New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star Demo Review

So the demo for New Style Boutique 3: Styling Star was released a few weeks ago and now that I've played it a few times, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the demo. Now I'm just reviewing the content of the demo and not the content of the final game. The actual game won't be out until later this month and the anticipation is killing me waiting for it to be released.

At first I was surprised the demo was available so early! I thought it wouldn't be released until at least November. It's your typical Nintendo demo that only allows you to play it 30 times. I've never actually gone over this amount, but maybe you can re-download the demo if you reach the maximum amount of plays.

New Style Boutique: Styling Star is the fourth installment in the series and this game seems to be a lot more story specific than the previous one. Nintendo seems to be pushing the popstar angle of the game and the careers of the pop stars will be influenced by your activities such as picking their outfits. It's an interesting new concept and it's nice to see Nintendo trying to put an actual in depth story line into the game rather than random events that happened (i.e. the Five Sisters in Style Boutique 2). I haven't seen enough of the story elements to comment on whether I like them yet, but it's great to see Nintendo brought back some male characters into the game. 

And on that topic, men's fashion has also returned! Now to be honest, I didn't like the men's fashion aspect of New Style Boutique because I got bored dressing the male character's up. I prefer designing outfits for females as I have more creativity for that. I also found my boutique would only get male customers after a certain amount of time and that was one of the reasons I stopped playing New Style Boutique. I could never get female customers to appear for months no matter what I tried. I guess a lot of people like the male aspect as a lot of people tell me they wish the game had dating or you have a boyfriend. I guess I'm just too old for that feature to appeal to me haha.

The new items look amazing!

Now on to aspects of the demo that I found interesting and enjoyed in the demo:

• There's a wide range of customisation options for your characters appearance. I always get stumped on the height one for some hilarious reason. Having to pick between medium height and tall height is such a difficult decision for me! 
• Boutique assistants have returned but the demo said you won't be able to change them around like you could in a previous game. Not sure who I will pick in the end as none of the options jumped out to me as amazing. 
• Contact cards have been revamped and thankfully it now tells you items you have sold to the customer before. Thank you Nintendo! This used to annoy me so much with the main characters in Style Boutique 2 as I forgot all the time which items I had given them before.
• The ability to customise your nails! Oh my good, I was wishing this would be in the next game and I can't believe it is! You can only pick from per-designed ones though, but at least that's something. 
• Achievements are an excellent new feature. Now I'm a person who enjoys achievements as I like having something to work towards to. It looks like there will be plenty to obtain judging from all the categories shown in the phone menu.
• You can finally wear glasses and earrings at the same time! Now if only we could wear necklaces and scarfs together. The watches and bracelets look amazing too!
• The headphones look pretty cool, I'm interested to see if they only belong to certain brands (i.e. Stage Dive) or if you can get them in a range of styles.
• Recommendations from brand representatives will be available at the Exhibition Hall. I'm intrigued at what this will entail and whether limited edition items will return from New Style Boutique.
• Amazing online features were mentioned and finally we can visit other player's boutiques!! The last one game had the worst multiplayer ever and I'm glad we can finally be able to share our own designs.

 

Nails have finally been included in the game!

The number one thing that I was disappointed with in the demo was the in-game clock. I absolutely hated the in-game clock in New Style Boutique as it seemed to limited how much I could play the game. I would play the game and after some time, it would stop giving me things to do. No matter if I slept or not, I would have nothing to do during the days and time moved so quickly. When Style Boutique 2 was released, I was so happy it went off the 3DS clock so I could know exactly what time it was in game. I'm guessing maybe because it's using an in-game clock that things such as unlocking colours and make-up sets at certain times will be removed in this game. Maybe they'll just unlock throughout the game rather than the tedious task of playing at certain times, days and seasons to unlock them.

