I promised myself to make a guide about the dance minigame as soon as I figure out how to make my first full combo.
Finally I did it. Unfortunately it was much harder than I anticipate it. and despite the fact I play a lot of rythm games this one is no piece of cake.
Be it its rather unique scoring which will make like 45% of your performances ranked as C-CCC
or due to the fact that the sound card and the graphics card at least in my system don't sychronize enough to get a proper full combo, mastering this minigame is a pain in the butt.
That being said reading this guide won't make you rythm game experts in comd3d2 nor it guarentees that you will start doing full combo after full combo. What I hope is to just maximize your chances to help you achieve higher scores and find for yourselves the areas you need to improve.
This game actually requires a lot more skill that is probably given credit for.
Also unfortunately this guide will not be so picture filled as other guides I made cause apparently the images I prepared are too large to upload.
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2236283852

For the dance minigame there are 4 modes of it.
The first 2 modes are the practice modes accessible every 2nd swift in the game from the UI if you press dance. then you can choose 2 more modes the appreciation mode where you pick a song and any maid/maid you have in your possession and watch them perform the said song and the practice mode. The practice mode again you select the song from any in your collection and any of the maids you own (again extra and unique maids are included) and you can perform the song yourself. Note as a special feature the appeal mechanic is turned off in practice mode and your score will not be ranked nor will you gain any credits.
The third mode is the club mode. The maids perform in the theatre for the guest in order to win credits. In this mode any maid in your possession can participate and the appeal mechanic works however the song is selected randomly (though if you practised a song earlier in practice mode there is a good chance the game will select that song since it is already loaded in its memory) In this mode your score will be ranked with a grade of ? to SSS the rank is based on your total score with S rank over 200000 for most songs (though there is one that gives S rank on 171000 ) and usually an accuracy of 97%, 96% is usually AAA 95% usually AA 94% A 93% BBB 92% BB 91% b and below that usually c -ccc. Note the precision is indicative.... since the rank is based on total score and precision is not the only factor affecting the score.
The 4rth mode is the VS mode which is only available through story and events. In this mode you go against the AI but you gain no credits and your score is not ranked. However progressing the story increases the stars for your empire club increasing the income in all your facilities. In this mode appeal reigns supreme... as every note played during appeal has its score quadrabled. (just so that sheriti can kick our butts in the last round with her 4 starting appeal in a 200 notes song which she can spam 5 times for a total of 150 notes quadrabled in score out of 200 :P. They would probably give her an extra appeal but then they would have to remove the 5 second cooldown for her to use them all) In this mode you can only select the 3 starting maids to perform the song. The contest is usually 2 rounds and you get to always select the first round song. In the second you can only select a song vs etoile. In all other vs there is a featured song that unlocks as a reward of the live... (just to make sure you did not get to practice the song beforehand in order to have a fair chance vs the Ai.

