YMMV / BTS World

BTS World provides the following YMMV examples:

• Audience-Alienating Premise:
  • While it's not a Dating Sim, the self-insert aspect of managing the members and the otome elements (with a clear aim at a young female audience) have turned off parts of the fanbase from playing the game altogether.
    • Players have noted, however, that the game interactions you do have with the members are platonic and encouraged to be so, with professionalism and friendliness being rewarded (after all, you're their manager) while acting flirty is not.
  • The fact that all of the side-stories (from Another Story) have the player character knowing about BTS and going out of the way to find each member and "get close to them" (for no explained reason until later on) has made some fans uncomfortable, to say the least.
• Awesome Art: The animation that appears whenever you draw a card (particularly the one that appears when you draw x10) is absolutely gorgeous and surprisingly detailed.
• Awesome Music: Aside from featuring instrumentals from already-existing BTS songs (namely "Go Go" and "You Never Walk Alone") and a couple of pretty sweet rearrangements of other songs like "DNA", the game features a lushly orchestrated original soundtrack.
  • The original songs made by BTS themselves (with three being collaborations) are also great:
    • The main theme, "Heartbeat", an emotional track reminiscent of "Spring Day".
    • "Dream Glow" (sung by Jin, Jimin, and Jungkook, feat. Charli XCX), a pop track that mixes the four singers' vocals and Charli's coproduction with BTS' signature lyricism.
    • "A Brand New Day" (V and J-Hope, feat. Zara Larsson), a catchy electronic tropical song that mixes a daegeum (a Korean bamboo flute) with production by Mura Masa.
    • "All Night" (RM and Suga, feat. Juice WRLD), a chill hip-hop song that has smooth transitions and trade-off verses between the 3 artists.
• Breather Level: Fittingly (given that it comes right after BTS finally debuts), Chapter 7. Gameplay-wise, it finally has you play 5 cards while not dramatically upping the goal score of each level, which is much easier to meet than in Chapter 6, where (unless you have 3 or more 5star cards) you were pretty much forced to push your inventory to the limit.
• Broken Base: The game itself has caused divided reactions in the fanbase. The fact that (while it's not a Dating Sim) the game's premise and tone have been compared to a Self-Insert Fic (with the English translation pre-patch explicitly referring to the Player Character as female), along with the inclusion of the real-life struggles and insecurities of the group, have been some points of contention.
  • The reaction after Netmarble (due to the game doing well, but not as well as expected) announced job openings for people with an understanding of ARMY and "games for women" for a sequel (though likely a literal translation of "otome", the genre this game takes elements from) hasn't exactly improved, resulting in fans questioning Netmarble's and even BigHit's understanding of their audience.
  • Another Story, particularly the Audience-Alienating Premise (see above) and the individual stories. Opinions on them range from the stories being actually entertaining, to Narm Charm, to cringe-y and terrible.
  • The inclusion of certain real-life issues members went through, such as certain member temporarily self-imposing an extreme diet, has been controversial among fans due to the content being possibly triggering and, given the game's seemingly light-hearted (though not entirely) tone at the beginning, unnecessary and distasteful for some. Others, however, have noted that it fits the semi-biographical nature of the game (which also includes other hardships such as another member going through Performance Anxiety, BTS being rejected by TV stations, or even, as of Chapter 7, members being cut from broadcasts), with those issues not being presented as something positive by the narrative and characters reacting accordingly, and the plot also being a learning process both for the members and the Player Character.
    • It doesn't help that after the initial release some tweets surfaced from a Vocal Minority taking certain scenes out of context (such as framing the diet scene as though the game was encouraging that behavior, which the actual game didn't).
• Difficulty Spike: The mission levels get noticeably harder around Chapters 4-6 (especially 6), dramatically raising goal scores to the point of pushing your cards to the limit.
  • The game takes one again on Chapter 8, which instead of requiring more cards, starts requiring that one of the cards corresponds to a specific member and/or game stat.
• Funny Moments: The text that appears if you fail to clear a mission (basically a non-lethal version of Have a Nice Death) can often be this, either by snarky comments from characters or simply by how anticlimactic the failure is. For example, Hoseok asks you at one point for ideas for a choreography; failing that mission has you try to demonstrate a dance move and hurt yourself in the process.
  • In one level, Yunki asks you for ideas for the set of a song. If you fail the level, the manager suggests playing a recorder in the middle of the song. The song in question? "First Love".
  • The mobile phone interactions, especially from the social feed, are full of these.
• Heartwarming Moments: The main story involves you and the members learning from, taking care of, and constantly encouraging each other to do your best.
  • The main theme, "Heartbeat" and its music video are a love letter to the BTS ARMY, implying that it was destiny that brought them together (BTS and ARMY, but also the members to each other).
