the v6 has been my first gotchi since wayyyy back in the 90's when I was little. My littlest sister convinced me to get one with her so we could connect and be friends so I gave in.
I won't know how it compares to recent versions but I can give a pretty good overview.
V6 music star is based around your tamas rise to fame. Once born you are assigned a music instrument and a toy you have throughout the tamas life. The instrument you play determines what kind of music your band will play. Each generation of tamas gets a new instrument added to choose from. For each genre of music if you get to number 1 ranking you will win an award from the gotchi king! (more on ranking later) The games you play are to raise your tone, rhythm and original skill points depending on which of the three games you play. (you can raise them to a grand total of 999) The games also raise happiness and lower weight and stress. Stress accumulates when you practice your instrument or when you go to school. To lower stress you tell your tama to play with its toy.
When the tama is a child you can select away and send them to preschool where you can play a minigame of jump rope with the teacher and another tama at school. When the tama grows to a teen they go to school and meet two other tamas and form a band. You name your band and you can play a minigame here too. As a teen you depend on the mailman and the gotchi king to send you points to buy food. After the tamas out of the child age you cannot feed them the default food anymore and you must buy it every time but you can't make points until you are an adult. The skill games only raise your skill points not your gotchi points.
Once you are an adult your band grows with you. When you go away the first time you go to school and perform in front of a panel of judges. If your skill and practice are up enough you will pass and be allowed out into the real world if you you need to practice and play games more until they give you three circles instead of x's. After passing the judges, instead of going to school you can go to a recording studio, a fruit picking job or a bakery job. The two jobs will earn you gotchi points towards food and items. To buy items when you go 'away' you can also go to the store. There are only four items available for sale at a time but they change a few times throughout the day. At the recording studio you play a game with your band producing music. If you do a good job on the game you will have a 'cd release' and gain more fans and climb up higher on the star ranking chart. Once you reach number 1 on the star ranking chart you win awards and your band manager will come and pay you 1000000 gotchi points per concert you play. (the tama will alert you in the evening when you need to go play a show) If you are a lower ranking you will get less points and have less fans.
Once your tama is 5 years old your band manager will appear with a mate for you. If you accept the pair will produce a brand new baby. They will take turns feeding and caring for the baby for the next day before returning to tama planet and leaving you with the new hatchling generation.
The new generation baby will keep all the items and gotchi points from the parent. Their skill points will already have a few based on where the parent excelled in. Sometimes when the mailman comes he will come bearing gifts and points from your parent, the points from the mailman differ depending on how rich and successful the parent was. My first generation mimitchi made 20 million gotchi points from being number one ranking and when the mailman comes he brings 15000 for my second generation Chantotchi.
The pros of the v6 are that there are many different characters that can be grown, there are even four different old timer tamas! It is fairly easy to succeed and become number one ranking and I think it is sooo cute that tamas can get married, have children and care for the baby together. The growth stages are gone through quickly and just as you are getting tired of your current tama, it gets married and gives you a new one. The color options are quite cute and modern and the size is small and portable. There is no annoying antenna sticking out of it. For each different genre of music your band plays there is a different song that the tamagotchi plays which is so so cute. I love this toy, I wish I had some earlier versions sooner.
The cons of the v6 are that it needs a lot of attention to get anywhere. There is a lot to do in this version and it can get easily confusing sometimes. However there is always the pause button I suppose. The buttons on the v6 are quite terrible, sometimes needing 6 or 7 presses to actually register.
But aside from all that its a pretty good purchase, very enjoyable.
Btw, if you connect, it doesn't show hearts on the friends list if they are fully in love. it shows like a big big smile. Hope I helped.
