SELFY COLLECTION - The Dream Fashion Stylist Game Review

The Nintendo Switch is finally home to a fashion styling game and no it's not Style Boutique. The game is titled SELFY COLLECTION - The Dream Fashion Stylist and is based on the popular avatar program 'Selfy' from GCREST. The game has been out since September last year and is the localisation of the Japanese game SELFY COLLECTION 夢のスタイリスト. I've been playing the game a bit over recent days so I thought I'd write up a quick review of what I thought about the game.

SELFY COLLECTON - The Dream Fashion Stylist has you taking on the role of a stylist travelling to different regions creating outfits for players. There are over 5,000 items to collect and these include clothing, make-up, hair, costumes and backgrounds. You can use these items to fulfil coordinates requests for customers and to decorate your own in-game avatar.

The game graphics are super cute and colourful. That was the main thing that caught my attention when I was scrolling through the eShop. I just knew I had to get it once I saw the screenshots! Finally a fashion game on the Switch! When you start up the menu, you can select a new game or continue with your current one. The game is pretty basic from the start, you enter a name and it goes straight into the story line. Your avatar is a newbie stylist working at 2-way, a fashion shop in the city and it's the typical storyline that you are the relative of a previous owner (your mother co-owned the shop). So of course your character has a lot of expectations on their skills already. The first request will come from your co-worker Nana who talks you through a coordinate request. Key words for the look are mentioned in the request and don't worry, these show up on the outfit screen too.

Picking an outfit for a customer is a lot different to the Style Boutique series. You are limited to types of items and there are targets you need to achieve. The left hand side of the screen displays the customer along with the targets you need to hit. Basically you want to keep an eye on the price bar, if it alters the customer satisfaction will decrease and it will affect your overall outfit score. You can choose items from the right section and the target bars will move depending on the image/style of the item you pick. For example, the request below wants items that are cute, ribbon and pink. So you can scroll through the items available and see which ones increase the bars. Sometimes there's a bit of mix and matching with different categories to find the perfect balance.

Once you are happy with the outfit, you will be graded on the overall look. It's your typical rating system of S rank to D rank. If you achieve A rank or higher, you will receive two items for your collection. You also earn points for popularity which is how you can progress in the game as well as a money prize. It's important to get lots of cash cause you'll need it in the game. The items you use in each outfit will be upgraded every time you use them and you will get customer points with clothing stores in the game. SELFY COLLECTION is very much big on the levelling up system.

SELFY COLLECTION has a plot which centres around the new Queen of the nation calling a ban on all outfits once she is coronated. You must use your stylist skills to travel to 5 countries and obtain certificates to stop her plan. The plot is a bit silly in my opinion and I haven't got that far into the game yet for many plot points to occur.

The main menu is pretty basic and you'll be spending a lot of time here as every time you complete a request, you are sent back to the menu. Here's a quick run down of the Main Menu:

• Request - Check and complete coordinate requests from customers or storyline NPC's. There is always one main storyline request to complete. Even if you get a bad score, you will still pass and progress in the storyline.
• Shop - Purchase new items from a variety of shops.
• Portfolio - This is an online feature that allows you to share your creations online and view other players outfits.
  
• Change Clothes - Dress up your own in-game character.
• Collection - Details all items collected in game and requests completed.

The request menu is pretty basic and lists five requests at once. The main request required for the storyline is listed first followed by four random requests. As I mentioned just before, you don't need to get A or S rank to progress in the story with the main requests. I got like a B on one and the story just kept going. I tried redoing it from the Collection section and it does improve your grade but you don't get more money. The four other requests are random and completing them will give you more money and points. One thing I did notice about these requests is that they don't change often. I rarely see new ones and the screenshot below shows 3 I've already done. The last one was a new one as I progress the story line but that was the only one to appear. Kind of a let down that the requests are varied much so far.

The portfolio feature is quite neat and interesting. I thought it would be similar to Shopdo however it allows you to post pictures or 'works' you create with different stickers and characters. This feels very on brand with an avatar style game. I've only briefly messed around with it and made this silly photo of a character with some cute toys. These pictures can then be uploaded onto the online server for others to view. There wasn't much on there when I assessed it, probably less than 30 pictures. You can like other players works and it looks like some people get super creative with this feature.

