How to play ONGEKI PLUS

ONGEKI PLUS is the second iteration of the latest sega arcade music game ONGEKI.

While most of the game stays the same, this update adds new features and bonus.

This guide explains the basics of the game system, including new features introduced in ONGEKI PLUS.

Buying GP

Upon starting the game, you are asked to buy GP (Game points).

Unlike other arcade games where one credit allows you to play a set number of songs, in this game, you buy GP, which are then consumed each time you play a song.

The GP options changed with ONGEKI PLUS, there are now 2 patterns which can be selected by the arcade.

Pattern A

CreditGPSong countRemaining GP
1100220
2230 (30GP bonus)530
3370 (70GP bonus)910

Pattern B

CreditGPSong countRemaining GP
112030
224060
336090

Most of the arcade I’ve seen use the B pattern, which gives the standard 3 songs for one credit.

You also get 40 GP for free when you first play with a new aime card.

Here are the different ways to spend GP:

  • Playing a song: 40GP
  • Temporary unlock master difficulty for a song: 10GP
  • Extend timer by 60sec: 10GP

When the game ends, remaining GP are converted to Money at a rate of 15 Money per GP. See Money section for more details.

Chapter Select

There are 2 types of chapters: Event chapters and Original chapters.
Original chapters include story and require a chapter to be clear before unlocking the next chapter.
Event chapters may only be available for a limited time and may include ranking events.

Music Select

After selecting a chapter, you are brought to the song selection screen.

In addition to genre categories, there is a category for each character of the chapter. Songs found in these categories may not be available from other chapters at first. But after a successful clear, the song will be added to “My list” and be available from any chapter.

Some songs are locked and needs to be unlocked with jewels before you can play them.

In addition to songs, items such as cards can be bought with jewels.

See “Jewels” section for more info on jewels.

Starting with ONGEKI PLUS, in order to watch the epilogue and unlock the next chapter, you just need to clear the song marked “Epilogue” (エピローグ).

Another change is that you are now limited to only one story per game.
If you already watched a story prologue or epilogue, the epilogue icon will be grayed out, and clearing the song will not trigger the epilogue.

Final Check

After selecting a song and its difficulty level, you are brought to the final check screen.

From this screen, you can:

Edit deck, select cards to use

Power up cards using Money, and use star tickets.
See “Cards” section for more details

Change option such as speed.

Access the “Communication” screen.
See “Intimacy Level” section for more details.

Gameplay

Colored button tap

Press the button of the same color, you can either use buttons located on the right, or on the left of the lever. In expert difficulty or higher, two notes of the same color may appear at the same time, in that case, you need to press both buttons of the corresponding color.

Colored button hold

Keep the button pressed until the end. There’s no need to release the button with precise timing.

Side button tap

Press the corresponding side button.

Side button hold

Keep pressing the corresponding side button. There’s no need to release the button with precise timing.

Flick

Move the lever quickly in the corresponding direction.

Bell

Collect. Move the lever to place the central character next to the bell.

Bullet

Avoid. Move the lever to place the central character away from it.

The field will also change shape during the song. Make sure the central character is always inside the field. When outside the field, notes can’t be hit.

Battle system

Team life

Your team’s life decreases each time you get hit with a bullet, and increase by collecting bells. If your life reaches 0, the song ends immediately.

Opponent life

Your opponent takes damage each time a note is played successfully. The amount of damage of each note played depends on the cards you’re using.

During the first part of the song, you’re up against small fries: ongeki neko (ongeki cat). Each time you beat one, a new one appears.

During the second part of the song, you’re against the boss. After the boss is defeated, attacks contribute to “Over damage”.

The moment of the song when the boss appears is fixed for each song and is usually around the middle of the song.

The song is cleared when “Over damage” is over 0%.
If you are not able to beat the boss, the song ends with a draw.

The amount of HP the boss has is dependent on the boss level and the number of notes in the chart.

The boss level is totally unrelated to the difficulty level of the song. And increasing the difficulty level does not make the boss easier to beat.

As a general rule, in order to beat the boss, you need cards with a level greater than the boss level.

In game currencies

Jewels (ジュエル)

There are 2 types of jewels: Chapter jewels, and All-mighty jewels.

