BanG Dream! Our Notes is a rhythm gacha featuring five girl bands, original songs, covers, and character-driven stories. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't, and our overall impressions of the game.
Overview
What is BanG Dream! Our Notes?
BanG Dream! Our Notes is a rhythm game centered on five girl bands as they navigate life both on and off the stage. The game features MyGO!!!!!, Ave Mujica, Mugendai MewType, millsage, and Ikka Dumb Rock, with each band receiving its own story route focused on its members and relationships. Alongside the multi-route stories, players can collect Members and Snapshots, build their teams, and join Lives by tapping, flicking, and sliding through songs from the BanG Dream! bands. The game also features customizable rhythm gameplay and GEKISO Lives, adding more ways to play and engage with the music.
BanG Dream! Our Notes features:
⚫︎ Rhythm Gameplay and Competitive Lives
⚫︎ Band Stories and Character-Focused Narratives
⚫︎ Members and Snapshots Collection
⚫︎ Customizable Rhythm Gameplay
⚫︎ Multiple Bands With Distinct Themes and Musical Styles
| Digital Storefronts | |
|---|---|
 Android |
 iOS |
| Free-to-Play | |
BanG Dream! Our Notes Review: The Game Knows How to Make Good Songs Play Well
Setting the Stage for Another Rhythm Game
Being a rhythm game fan in the big 26 makes you feel like a glutton for choice. The genre consistently puts out games, some leaning into distinct styles like Rift of the NecroDancer or Muse Dash, while recent releases like Hololive Dreams follow the franchise-focused tradition represented by games like Love Live! School Idol Festival.
BanG Dream! unsurprisingly falls into the latter camp. The established girl-band franchise features groups with their own themes, original songs, and impressive covers, and BanG Dream! Our Notes brings them into a new rhythm gacha. Players collect Members and Snapshots, build teams, and play through a library of songs featuring the franchise's various girl bands. The formula is familiar, but Our Notes pays close attention to both the stories behind those bands and the act of playing their music.
Our Notes may not reinvent the rhythm gacha, but it has plenty going for it. Its character-driven stories give the bands more personality than their roles as performers alone, while a diverse soundtrack and extensive rhythm-game customization make the music enjoyable both to play and listen to.
A Band Is Never Without Baggage
BanG Dream! Our Notes lets players choose which band's story to experience first, with each group getting its own story mode. My first choice was MyGO!!!!!, and it wasted little time establishing that these characters have more going on than just playing music. The story opens with the band CRYCHIC falling apart, then jumps forward to the aftermath, where a transfer student named Chihaya Anon enters the scene. Trying to form a band, she finds herself bringing together the scattered remnants of CRYCHIC. It is a surprisingly heavy way to introduce a rhythm gacha, especially for someone coming into BanG Dream! without much prior familiarity with its characters.
That history creates some entertaining friction, but the character writing isn't limited to established bands. Ikka Dumb Rock, one of Our Notes' original groups, has its own story that's been one of my favorites so far. Its members have their own baggage and disagreements, but the conflicts feel like a natural result of their personalities rather than drama inserted simply to keep the story moving.
The story also gives those conflicts room to build before they reach resolution, balancing internal dialogue and lighter moments with the band's more serious problems. Not every character gets enough time to fully show themselves, but there is enough here to establish who they are and why their relationships work. It also helps that Ikka Dumb Rock has some great songs, making the group easy to appreciate both inside and outside its story.
Our Notes also has smaller ways to spend time with its cast. Bond Stories focus on pairs of characters, usually from the same band, and offer a more intimate, slice-of-life look at their relationships. They are fully voiced, which was a nice surprise, and seeing two characters interact outside their band's larger conflicts gives them another chance to show their personalities. Snapshots also contain story content, with their scenes appearing as story CGs rather than existing solely as optional character lore. Together, these smaller stories give the cast room to breathe between the larger band narratives.
The main stories are presented primarily through Live2D rather than traditional animation, which naturally limits how elaborate some scenes can be. Our Notes makes decent use of what it has, however, with camera movement, blur, and screen effects helping scenes carry some additional weight. A brief use of chromatic aberration before CRYCHIC's breakup, for example, creates an appropriately uneasy atmosphere without requiring a full animated sequence. Occasional 3D animated shorts also add visual variety to the storytelling.
The main stories, Bond Stories, and Snapshot scenes all serve the same purpose in different ways: they make the characters feel like more than performers attached to a rhythm game. The combination of heavier band conflicts, lighter character moments, and fully voiced interactions gives the cast enough personality to make the story worth following.