https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2236299289
From left to right
the face of your maid that is pretty much what it is... a zoom in to the face of the maid you selected. However there might be some effects on in if you have good enough peripheral vision to notice during club mode and vs mode. When the appeal is activated the maid face glows green ( cause she transforms to the incredible hulk of the song industry?) and when the appeal activation (usually 30 notes) finishes it greys out for 5 seconds in a top to down counter to show you how much time you have before your next appeal activation (5 second cooldown) if for some reason you do not activate your appeal as soon as you get it. Those effects on the portraits dont appear in practice mode.
The bars next to the maids face is her max and current appeal. The number of bars indicates how many times you can activate appeal (1 time for each bar) and how much appeal you have stored right now. green for you purple in for the enemy maid... in the picture i have just activate appeal while etoile is storing her 3 (as you see 3 full appeal bars) activations for the next time I restart the game cause she is lost already... This bar does not appear in practice mode.
Next to the maids portrait there is a ruler. The ruler is blue until you activate appeal. once appeal is activate the ruler keeps track of how long it lasts . when it turns back completely blue the appeal time ends meaning you need to resume the song.
next to the ruler on the top there is a time related bar that indicates how far in the song you are. The bar is related to the song duration not to the number of notes left. The black lines of the bar indicate checkpoints. Those checkpoints affect the bars below the maid head. if you do well, (or activate an appeal ) during the check point the number of bars goes up in club and vs mode increasing the song difficulty and your ability to gain a higher score. if you do lots of mistakes between the checkpoints the difficulty goes down.
The bars below the portraits named score rate are actually misleading.... With a name like that you would expect that the higher the score rate is the more points each note gives.... Well that is not true. The score rate mode is useful on club and versus mode. in versus mode however you want to keep the score bar to at least yellow in most cases. Lifting the bar to yellow changes the difficulty of the song in versus mode from normal to hard... meaning more notes in the song and your only chance to beat sheriti at the end (if you don't change the difficulty to hard she will just finish the whole song in appeal and you will loose)
On the bottom right is your combo.... This is the most important stat of your performance. The higher the combo the more notes each subsequent note adds in the score. there are stages of the combo number. it starts white. it changes to blue on 50+ green to 100+ red to 200+ each stage giving more and more points. That means a single mistake in the middle of the song can ruin your end score by a few hundred of thousands of points.:

https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2236337887&fileuploadsuccess=1
first score full combo second score i missed a few notes somewhere in the middle ruining my combo.

The final score of the song changes from mode to mode but in all modes the most important factor is how big your d... (eh i mean combo) is ....
In practice mode this is the only factor effecting your score. There is no appeal here so appeal has no effect on the score.
In club mode appeal is only used to increase the length of a combo you started. the appeal itself does not increase the value of every individual note. Appeal here impacts the score indirectly.
In versus mode appeal quadruples the value of every single beat. meaning that how fast you regenerate appeal and how many times you activate appeal (as well as the combo size you activated the appeal) has a direct impact on the final score.
Another important thing to note is that the maid stats do not effect any song you take over. I tested this many times in club mode it does not matter if you have 9999 dancing or 1200... if you play the song the score is based on your performance alone.
(thought if the maid with the 1200 has a vocal feature she will generate appeal faster)

The combo count increases with each perfect or great beat you play consequently. every 50 beats a shiny note appears that does something that only S- court knows what that is and apparently that is a secret so i can find no mention of it anywhere...And the colour of the combo changes, from white to light blue to green and so forth. Each new beat in a combo has a higher value than the previous one. When the combo reaches 50 + the value of each beat is almost as much as the value of an appeal enchanted beat in versus,
That also means that the line between good and bad/ miss is very dubious cause you dont want any good beats since they break your combo chain. ,
In order to finish the game you only need to be able to do a 20 beats combo and press appeal. that should give you enough points to win most versus. If you are trying to make credits from the minigame the amount of credits club mode gives is depended again on your final score.

Appeal is a tag mechanic during club and vs mode. By activating appeal (right mouse button in pc. You still need a green appeal bar in order for it to activate) the maid takes over the singing and the dancing for 30 beats scoring a perfect on each beat and without breaking your combo. during that time you can continue your voyourism without fear. after the appeal time ends you have to resume the song. To stuck up appeal in order to fill the appeal bar you need to score perfect or great beats on the song. The more you score the faster the bar fills.
Another factor that effects appeal generation is the maid character. Majime maids are the worst in generating appeal, while the sweet little devil maids are the best... (too bad we can't use them on versus mode :P) muku type maids seem to be the second best.
The appeal generation is also affected by whether the maid you are using is a headmaid or not. even majime type maids become descent with the head maid tittle.
Features at character creation also effect appeal generation. Angel voice muku maid fills the appeal bar almost immidiatly. ( However, the effect of features does not seem to stuck with the head maid.)
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2236301262
muku angel voice maid activating appeal in like 20 beats after the song started.