ALL-mighty jewels (オールマイティ)

All-mighty jewels can be used in any chapter except event chapters and end chapter. They can be obtained in these cases:

  • Buying a gacha on the card maker: 1 jewel per card
  • Not printing a card you got in gacha: 4 jewels per card
  • Login bonus
  • Mission rewards
  • Monthly bonus when subscribed to course on ongeki-net: 30 jewels

Chapter Jewels (チャプター)

Chapter jewels are earned after playing a song and are chapter specific, they can only be used in the chapter they were earned.
The number of jewels you get after playing a song is determined this way :

Reward for a successful clear (WIN)

  • 1 jewel for beating the boss
  • 1 for beating the first ongeki neko
  • 1 or 0 jewels (random) for every extra ongeki neko.
  • 1 or 0 jewels (random) for every 100% over damage.

Reward for reaching the end of the song (WIN OR DRAW):

  • 2 jewels
  • 1 or 2 bonus jewels when playing chapter song

Reward for playing local matching:

  • 1 jewel for each person you played with.

Reward when failing the song midway (LOSE):

  • 1 jewel

Money (マニー)

Money can be used to level up cards or increase intimacy level with characters.

Money can be obtained in these cases:

  • After playing a song
  • Converted from GP when the game ends
  • Login bonus
  • Mission reward

Score

There are 2 types of score:

Battle score

This score depends on the damage done, and thus on the cards used.

Technical score

This score only depends on your own abilities and is not influenced by cards. It’s composed of 950 000 points for hitting the notes and 60 000 for collecting the bells. Which means a maximum score of 1 010 000. Points are also deducted for each damage taken.

A grade based on the technical score is also issued.

GradeTechnical Score
SSS+1 007 500
SSS1 000 000
SS990 000
S970 000
AAA940 000
AA900 000

Cards and Skills

The amount of damage made during the battle depends on several factors :

  • The attack of each card, which depends on rarity and level.
  • The skill of each card.
  • The attribute of each card relative to the enemy’s attribute. Each card and boss have an attribute which is either: Fire, Leaf or Aqua.

Leveling the cards

In order to be able to beat a high-level boss, the most important part is to use high-level cards.

Your cards get one experience point each time you play a song with it.

Another way to level the card is to exchange Money for experience points using the “power up card (カード強化)” option from the “Final check” screen.

There are the following options:

  • 120 Money for 1 experience points
  • 550 Money for 5 experience points
  • 5000 Money for 50 experience points

The amount of experience points needed for the next level is as follow:

Lv 1 to 201
Lv 21 to 402
Lv 41 to 503
Lv 51 to 604
Lv 61 to 705

Increasing the level cap

By default, a card level cap is 10. The first thing to do to increase the level cap is to print the card with the card maker. Printing the card adds a flower called “kaika”(開花) on the top left part of the card, and increase its level cap by 40. Cards obtained in the card maker gacha are already considered printed, even if you choose not to print them. So their level cap is already 50 when you first get them.

The other way to increase the level is to get the same card again. The number of duplicate cards you own is shown by the number of stars on the card. The level cap is increased by 5 per extra star.

R, SR, and SSR cards

These cards can get a maximum of 5 stars, which means a maximum level of 70.

For cards you got in gacha, you need to actually get the same card again. For cards bought in game, you can buy it again at a higher price.

N cards

These cards can get a maximum of 11 stars, which means a maximum level of 100.

At level 100, N cards are actually more powerful than SSR cards, but increasing the level cap of these cards is way harder.

N cards are different: there’s only one card per character, that you obtain when you unlock a new chapter.

To increase the star count on an N card the only way is to increase the intimacy level with the character. See “Intimacy level” section for more details.

Star tickets

Another way to increase the number of stars without getting the same card again is to use a star ticket.

Star tickets are specific to a Rarity and card type. For example a star ticket “SR BandG Dream! Girls Band Party” can only be used on SR cards featuring BandG Dream! Girls Band Party characters.

Star tickets are given as reward during missions, ranking events, and can also be bought from the “End chapter”.

To use a star ticket, use the “power up card (カード強化)” option from the “Final check” screen. After selecting the card, select “Increase limit (限界突破)”

Skills

Each card posses one skill which is either:

Guard

This skill decreases the amount of damage taken when hit by a bullet.

Example:
Leaf guard + 30
Reduce damage from leaf attack by 30%. Increase attack of this card by 5%

AssisT

This skill attack even when some notes are missed.

Example:
SIDE-R Assist +5
Side R notes automatically attack. Increase attack of this card by 5%

ATTACK

Increase attacks of the card itself

Example:
Attack +15
Increase attack of this card by 15%

BOOST

Increase attack of all cards matching the condition.

Example:
Fire Boost +10
Increase attack of fire attack cards by 10%

Recommended deck

Since most boost skills only boost attack skill cards, which means they don’t boost themselves, an efficient deck is usually composed of one boost card and 2 attack cards.