A Good Performance Comes With Twists and Plenty of Control
At its core, BanG Dream! Our Notes is a familiar mobile rhythm game. Lives, the game's main rhythm mode, throws the usual assortment of taps, flicks, and slides at the player, and its responsive controls make hitting notes feel consistently reliable. What makes the experience work particularly well, however, is how much control the game gives players over the way those songs are played.
Note speed can be fine-tuned down to the second decimal place, hit sounds can be changed along with their volume, and various elements of the gameplay interface can be adjusted, toned down, or removed entirely. The interface can even be repositioned during Lives, making it easier to focus on the parts of the screen that matter most when chasing a Full Combo. Calibration is straightforward as well, with a separate option for Bluetooth audio. None of this changes the fundamentals, but it makes the rhythm gameplay easy to settle into and tailor to personal preferences.
GEKISO Lives are where Our Notes puts its own spin on that foundation. Each song includes three GEKISO sections, with JUST rewarding accuracy, COMBO rewarding high combos, and LUCK introducing a little randomness into the scoring. Having four other players compete on the same song creates a different kind of tension than simply chasing a high score, while GEKISO Skills from Members and Snapshots give team-building a more direct role in the performance. The system adds another layer to the usual rhythm-game loop without getting in the way of what already works.
That separation is what makes the rhythm gameplay so satisfying. Building a strong team matters when chasing higher scores, but the actual act of playing remains enjoyable on its own. A well-built setup can make it easier to maintain a long combo and push a score higher, but Our Notes does not need its collection systems to make tapping through a good song feel good. The foundation is familiar, yet the combination of responsive controls, extensive customization, and GEKISO gives the game's Lives enough personality to keep them engaging.
Building a Band Takes More Than Playing Songs
BanG Dream! Our Notes makes it relatively easy to get a team up and running, with Members gaining substantial experience simply by playing Lives. My own team went from around 140,000 to more than 200,000 power largely through normal play, making early progression feel closely tied to the rhythm gameplay rather than requiring a separate grind. The steady stream of experience from playing songs made building an initial team approachable, with several of my Members eventually reaching their level caps before Member Training entered the picture.
Reaching those caps is where progression starts asking for more deliberate investment. Member Training raises a Member's level cap, while Snapshots rely on duplicates to increase theirs, with each uncap raising the cap by 10 and providing additional stats. Members also have star levels that improve Leader Skills and provide bonuses for certain songs, while Snapshot uncaps strengthen their skills.
The easy early levels therefore feel less like the extent of character progression and more like a quick way to establish a usable roster before the longer-term optimization begins. With team strength directly affecting scores, investing in these systems can make a substantial difference when chasing higher scores.
Studio Practice takes progression outside of Lives altogether, passively generating resources for each band and materials used to improve Band Instruments. The T.G.W. Card also contributes to this longer-term progression through its own system of daily rewards and upgrades, although its broader role in the game's economy is something I'll get into later. Together, these systems reward consistency beyond simply playing songs, giving regular check-ins another place within the game's progression loop.
Songs Worth Putting on the Playlist
BanG Dream! Our Notes largely relies on Live2D for its presentation, whether it is showing off Member and Snapshot artwork, displaying characters in menus, or bringing the story's cast to life. The Member and Snapshot art looks excellent, while the Live2D models and occasional camera effects keep story scenes from feeling completely static.
The Band Stories also occasionally break up their Live2D presentation with 3D animated shorts, while the game's music videos give the bands another chance to show off their visual identities. Menus are similarly straightforward and easy to navigate, with the dark-blue interface providing a consistent look across the game's various screens.
Where Our Notes really shines, however, is its music. As a game built around girl bands, the soundtrack naturally leans heavily into rock, but there is plenty of variety within that umbrella. Alternative rock, gothic metal, funk rock, and other styles all make appearances, with each band bringing its own musical identity to the library. Not every song will be a favorite, but the overall selection is strong, and the vocal performances are consistently solid. I have a particular soft spot for Ave Mujica's symphonic metal pieces, including its heavy rendition of A Cruel Angel's Thesis
from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The voice acting is just as important to the story, and strong performances give the cast personality even when scenes are primarily presented through Live2D. Combined with each band's distinct identities, it makes the soundtrack feel like more than something to tap along to during Lives. Plenty of songs are worth coming back to simply because they sound good, making the music one of Our Notes' strongest assets.
Hitting the Ground Stumbling
BanG Dream! Our Notes had a somewhat rough opening, with connection issues being the most noticeable problem during my first few days. At times, the game would lose connection badly enough to send me back to the title screen right before a GEKISO Live starts, although these issues have become much less common since launch. The game's first event was also postponed shortly after release, while several LIVE modes remain locked. None of this has prevented me from playing the game, but it made the opening days feel less stable than they should have.
