltage meter must be filled again before another burst can be used. Special items called amulets can also be purchased and used to adjust gameplay elements, such as reducing the interest rates' deterioration rate. If the idols pass an audition, the unit is chosen to do a televised performance of the song previously chosen, while an encore is given if a festival or live performance is successfully completed.〔 In addition, live performances allow the unit to perform an additional encore as a solo or duo, while special performances called quintet lives allow the player to invite two guests to perform the encore with the unit as a quintet.〔〔 The performances serve to increase the number of fans the unit has in the region it is held or in all regions in the case of national broadcasts.〔 At the end of each day, the producer returns to the 765 Pro office with the idols. The player is shown the weekly sales ranking, and can choose to have a conversation with the idols, who play a game with the player and present a number of choices similar to the greeting in the morning. If available, he or she is also shown the idols' fan mail or email messages sent to him or her. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Idolmaster 2」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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