Good cards you can buy with jewels:

  • Attack cards: Chapter 1 SR cards
  • Boost cards: Chapter 4 & 7 SR cards

The cards from the Touhou event are also very good, especially the SSR cards that can be bought for only 300 jewels.

Intimacy level (親密度)

Every original character in the game has an intimacy level. This is not true for event characters. This level is increased by 1 point for each card of this character used while playing a song.

Another way to increase this level is to buy presents for the character from the “Communication” Screen.

The following options are available:

  • 6 points for 900 Money
  • 20 points for 2500 Money
  • 200 points for 20000 Money

In the beginning, 6 points are needed to increase the Intimacy level by 1, but more points are required as the level increase.

By increasing the intimacy level, the following can be unlocked:

  • Profile details
  • Plates and titles
  • N cards for this character, to increase the level cap.

Card Maker

Next to every ONGEKI cabinet, there is at least one card maker machine.

Card print (カードプリント)

This option allows you to get a physical version of a card you unlocked in-game.
Printing a card cost 1 credit (100¥)
You can only print a card once for each star the card has.

Printing the card for the first time adds a flower called “kaika”(解花) on the top left part of the card, and increase its level cap by 40.

When the card reaches its maximum level (100 for N cards, 70 for others), the card can be printed one more time. This replaces the kaika flower with a “choukaika” (超解花) which increases the power of the skill.

It’s possible to print any card with the Hologram option, this cost 1 extra credit.

From the second print of a given card, it’s possible to customize the card by removing some of the elements on the card: skill info, kaika, QR code…

Gacha print (ガチャプリント)

The usual gacha, from here you can spend your money in the hope of getting powerful cards.

Cards you can get here are not the same cards which ca in-game. And cards which can be bought in-game does not appear in this gacha.

Every paid gacha has the following options:

  • 1 card: 1 credit
  • 5 cards (1SR or better guarantee the first time): 5 credits
  • 11 cards (1SR or better guarantee): 10 credits

All the cards you get are added to your account and comes with the kaika flower (level cap of 50)

You can choose to not print a card, and get 4 jewels instead. If you do this, you won’t be able to print it again, unless you get it again.

Free gacha (無料ガチャ)

ONGEKI PLUS introduced free gacha tickets which can be used on the card maker.

There are 2 types of tickets: “Free gacha” and “SR guarantee Free gacha”.
These tickets can be obtained through login bonus and missions. On top of the daily login bonus, a Free gacha ticket is awarded as a weekly login bonus.

This gacha is very different from the paid gacha above. With it, you can only get S and SR cards found in original chapters. And cards you get here do not get printed for free. If you want to print them you’ll have to print it from the “Print card” menu.
But the good point is that cards you got in free gacha are in “kaika” state, so you don’t need to print them to increase the level cap.

Rating (レーティング)

The rating is a number reflecting a player ability. It represents more or less the song difficulty level a player is able to get an S grade on.

It is calculated for each song cleared by taking the difficulty level of the song and adding a modifier depending on the score

Score gradeModifier
SSS++2
SSS+1.5
SS+1
S+0

For example, getting an SS on a 13 is equivalent to getting an S on a 14. They both count as an individual rating of 14.

But not all songs are used to calculate a player rating. The game selects 55 songs from which it calculates the player rating:

  • 10 recent songs: Out of the 50 most recently played songs, take the 10 best.
  • 15 new songs: Out of all the songs added in the current version of the game (ONGEKI PLUS) take the 15 best.
  • 30 best songs: Out of all the songs from the previous version, take the 30 best.

If you subscribe to the premium course, you can see on ongeki-net which songs are used to calculate your rating.

4 thoughts on “How to play ONGEKI PLUS”

  1. Great article. Just visited Japan and tried this game. Quick question though. For the original scenarios there are is a volume 2 and to unlock it requires a red/blue/green jewel that has an image of a shopping cart on it and I cannot figure out where to get those from? Any ideas?

    1. Jewels with a shopping cart are chapters jewels from the the second volume chapters.
      Every chapter has different color jewels, First volume jewels had a flower on top, and second volume has a shopping cart, but they work the same way: You get chapter jewels by playing songs.

  2. Hello, one question? What do you need to do to clear a level or chapter? Complete every song at each difficulty?
    Thanks

    1. Hi,
      As stated in the article :
      “Starting with ONGEKI PLUS, in order to watch the epilogue and unlock the next chapter, you just need to clear the song marked “Epilogue” (エピローグ).”

      You just need to clear it once, at any difficulty, but it will not work if you already watched a Prologue or epilogue during this play. In this case the “Epilogue” icon is grayed out.

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