Further more activating appeal gives you 30 correct hits instantly for the check points.even if you activate it after a series of unfortunate circumstances... if you do so before a score checkpoint you will not loose score bars and the song difficulty will not change. Keep in mind however that the appeal only counts one and the 30 combo will not count as new beats. so cehck points that are close to each other might be skipped completely failing to raise the bar for you.
On songs with more than one singer if every maid has a feature or the headmaid tittle then you generate appeal way faster than if they don't . In comparison 3 little devil maids I made late game activated 5 appeal on a single song... (club mode) compared to 3 that the starting maids managed to activate
Stucked and unused appeal bars have no effect on the final score... Hoever.... unused appeal is saved as starting appeal for your next song. Be that club or versus mode.
If you are having trouble with versus mode a good idea would be to not use appeal during club mode songs and store it for the versus mode songs.

From the above it becomes apparent that you need to give to one of your 3 starting maids a voice feature if you want to have an easier time with the dance minigame. To do that you need to unlock at least 15 maid points in the first 3 days. This short guide will tell you a way to do it. I don't claim this to be the only way for it. but you need GR01 in order fo be able to do this.

Step1
In maid creation make sure your first maid is a virgin.
step 2
once the first maid is created go to events. read the GR 01 tutorial. this will give you 5 maid points.
Step 3
go to schedule.make sure both actions for the maid's first day are yotogis...Yes you can do yotogi in the morning too.
Step 4
press next and start yotogi with your maid. select the following yotogi skills: virgin caress, *3 loss of virginity anal.*1 do not do the loss of virginity skill yet just the anal one.
Step 5
insert hard insert insert.
insert hard make her ♥♥♥ insert (make sure her mental wont go 0)
insert hard make her ♥♥♥ insert.
insert. make her ♥♥♥, insert make her ♥♥♥. insert hard.
make sure she is on red arousal every time she ♥♥♥♥. if not just insert instead.
step 6
press next to start evening program
step 7
choose normal (NOT virgin) caress *3 and loss of virginity sex *1
Step 8
Insert hard, insert insert.
Inserrt hard , insert insert
Insert hard. arousal mode then insert and make her ♥♥♥ until she falls below red arouseal then insert hard to get her back to red arousal. make sure you finish with her having 300 arousal. insert hard last at the end to drop sensual to 0)
insert, ♥♥♥ inside/outside insert ♥♥♥ inside/outside. insert hard. She should now have 1000+ lust. that will give you another 5 maid points. and the beginner lust trophty.
Step 9 hire your second maid.
step 10 go to schedule and choose some trainings for her. maybe singing. it does not really matter what you do with the second maid. make sure that the first maid though has 2 yotogis with you today. You should also have unlocked a couple of events in the event feel free to watch them but not necessary.
step 11
choose any anal yotogi skill with low cost and repeat it like i did in step 8 remember to exploit arousal mode. her hentai skill should be around 400-500 from day one you need to get her hentai skill to 1000 on day 2.
step 12
repeat step 11 she should now have at least 1000 hentai points. that will give you the beginer hentai as well. you also may get anotehr trophy for performing 3 yotogis beginner yotogi for another 5 maid points a total 20
step 13.
make your 3rd maid give her 300 points on singing. that will give her a voice related feature that will allow her to generate appeal faster during versus.
Virgin skills don't get arousal mode but the sheer amount of lust they gain on each insert on loss of virginity sex is op (150 points)