Other things about the demo I wasn't too fond of included:

• The layout of the make-up section. The colour palette system in Style Boutique 2 was great and easy to see. I find this new layout a bit not user friendly with having to scroll through the colours and it's not as 'pretty' looking as the previous system. I guess they wanted a more realistic look with the swatches style.
• The map layout has returned to the one like in New Style Boutique. I liked the section one in New Style Boutique as it allowed you to talk to NPC's and cycle through different scenes. It seems that the NPC standing around thing has switched from seeing the pink/blue characters back to the player card system like in New Style Boutique.
• Having to sleep all the time. Nintendo you better not limit my play time like in New Style Boutique and let me play for hours on end.
• No mention of Caprice Chalet was shown. I was disappointed as I loved the dollhouse and miniatures aspects. You will still be able to collect miniatures but it seems you can only use them at the boutique.
• Not much information was shown of designing your own outfits. I would really like to see this feature built on from the previous games. Apparently you will be able to share designs with other players online so hopefully more design choices have been added. The manual mentioned shopping bags which was an odd choice, but makes sense since you're running a clothing store.
• The sporty brand Streetflow wasn't shown in the demo so hopefully it wasn't cut from the game.

I wonder what the online features have in store for players?

From playing the demo, you could clearly tell this is more of a sequel to New Style Boutique rather than New Style Boutique 2. The new game borrows a lot of aspects and features from New Style Boutique such as contact cards, in game clock and men's fashion. Now I love New Style Boutique 2, I would rate it as one of my all time favourite games. It's going to be really hard to pick up a new game that has a different art style and features to the most recent game. But I'm sure I'll get used to it over time and I'll end up playing a billion hours of it.

If I could implement features into the game, there's a bunch I'd love to see. These include:

• New hairstyles and more quirky style ones. I loved the Lolita style ones in the previous game so I hope more baby-doll inspired ones appear.
• More DLC released in the western regions. It was a shame not all the DLC was available for the western versions of the game because some of the Japanese DLC was amazing. No DLC has currently been announced but hopefully Nintendo works on releasing them in all regions rather than just Japan.
• New train station locations. I'd like to see new locations included that extend past the normal places like the beach of city. Maybe a new eastern inspired location like a temple or animal themed location.
• A new style/brand. A new style hasn't been included for a while and the game even removed the glam style in the last game. Some great ideas would maybe something inspired by Japanese fashions such as Mori or Fairy Kei. I know the game has Retrobeat, but I'd like to see a vintage style brand that focuses on styles from era's such as the 70's or 90's.
• More mannequins available to display at the boutique. It was terrible only have one mannequin in the previous game and limited options for decorating the window it was placed in.
• More varied requests from customers at the boutique. It gets really boring serving customers who only want girly outfits or a design item. I wish the game was more creative with the requests and didn't always use just style based ones.

It wasn't included in the demo, but Nintendo released information about the amiibo content of the game. The previous game had an amazing selection of amiibo content and each item reflected the character perfectly that was required to scan into the game. I still wear the Rosalina dress to this day in the game! So the amiibo content announced for the game is just a bunch of logos on t-shirts and bags themed around the amiibo's character. That's so boring! How do you go from items such as the Yoshi Hoodie or the Bounty Hunter Boots to boring t-shirts? I guess because they crammed in so many amiibo items (way more than the previous games), that they didn't put much effort into the designs of the items. Some of them look like things I'd make in the game and my design skills are not amazing. I'm going to end up collecting them all anyway because it's super fun to scan the amiibos into the game and serve the customers based off your friend's mii's.

Amiibo items from the Isabelle amiibo.

Amiibo items from the Princess Peach amiibo.

If you are interested in the demo of New Style Boutique 3, I have a detailed overview of the demo posted on my New Style Boutique 3 blog. I highly recommended trying out the demo if you're a fan of the series or maybe you've never played it before and would like to see what the game is about. I'll most likely be posting play journals on this blog of the game and guides on the New Style Boutique 3 blog.