6) I took full advantage of keeps, breaks, and revivals.
A waste of time imo, you only need one at song 4 or 5 if you're missing some fans and getting one for one of these is easy because you'll be using those most of the time.
Also you don't actually need one to win the game.
Keep in mind that even with this system I still didn't get S rank or all of the awards. Maybe there's something else I could be doing to improve there.
Break the charts early.
BT2 got tired of micromanaging stuff early on and got lazy, thus thought of a way to get S evaluation while keeping pointless game mechanics out as much as possible.
W1-7 iirc, break the charts and rank in the top 20 asap, enough on this all over the internet already.
W8-18. Train primary only and obtain Koshiba as often as possible, don't bother with secondary as it only increases points marginally and you'd be wasting weeks. Quit if primary is maxed. Rank 12-14'ish. Don't bother getting image 16, more on this later on.
The reason why you'd want to finish training early on is because you only have a few fans and you don't really need to bother with decay too much.
W19+ Switch songs whenever the game nags but stick to the song you're using. Don't bother with lucky stars and set bonusses.
Focus on two areas and at most at one time and get the required amount of fans for the special fes's. Best to leave the harder ones for later because of lack of danketsu. Always go out of your way and obtain Ariake and Yamahara. Do a paid promotion if you don't want to lose your current reporter and want to stay in one of the 2 areas. When you're finished you can ignore the area imo but you could always do a national audition at times to prevent a cleared area from decaying too much if you want though it doesn't really matter. Repeat for the other areas.
Don't bother with stability when focusing on one area and just aim for a high amount of fans, focussing on keeps and actively trying to get one is a waste of time imo.
You should be finished at around w45'ish. Just focus on getting money or so.
Get Kanemaru and do high paying jobs, lose to Vesperia etc.
Around now your amount of fans should be decaying like crazy and national auditions stop appearing but it doesn't really matter.
Assuming you never switched songs, you should've obtained quite a large amount of lucky stars with your 5th song even without trying. You could change to a set and do do whatever you want if you're very popular in the chart, getting a break should be easy enough, even without trying but remember that you can only get a keep when competing in fes's and the battle with Jupiter's your final chance to get one.
I should point out that even though it says that a song should be released for over 10 weeks, the game actually starts counting the week you first switched songs; or cd release week 6 so you have 10 weeks of passively trying for a break.
Remember that I mentioned that you should stop training after maxing primary, and stop at around image 12-14?
The reason for that is because the extra amount of fans, and thus sales, you obtained will allow you to get top 1 without getting any special condition during the whole game. Sure you'll be losing an S for image level but you don't need it neways.
You should get a decent highscore for most songs.
Also, as a rule of thumb I never bother bursting twice during the same song and only do it near the end until it's the 4th release.
Managing your unit's mood is easy enough, you do the evening commu correctly and your unit will never get angry so you can pick whatever you want during the morning, though it's best to build it up with spread out -++ and +++ answers to get more danketsu early on.
Acting is easy enough, and RPS is so as well if you find someone you're familiar with and stick to this idol till the end.
Most idols have 1 obvious face they make if they want to throw out something so losing to this one should be easy enough. For the other 2 it tends to be harder cause the face they make look similar. Just focus on getting a tie or losing.
For Chihaya it'd be something like this
She's obviously smiling when she wants to throw out paper, so you'll do rock.
In case of R or S, you'll pick Rock; you'll either lose or get a draw. Getting 3 draws is a good thing neways.
TLDR, or the way I remember it when playing iM@S2 and doing something else at the same time;
W1-7 Break charts
W8-18 Train primary, quit early when maxed.
W19-45 Farm fans in 2 areas at a time max, do special fes's
W46+ Farm money or stick to doing fes's if you really need to, don't bother actively getting break, though you have 10 weeks.
Don't burst during a song with early ones.
Obtain Reporters when you see them
Grats, you should have an S on all criteria except for image level, won all awards and got best end.