Unfortunately there is no way around it on this minigame... you want to get good at it you need skill. there are however some things that can help you:
For starters don't go with the sounds, use your eyes. The graphics are send to your graphic card your sounds to your sound card. Unless you have some short of a crazy expensive pc set up there will be inaccuracies on the sounds and the screen each and every time. The graphic card is more accurate in giving you the timing of the beats since the game uses the data from the graphic card not the sound card to determine the beats timing.
The circles don't go always at the same speed, sometimes the circles shrink faster even in the same song.
When the beats are grouped they are grouped for a reason. if 2 circles overlap you can double click them on the same timing. if more than 2 are grouped up keep pressing until the end of the group.
eg:
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2236299289
the beats in this picture would read as follows wait click 2ice wait click 2ice.getting the wait and the clicking timing correctly though is the trick.
use your mouse.... you just need 2 buttons for this game so why search them on the keyboard.
use your appeal on cool down or on checkpoints... but don't let it stuck up
learn a singe maid song well and repeat it... entrance to you (which is probably a bad translation and they wanted to say her entrance to the stage and not to our ass or mouth...) is probably the hardest of the songs to play its only redeeming feature it has a lot of beats allowing your appeal to trigger a lot.half the songs in versus mode you get to choose them so this will give you an advantage to make the first round easy.
store the extra appeal for your next song. if you don't need to use it in round one, then keep it for round 2. using the appeal unless maxed out in club mode it is a waste.
The maximum appeal the maids can store depends on the maids total stats. The higher the maids total stats the more appeal bars they can store, though most of the songs have 300 notes and with the 5 second cooldown between appeal uses it is unlikely you will be able to use more than 7 appeal in a single song... provided that you use it on cooldown. you can generate 3-5 appeal in a well played song.
The bar for the club mode songs builds up according to the number of maids that you have scheduled to work. if you schedule 40 maids to work (trainings do not count as work) you can get a club song every 2 days. (actually you can get it every two days even with less than 40 maids but 2 days seems to be the minimum time as you need to start the evening with a full bar. I suppose you can train 5 maids and still get a club song every 2 days as well.

hot start and the vs with ena/ shana are pretty straightforward. if you have a fast appeal generation maid you will win just by pressing the appeal button.
the english song side event is probably harder than the etoile /saki events. for those events you just need to time the appeal right in order to get your score bar to yellow to increase the difficulty so that their starting appeal matters less. if you manage to do a 20 beat combo at start and press appeal without loosing the combo for a 50 beat combo. that should secure the win. For the english event you will need at least 2 50 beat combos during the song, or a fast appeal generation.
To beat sheriti at the end you need to absolutely make no mistake in the first 20 beats and press appeal to increase the difficulty at the first checkpoint.if you don't have a fast appeal generation maid... well you need to do at least a 100 beat combo to have a chance as you wont be able to change difficulty on the first 2 checkpoints so you will need to outscore sheriti's appeal with a big enough combo . On the positive part. Melody of the empire is probably the easiest song in the game.
If the starting 4 appeal of emushere is giving you trouble just store a similar amount from your club performances. Remember to use the first appeal before the first checkpoint to increase the difficulty, r
The song is quite short so make sure you are wining or spend more appeal.
Good luck
you need over 1000 dance and singing for hot start. 2000 for the second star event 4000 for the 3 star event 6000 for the 5 star event.
If you choose the restaurant route you will also need 2000 cooking vs sana and 4000 vs etoile. in addition to the dancing and singing stats.

This affects how fast the circle is moving in the game the more you give to it the more slow moving the circle becomes. While this seems to make the game easier and it is the logical conclusion. It does not. The total time of the song remains unchanged, that means that some fast appearing beats will be appearing at the same time making it harder to get a full combo or at least add some variation in the normal setting in getting the same result. the setting has no affect in the score neither. the score remains depended to the size of your.... combo. In the end you will do better at the speed you practice to but if you want try mastering different speeds it can increase replayability.

this setting displaces the correct or perfect beat result by +- 10-30%. It seems to change the part of the circle where you can score great or perfect to before or after the circle lands on the note. Again this setting has no affect in the score. the score is related to the total combo you can get on this setting. It can completely change a songs timing giving you a new challenge to master I guess while waiting for the next song to be released. The total time for each beat remains unchanged, what changes is the timing moving a bit forward or backwards.