  • Some of the mobile phone conversations are this, with you having to be able to act in a way that makes you both reliable as a manager and someone who can read each member well so you can trust each other and be all on the same page. In particular, one of the most reliable ways to get Affinity points with Jimin is reassuring him that he's doing well, as the story shows several times how insecure he is, but also you have to be able to open up to certain members (such as Jin) and rely on them.
  • In Chapter 3, Jimin feels pressured after being told to flash his abs in a choreography, so he secretly self imposes an extreme diet. After he collapses while rehearsing alone, the manager quickly acts to take care of him - and Taehyung reveals himself, having watching secretly, and immediately offers to help Jimin with a much healthier diet to help him recover (and so he and the manager can watch over him in the long run).
  • Also in Chapter 3, after too much pressure over being the main vocalist makes Jungkook temporarily lose his voice, the members and the manager throw him a small party to apologize and reassure him. He then sings "Whalien 52", a BTS song that uses the case of the 52-hertz-whale that sang at a different frequency than the rest as a metaphor for loneliness, while the members listen and encourage him.
• He Really Can Act:
  • While V and Jin had already been praised for their acting in the BTS Universe, other members also showed off their acting skills in here, particularly in Another Story.
  • One of the highlights mentioned by both the fandom and the members themselves is RM's acting in his individual story, where he really shows his dramatic chops.
  • In Another Story, Jin gets the chance to show a wider range of emotions than his more stoic character from the BU.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Before its release, the game's infamous Development Hell (plus the months-long complete radio silence from the company since the initial announcement) led to running jokes about whether BTS World was actually real or some sort of collective fever dream.
  • Due to his early appearances in the main story, particularly the way he reacts to the "Bangtan Boys" group name, game-Yunki (and, to a lesser extent, Namjun) is jokingly portrayed as a complete asshole who constantly berates/looks down on the manager, down to some fans making a very clear distinction between "Yunki" (the game character) and "Yoongi" (the real guy).
  • A screenshot of Taehyung's Agency dialogue (aka. the one that appears when he's at level 4 of Member Condition, "Manager! It's time for you to pick me!") edited to say "Manager! It's time for you to shut the fuck up!" has become a popular reaction image to respond to what's become known as "mantis" or "manager antis" - that is, "fans" who nitpick every single move by BigHit (to an extreme that goes beyond criticism into outright demonization) under the pretense of caring more and knowing better about the industry/legal process/the members themselves than the company or the rest of the fandom.
• Periphery Demographic: There are people who have found the game enjoyable despite not being BTS fans, including Forbes game reviewer Paul Tassi (at least until Chapter 6, see That One Level below). Gamesradar+'s Golden Joystick Awards nominated BTS World for Best Mobile Phone Game of the Year (which BTS World won!) with the following description:
  It doesn't matter whether you're a fan of BTS or not, this story simulation game drags you back to 2012 and has you working to support the burgeoning super group at the outset of their career. It's K-Pop meets Football Manager and it is wonderful.
• That One Level: Chapter 6, which has even been pointed out on Forbes. This is a point where the game takes a sharp Difficulty Spike by raising the goal scores to nearly 50,000 with 4 cards, which is especially hard to do if you only have 2 5-star cards or less, even by maxing out a lot of the cards you do have (with 5-star cards mainly appearing through drawing - that is, a Luck-Based Mission). You might want to collect and level-up at least as many 4-star cards (or even 3-star cards) with a ridiculously high main stat^note aka. cards with Empathy over 3,500 at level 50 if a mission requires Empathy-Stamina, for example as possible.
  • Instead of adding another required card, Chapter 8 changes the dynamic by making an additional requirement for 1 of the 5 required cards (at least one card needing to be a Jimin card, for example). And it still demands for a higher score.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: The entire soundtrack, but special mention goes towards the main theme "Heartbeat" (along with its music video), which plays in the main menu, and the music-box arrangement of "DNA" that plays in the opening loading screen.
• The Woobie:
  • From Jin's Another Story, Areum. Introduced as a rich, serious, overly-demanding Ice Queen, we soon learn she acts like that due to the caretaker in charge of her (under the orders of Areum's mother) being very strict to her and making her act like an adult. The only person with whom she acted like a normal child, other than Seokjin, was her father, who had to agree to never go see his daughter as a condition for divorce.
  • Yunki in Another Story is a brilliant pianist who suffers from Performance Anxiety due to childhood trauma. He's still determined to participate in a music competition in order to go to Germany, and is very open to any of the Player Character's suggestions in order to overcome his fear. After several chapters working on it, he gets to learn to play in public without getting anxious and, in the finals, gets the bigger applause from the audience... only to find out from his teacher that he was only used as an incentive for his rival, who was arranged to win from the start and wins the prize instead of Yunki.