Great game! Simpler than the first game but more fun. Great looks, great characters and most of all fantastic music! ^_^
As far as i know this is a Japan only release game, so do it properly and get a NTSC-J xbox 360.
I started playing it on Monday night and have been itching to play it every minute I'm away at work lol. Now i don't speak much Japanese and can barely read it but after an hour of playing about and seeing what each menu option does you'll soon figure things out.
You start off by selecting your 3 idols out of the 12 available, then you can select the song you want them to perform, the outfits they wear, accessories and then finally the song is broken down into lines/verse's. On that you can set who sings which part, be it all 3 girls, just the one, or just two of them. Also you can control the camera controls, from long, mid and up close as well as whether to fade in between each section.
There is a second mode when performing the song, this has to be changed in the menu system where you select song and stage. In the other mode the idols perform the song and you spend the length of the performance taking picture of your idols, the controls for this are laid out before you play.
The main and default mode during performance is a rhythm action game, this uses the A, B, X, Y, and left and right bumpers. This is the most fun, though it can be very difficult once you increase the difficulty settings.
Sometimes its hard to pay attention to the rhythm game as you just want to watch the idols perform.
There is more to this game as I'm yet to discover, the talking between songs makes it hard to engage more in the story and growth of your idols if you cant read or speak Japanese.
If your put off or unsure about the game because of the language barrier I'd still urge you to buy the game, if you have a real thing for Japanese gaming, the idolm@ster and rhythm action then you cant get better than this.
Hopefully this was useful, it may not be the most in depth review but it explains a bit more about the game for those who are interested.