Gamertell

Title: Pop Cutie! Street Fashion Simulation
Price: $29.99
System(s): DS
Release Date: October 6, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Koei (Koei)
ESRB Rating: “Everyone” for alcohol reference and mild suggestive themes
Pros: Lots of outfit customization options, interesting premise, lots of replay value, interesting NPCs
Cons: Customers (and employees) can be impatient and stupid, there is a noticeable slow down when an area is heavily populated.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up, 95/100, A, **** 1/2 out of 5

Pop Cutie! Street Fashion Simulation is a hidden gem. It didn’t arrive on the DS with a huge fanfare, and appears fairly unassuming, but is really a wonderful way to spend a day. It combines a store management simulation with a keyword collection aspect that will keep players’ attention even after they’ve beaten the game and become the top designer.

Don’t be fooled by its appearance and title. Pop Cutie may look and sound like a game for girls, but once you start playing, you’ll see it is a gender neutral simulation that anyone can enjoy. I highly recommend simulation fans take a chance on Koei’s fashion designer game.

Forget Project Runway, I’ll become a designer on my own!

Pop Cutie begins with the player customizing their character avatar (done by waking up in the morning and washing the face), and then heads to a cafe for lunch with a friend. The player and the friend discuss how to become a designer. Just then, Professor Rabbit, a man with a rabbit hood, rabbit feet and a blue suit on, appears and offers to help. He takes the player to the flea market to set up the first “shop,” then guides the player through a designing tutorial.

Designing is done in an unconventional manner. You go to the street to talk to people and get inspiration in the form of keywords. You then return to your studio and combine keywords to create new clothing items. Different color options are obtained by picking flowers on the streets to expand the palette.

Let’s convert the masses!

Each person’s Pop Cutie experience will be different. Everyone starts with the same first article of clothing (the heartbeat shirt design from the tutorial), but after that the acquisition of keywords is largely random. Plus, you can only have a certain set number of hairstyles (8), accessories (8), tops (8), bottoms (8), shoes (8), full body outfits (4) and costumes (4), which means each person’s shop inventory will be different and constantly evolving to keep customers interested.

This also means that in order to complete the game, you’ll have to constantly keep playing to unlock all the keywords, combinations and clothing. Since the game lets you keep playing after you’ve achieved the goal for the final stage, you have as much time as you like to keep doing so. Plus, there are multiplayer Fashion Battles to participate in with other players, and extra in-game music that you can unlock through Fashion Battles with NPC designers.

Pop Cutie also pays very close attention to detail. Every article of clothing has a sprite for each color, and when a customer purchases it, they put it on. So when you walk through the shop and street in the game, you’ll see tons of different characters, wearing items from your shop and the shops of your NPC competitors. Its fun to just stand in the street and watch all the different fashion combinations pass by.

There are two major issues with Pop Cutie though. One involves NPC AI and the other involves the amount of characters that appear on screen. Your customers and employees are basically imbeciles. The majority are sheep with anger management problems. Customers’ patience level is too short, and sometimes they can’t seem to look two spaces over to see a new clothing item or a dressing room/mirror/register. As for employees - they’re hopeless when it comes to register duties. If you assign one to the checkout, be ready to lose a lot of customers. Instead, man the register yourself when you are in the store.

The game also slows down a noticeable amount when there are too many characters on screen. This happens most when you have your character out in the street after the second stage, or when customers start to fill your shop after the third stage. The game will start to move haltingly in highly congested areas. Luckily, if you hold down B and move, all other characters will freeze so you can get past them.

Designer delight

Pop Cutie is a genuinely fun game, and represents a genre that hasn’t appeared much on the DS. It is a wonderfully creative and successful shop simulation, and fans of the various Tycoon game series will especially enjoy this opportunity to completely customize and manage their own fashion line and store. The ability to take part in multiplayer fashion battles and continue playing the game even after you’ve completed the main “story” ensures that Pop Cutie will remain in your active DS game pile for a long time.

Site [Pop Cutie! Street Fashion Simulation]