The Collection tab is something I'm interested in and something that the Style Boutique series is lacking. How great would it be if you could just check which items you were missing from a brand or see if you've got the complete set of an outfit. Once you reach levels for each brand, you will unlock a reward. The Collection tab shows a progress bar on this along with a collection percentage. Looks like there are heaps of brands to collect in game! Going to take forever to see them all! You can also access requests from the Collection tab and it looks like I've done 38% of Rose Land so far.

New shops will become available once you progress in the story. Like in Style Boutique, some will open because they are required by the storyline and others will open as you play the game more. The shop menu reminds me of the brands in Style Boutique and each country has unique shops to it. Shops have a theme to them, for example Li aria sells make-up items and Orden Garden sells gothic style clothing items. Once you buy an item, it will disappear from the selection and the more purchases you make, the more your customer level with the shop will increase. You need to increase this bar for more items to become available for purchase. Remember the categories/label thing I mentioned early? Well this comes into play in the shop menu as each items will display what styles it belongs to. Information on the price, charm factor, colours, styles and labels are listed for each item. You can shop for new items when you are in a request and I found myself doing this a lot.

Dressing up your character is super fun and challenging. There are so many gorgeous items to chose from and your collection will grow more once you progress through the game. The clothing items are very reminiscent of typical avatar style clothing and lolita is a popular style in the game as well. I love the range of hairstyles which feel a bit more broad than Style Boutique. You can even add cute background or actions to your character. There was an adorable bubblegum one or one where your character holds a stack of gifts.

The requests in SELFY COLLECTION are kinda like Style Boutique with situations such as 'give me an outfit for going out' or more weird ones like 'give me an outfit I cannot open my eyes'. Reminds me of the funny descriptions characters used to have in Fashion Forward. Each request has a short cutscene and like a billion loading screens. Well it felt like that to me as you get one everytime the scene changes. You can re-do requests via the Collection tab from the main menu so you can try to get a better score. I found I had to do that a bit as you cannot get super high scores on requests early one as you don't have the right items to hit the targets.

Whilst completing requests, you can search for certain features of items. It was then I discovered that everything I owned didn't meet the requirements. Boo! That is one thing I don't really like about this game, it's tricky to know what the exact items you need for the requests (mainly the main story line ones so you can get a good score).

The art style is one of my favourite aspects of the game and the shop NPC models are just gorgeous. Every time you level up a shop, the representative for that brand will appear floating on the screen as shown on the screenshot below. Doesn't the girl in the second screenshot have the most stunning ensemble? It's like a pastel heaven!

Now onto the aspects of the game I'm not too fond of. The first thing is progressing in the game because I'm at a standstill. I've played the game for a few hours now and it seems like I've hit a wall. My money runs out super quick so I can't buy nice items needed for requests. And I need to buy nice items to get more customer points at shops to unlock higher level items. Then I unlock the higher level items and they are way over priced! Some items are 50,000 coins! I barely have coins in the game and I found myself grinding out previous requests to get coins. So that's why I was getting annoyed at the lack of new requests and even other ways to earn coins.

The NPC's in the game aren't anything fancy to write about. Most seem to be pretty self centered and demanding. At least the game gives you options to fast forward or skip through cut scenes. Because some can be painful to sit through dialogue wise. The translation is decent as the main message comes across however there are quite a few errors that pop up. I'm not too fussed about stuff like this as I appreciate games originally released for the Japanese market actually getting western releases, so I'm fine with translation issues as I get the jist of what they are saying.

SELFY COLLECTION - The Dream Fashion Stylist is a visually beautiful game full of outfit requests that will challenge any fashion fan. It's a cute game if you are into avatar style games and collecting items. The storyline progression and lack of requests turns me off the game a bit. Like I want to sit down and play it, I just find I cannot do what I want to do as the game limits what's possible. Maybe this is one of those short session games played in small bursts. But I'd love to unlock more countries and shops in the game to see more selections of items. Hopefully more players will pick up the game as it's nice to support style/fashion based games on the Nintendo Switch so we could possible get more in the future. SELFY COLLECTION - The Dream Fashion Stylist is available on the eShop for purchase is a digital download with no physical cartridge. I shall leave you with this interesting outfit I created for a request which is when I discovered you can not add pants/bottoms to outfits. Like I literally made other outfits that were just underwear (which you can buy in game) and it scored super high! This gothic ensemble features this weird arm muppet thing which is great for upping target scores.