Gamertell

Title: Poupeegirl DS
Price: $58.90
System(s): DS
Release Date: December 17, 2009
Publisher (Developer): Alvion (Alvion)
ESRB Rating: N/A, Cero A for All Ages.
Pros: Very easy to play, especially if you’re familiar with the Poupeegirl site. Lots of clothing to collect. Contests to enter to win ribbons (currency) and items. Can earn passwords to unlock exclusive items at the Poupeegirl site. Lots of customization options and opportunities to get new clothing. There are also multiplayer contests, if you can find someone else with a DS and copy of the game.
Cons: Can be hard to click the right characters on the street, contests can be quite easy to win once you have at least 20% of all clothing types and some characters look scary.
Overall Score: 8/10

Poupeegirl isn’t known for being a DS game, it’s known for being a social networking and dress-up site. Users create avatars, which they then dress up in fashionable clothes. But the clothes and accessories aren’t free. You have to earn ribbons, or purchase jewels, to acquire them. To earn ribbons, players upload images of their own clothes and accessories to a closet. You then can earn more ribbons, and make friends, by commenting on other people’s closets. There are also social aspects, like a forum and contests.

Poupeegirl DS, also listed occasionally as Poupee Girl DS, tries to recreate the same atmosphere and feeling in a portable, single player game. It not only accomplishes this goal, but creates a smoother and more entertaining experience.

Become a virtual style icon.

Poupeegirl DS begins with the player meeting Katherine, owner of the Katherine Shop and general mascot for both Poupeegirl DS and the official Poupeegirl site. You’ve just moved to town, and she helps you create and customize your character.

Once that’s done, you’re moved into your house. You dress up for the first time and hit the streets. Then, it’s up to you what you want to do. You can make friends with the other residents in town, getting a new clothing item as a gift each time you do so, accept mails from friends you’ve made to enter contests, run errands, answer questions and get more clothing, go shopping, sell clothes you don’t want anymore and enter contests. There’s a staggering number of clothing items to collect – I’ve been playing for a week and just collected 1,000 items, and all my item gauges state I’ve only collected about 40% of available items from each category.

Lots of ribbons to earn, friends to make and clothing to collect.

Poupeegirl DS is primarily a dress-up and shopping game, and Alvion did a good job of creating it so you don’t get frustrated trying to earn enough ribbons, the game’s currency, to acquire new items. You get free clothing items and ribbons all the time. Dress up for the day? Ribbons! Played the game for seven days straight? Ribbons and an item! Won a contest? More ribbons and items! Talked to a stranger on the street? Ribbons! To make things even better, there are frequent sales at the main store, the Katherine Shop, which lets you pick up items at a substantial discount. So there’s no frustration, or having to wait too long to afford items.

This is especially good, since most of the starting clothing items stink. The colors aren’t too bad, but the items just aren’t fashionable. Users of the Poupeegirl website would probably recognize them as Shell Spring items, that it, random, usually low-quality and value, items you get for tossing shells collected from people’s profiles into the Shell Spring. They aren’t too horrible, but you’ll have trouble winning a lot of contests early on until you buy better items.

As for the contests, they are both good and bad. They’re good, because you get two clothing items and ribbons for winning. Even if you don’t win, you get a clothing item. They’re bad because, after a certain point, there’s no challenge. I found I could win almost any contest with any kinds of clothing, so long as I stuck to only two colors (for example, black and red, brown and white, pink and beige, etc…). Even if I didn’t keep the theme, like Street Casual or Mote, or suggested colors in mind, I’d win.

Another great aspect is the game and website connect, in a way. You can input codes found from the Poupeegirl site to get new clothing items in Poupeegirl DS. You also earn codes in the game for achieving certain milestones (getting X number of items, winning contests) that give you exclusive dress up items for your avatar at the website.

Fans of the site will be pleased, as will anyone who enjoys dress up games.

Poupeegirl DS is a lot of fun. If you enjoyed playing dress-up as a child, or still do, it’s definitely the right game for you. You can play for three minutes or three hours and still not get bored. Plus, it’s very import friendly. Yes, there’s a lot of Japanese, but it’s mainly hirigana and katakana and almost all items are represented by a picture so you shouldn’t have too much trouble navigating and finding your way to success.

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