Smaller bits of friction also remain. Claiming a large batch of Character milestone rewards can leave the UI looking unchanged until another action forces it to refresh, while some pop-ups cannot be closed until their animations finish. Navigation can similarly feel sluggish at times, especially when moving between the game's many menus and systems. These aren't problems that undermine the rhythm gameplay itself, but they do keep the overall experience from feeling as smooth as the songs it is built around.
Our Notes has clearly moved past some of its roughest launch problems, but the game still has a few places where the presentation and interface could use additional polish. For a rhythm game that otherwise puts so much emphasis on responsiveness and customization, those small delays stand out more than they otherwise might.
Music and Money Are Never Far Apart
As a rhythm gacha, BanG Dream! Our Notes naturally ties some of its progression to collecting Members and Snapshots. The main gacha uses Stars as its premium currency and has a 200-pull spark, with Standard and Pick Up banners available for players looking for specific characters or Snapshots. Featured Members and Snapshots can also return in future gachas, giving the collection loop a relatively straightforward structure rather than forcing players to chase every character before they disappear.
The larger concern is how many different ways Our Notes gives players to spend. The shop is built primarily around Stars, with bundles and SSR tickets, while Chat Packs and Stamps offer additional, more cosmetic purchases. The T.G.W. Card sits somewhere in between, offering a long-term progression track that improves team-building options and provides additional resources through its dedicated shop. As the T.G.W. Card rank increases, the shop opens up to more materials with weekly purchase limits, though these still come at the cost of Stars.
The gacha also connects to progression through Gacha Pts. Each pull contributes points toward the corresponding banner's 200-point exchange, but those points can also be converted into Star Stickers before the banner ends. You can then exchange Star Stickers for guaranteed SSR tickets and various upgrade materials. Choosing that route means giving up progress toward the banner's exchange, but it lets you use the resources generated through pulling another way beyond the gacha itself. It is not an especially egregious system, but it is another example of how the game's different economies overlap.
The Our Notes Pass adds another layer to that structure, offering Lite, Standard, and Premium tiers with increasing amounts of Stars, pulls, song skips, and ad removal. Credit where it's due: the Our Notes Pass has a nifty chart that clearly shows the differences between the three versions, making it easier to compare what each tier actually offers without moving between screens.
The Mission Pass is less aggressive by comparison, with its premium path available for free at launch and its rewards largely focused on extra resources and faster progression. It stands apart from the Our Notes Pass by functioning more like a traditional progression track, giving players another source of materials without asking them to buy into another tier at launch.
The Ad Watch Gacha is the oddest example of the game's approach. Players get three free attempts each day, but each attempt requires watching an advertisement. The rewards can include Members, Snapshots, and useful progression materials, so the system can genuinely supplement an account's growth. At the same time, requiring three advertisements for three daily attempts makes what should be a small free bonus feel more transactional than it needs to be. It is an unusual compromise between giving players additional resources and monetizing their daily routine. The Pass's ad removal makes sense in that context, but it also makes the dedicated ad-based gacha feel even stranger.
A lot is happening on the monetization side, but these systems currently sit alongside the game's core rhythm gameplay rather than locking it away. Stronger teams can improve scores, and investing in Members and Snapshots can make a meaningful difference when chasing higher ranks, but none of these systems currently makes playing songs inaccessible. The bigger issue is how often monetization shows up across the game's broader progression and collection systems, even when individual systems are relatively straightforward on their own.
Is BanG Dream! Our Notes Worth It?
A Show Worth Staying For
BanG Dream! Our Notes doesn't reinvent the rhythm gacha, but it doesn't need to. Its strongest qualities come from how well its different pieces work together. The cast has enough personality and history to make its stories worth following, while the responsive rhythm gameplay and extensive customization make the songs enjoyable to play. GEKISO also adds a competitive multiplayer layer that gives Lives another way to engage with the music without getting in the way of the core rhythm experience.
The music is ultimately one of Our Notes' biggest strengths. Each band's distinct identity gives the soundtrack plenty of variety, while the strong vocal performances and character-focused stories give the music more context than simply being another collection of charts.
The game also backs that up with a generous early progression curve and plenty of ways to spend time with its cast outside of Lives. Its monetization is more complicated than it needs to be, with Stars and spending appearing across several different systems, while the Ad Watch Gacha remains an especially strange addition.
For all its familiarity, Our Notes understands what makes a rhythm gacha worth sticking with. The songs are enjoyable to play, the characters have stories worth following, and the collection systems give players plenty to work toward. It may not be pushing the genre forward, but the combination is strong enough to make Our Notes an easy recommendation for rhythm game fans.
Game8 Reviews
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