Hanayamata: Yosakoi Live! is a school-themed comedy visual novel adventure game with a rhythm based elements. The game is based on the original Hanayamata manga series which first came out in 2011. The story unfolds during the course of 10 days, and follows five different protagonists who are members of Yosakoi school club. The school festival is approaching, and with all the mishaps and problems occurring in school they are practicing their dance performance until the day of the festival. While the most of the game is a visual novel style which follows the story and allows certain choices which branch the taken path, the rhythm based element occurs during the practice time, using about a dozen different songs. The dancing element requires pressing the right button at the right time to earn the maximum score. Flowchart of the story is available for each and every of the character which displays which paths you did or could have taken. At the end of each day, the score is given for both the story and rhythm modes, while the rhythm is rated on your success at timing actions, the story is rated based on taken paths, telling you how much of the actual story you have uncovered or strayed from based on your actions.
The game features five female protagonists, and story can be played with each and every one of them through every of the ten days, featuring full voice-acting for all the included heroines and side characters. There are no text-only descriptive segments in the game, even characters' thoughts are voice-acted. While the story is the same throughout all ten days of gameplay, perspectives are different as different protagonists are in different places doing different things and talking to different people. Even though most of the choices fit experiencing the same story from different point of view, choices can be selected which kind-of alter the story slightly depending with which character you played it (i.e. when playing as Naru you go look for your team members alone, but when playing as Yaya you can select to go look for your team members together with Naru).
Most of the game is animated to the most visual novels animate, which means blinking eyes, lots of different poses, and lip-syncing. Occasionally, a detailed animation of a character's expression across half of the screen is rendered to emphasize certain scene or event, otherwise, the posture and voice tone depict the right reaction or disposition of a character at the right moment during the dialogue. Message log shows identical icons for characters without their poses, and serves to re-listen certain lines or quick jump back to that point in the game.
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