Let me start out by saying that I’m big into mens fashion. I really like to look good so I have several style guides from some high end places that I could never afford to shop to make sure that every day I step out of my apartment I’m looking fly as can be. Womens fashion on the other hand…meh. My roommate is female and often likes to ask me how she looks, but I can never answer honestly because there are times she looks terrible. Almost like many of the characters in the Nintendo game Style Savvy (nice segue eh?). It’s probably the first thing you’ll notice about the game: everyone seems to take their style advice straight out of the Harajuku district of Tokyo.

Style Savvy has you playing as an up-and-coming personal shopper or “stylist” who gets a job at a local boutique. About 25 minutes later, you’re given your own shop to run. From there, it’s your job to expand your store, client base and significance in the fashion community. You’ll style outfits for the couple dozen customers in the game, you’ll shop at the buyer’s center for more clothes and the latest fashions and from time to time you’ll enter style contests where you compete against three different shop owners whose stores you’re never able to shop at. From time to time, you’ll encounter one of the several annoying characters in the game who’ll walk into your store, depart some “wisdom” and then leave.

Everyone will have the favorite part of the game and for me it’s running your own store. The game gives you a surprisingly large amount of things to do with your store, from designing mannequins, to making flyers, to holding sales and more. You are given the ability to choose the design of your boutique from a preset list (I went with the preppy, Penbridge design) and you’re choice of music, or even better, no music at all. You start out with a small back room, but that grows as you please your customers and get higher star ratings. The higher your star rating, the more things that are open to you including new store designs, music and more. Running the boutique gives games a fairly accurate, if not elementary understanding of running a business. Money gained from sales goes back into the store to buy more supplies, but you also keep a portion for yourself for personal shopping (be it as someone else’s store or on makeup and new hairdo’s). When you go to the buyer’s center to purchase clothes, you’ll buy them on the cheap but mark them up when they hit your store. It shows how profitable it can be being the middle man.

The buyer’s center is sort of a mixed bag. There are 16 different brands to choose from; but rarely are they ever all there at once. This really bites you in the butt when you feature a style in a magazine or in a flyer that you only have one of and you need it asap, but they’re not at the buyer’s center. Sundays allow you to buy styles for next season (so right now you’d be buying winter styles) which adds to the realism of the game. However, those styles have to be delivered the next day, so you must play on Monday to receive them.

This whole aspect of running a store and buying and selling clothes is actually kind of addictive. My first time playing, it was well over three hours before I put the game down for the first time. You’ll actually find yourself completely engrossed in having the best store in this town, a feeling that can be broken when you realize the limitations of the game. The biggest limitation is the fashion. Not the amount of clothes you have at your disposal, good God no, there’s plenty to go around. But the fact that everyone in the game is pretty brand or color specific. If someone wants you to match her Capsule shoes with a pair of pants, she probably want’s a pair of Capsule pants, even if a pair of Pure Cloth goes much better with them. Later in the game, you are able to try and convince someone to buy something they’re not sure about (with such sound arguments as “Don’t Think, Just Buy!”), but for the most part you’re matching brand with brand or color with color. This can really stink when you make an awesome mannequin that uses several different brands and nobody will buy it. That said, making a mannequin of one specific brand, no matter how ugly it turns out, will almost always get it sold. I’m not a brand whore myself, so I find it odd that all the customers in this game are.

And that’s the biggest problem with the game: the customers. Obviously when you reach that five star rating and win the international competition, pleasing the customers is really the only thing left to do with the game. Nintendogs had the same situation in that you really had to be into owning a virtual puppy in order to get the most miles out of the game. If you find the styling and sales of Style Savvy to be inviting, and dare I say addictive, then you’ll absolutely get the most out of the game. But, prepare to see ridiculous repetition. The customers tastes never change and many have the same story every time they come in and always want the same thing. There is a shopper in the game that I remember in particular who always want a top that will impress her friend who she is going to meet for lunch. I’ve so far sold her 7 tops…nothing else. It’s as if all the girls in the game are caricatures of what guys perceive girls to be. They’re always shopping, always worried about their style and never really serious about their work even though most of them have jobs.  Best example of this is the politician. Haven’t a clue what office she currently holds, but she’s in politics. Knowing that, you would think that anything she has to say would relate remotely to her job. But alas, there is no “I’m voting on gun control today and I need an outfit for the interviews afterwards” or “I’m introducing a bill today that would extend healthcare benefits to children with video-game addictions.” Instead, it’s all “going to a party this” or “meeting my best friend for lunch that“. It’s as if all the dialogue for the game was taken from the talking Malibu Stacy Doll.

Online gameplay opens more possibilities with that are much needed to get that extra milage from the game. You can take your boutique online and sell to people who may not have the same fashion as you, you can send out advertisements to friends on your buddy list and you can even host style competitions on local multi-player. There are some restrictions on this though. First of all, while shopping at a friends store locally, you can’t see any of the mannequins they have designed. Also, if they design an outfit for you that you really like, be prepared to remember each of the styles because there isn’t a way to save that exact outfit. It’s not all bad, you can haggle down the price when shopping with friends and you’ll find that they have a lot of items that you’ve never bought before. I never really spent my personal money in the game (as soon as I got an Afro for my chick, I was set) so spending it online was the way to go.

Style Savvy was made by a company called syn Sophia, a company that used to be called Aki Corporation. They are better known for the awesome wrestling games that hit the N64 including WWF No Mercy, WCW vs. nWo World Tour and WWF Wrestlemania 2000. Which explains why this game felt as if there was no input from women whatsoever. While I’m sure much of the fashion was designed by females, the animation of the characters most certainly was not. Many of their poses looked at though they were ripped straight out of Pokemon. When doing the fashion shows, none of the contestants ever looked as if they were a real model (and having sat through an entire episode of America’s Next Top Model, I should know). Most of the poses show the women in the game as shy, insecure or how I imagine how all Japanese men wish they were. Even the descriptions of some of the girls shows signs of a lack of self esteem.

Maybe the biggest problem with the game isn’t the customers, but the fact it was made by men. Style Savvy has it’s limitations (like not being able to fire your annoying assistant), but it’s a competent business-sim game that knows it audience well. There is plenty to do in the game and like Animal Crossing, you’re encouraged to play throughout the year to see just what comes next. If you can get into the game, you’ll be surprised by how many hours you put away trying to make your store the most kick-ass in town.

3.5/5 Stars