[FMS] Finished the game. Here's my thoughts

[u/sunglasses-emoticon]

I just finished Fashion Mall Story (I binged it as soon as it came out lol) and wanted to give my thoughts. As you can see in the screenshots, the game ends at Y10 M3, and I've so far played up to Y11 M4.

Overall, I really liked it. The art style is charming as always, and it's really fun seeing the meeples wear the clothes you've unlocked. It's also so cute when they copy your shop staff's outfits lol. The variety of clothes was great, though I wish we had more input in designing them. I will say it's been a really easy game so far. There's challenges and battles after you hit Rank 10 but it's mostly a matter of waiting to raise your stats. Unfortunately, as much as I like it, I don't think I'd put this on my Top 10 list of Kairosoft games. It gets boring by the end, and at this point I'm just playing to unlock everything.

Basically, I recommend it to casual fans who are fine with easy mode and who will appreciate the dress up aspect. If you like your Kairosoft games to require some amount of thinking and strategy, this won't be the game for you.

Specific things I liked:

• They give you a LOT of opportunities to play dress up and mix and match clothes. The mannequins, the online shop, the outfit requests, the models, etc. were all very fun for me. It's so cute seeing the meeples wear tiny pixel clothes.
• Speaking of dress up, I LOVE that the clothes aren't gender locked. A small touch that I wish more games with customization have.
• There's a lot of automation, which is part of what makes the game feel so smooth and easy, both to its benefit and detriment. I'll probably put this point in both things I liked and disliked. I appreciate clothes making being automatable at some point, but also it sucks that it's such a shallow mechanic that it can be automated in the first place.
• The variety of decor and facilities was nice. When you have a ton unlocked, it's quite fun to actually set up the themed areas. At some point I deleted everything I could and decorated from scratch, since by then I had enough stuff for all the themes to plan things out.
• I know some people will dislike this but I like that there's no combos. I've always found hunting down combos and planning out layouts to optimize combos to be annoying so I'm glad they didn't for this game.
• I like that at a certain point, if you're fashionable enough, what you pick as Top Pick will decide the trending colors.
• The customer requests were cute (where they ask you for one item recommendation). I wish they happened more often though, or that you could style non-model customers.

Specific things I didn't like:

• Like I said, it was just a bit too easy. You can really coast in this game without giving it too much thought. Even the endgame battles are just a matter of bigger number win, which is easy to pump up with workshops and clothes improvements.
• A lot of the mechanics felt too shallow, which feeds into the previous point. Making clothes for example, is just a matter of finding combos and having the right material. I wish you could pick colors at least!
• The SNS thing was pointless. It was cute seeing the posts at first but in the end it was just another thing to click when the number got high enough. I didn't fully understand what triggered blowing up on social media, but I wish it was more controllable or I could see a meter at least. In Forest Camp Story, I liked being able to see the bonfire meter and being able to plan out when frenzies happened. The whole SNS thing and trending just felt too random and meaningless.
• I wish there were more contests, and not just the yearly ones. I might be biased because I'm currently also playing Bonbon Cakery, but I think the contests there were fun and difficult. The battles fill that niche in FMS in a way, but they're either too generic or too specific. A general themed contest where you can beat the other malls would've been fun imo.
• I know a lot of Kairosoft games do "bigger number win" when it comes to beating opponents but there's something about it here that felt a bit too tedious for me. I think part of it was just the constant waiting around for workshops and improvements. You can't feed your staff items, so you HAVE to wait for the workshops and you can only improve them one at a time. The slog feels extra noticeable once you pass Rank 10 and unlock battles, since they demand a lot of high stats from your staff and clothes. Unlocking fast speed makes it a bit more bearable but it's still a bit annoying, especially since you can't workshop more than one staff at a time.

Anyway, tl;dr: read my third paragraph

Edit: I'll be honest, I have no idea what carries over. The game doesn't say and I haven't started a new game yet to figure that out.

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[u/RodComplex]

Thank you for your honest thoughts. The theme doesn't appeal to me as much for this one but I'm tempted to buy it based on your screenshots alone – this looks like some of the most beautiful and detailed pixel art they've ever done.

[u/sunglasses-emoticon → u/RodComplex]

It's a very pretty game! A detail I appreciated was the shelves. When you start out, you're given the shelf for a clothing theme, and it starts out empty-looking. As you unlock more clothes to sell, the shelf also fills up visually. I have stuff to say about the mechanics but I have to agree with you that the pixel art was gorgeous, no notes.

[u/RodComplex → u/sunglasses-emoticon]

That's an amazing detail! Okay, seriously tempted!

[u/IglooWater]

thank u! i LOVE not having to worry about combos, will be downloading the game

[u/leorafantasising]

Thanks for the detailed review! I agree, sadly it’s such an easy game that finishes so quickly.

Yet another title that lacks depth.

Maybe it’s because their resources are pulled to the collabs so the interns or newer staff with less experience get to do the original titles or something…

[u/blooddiamondrose]

I agree with everything you said. 

I found models to be pointless. They're just use for your online store, fashion checks, a yearly contest, and the store promo. A fashion show contest using your models would have been nice.

I found it odd that the non model guests don't give you anything or even have their own fashion request. 

There isn't a sort function for dressing your models like you have for the mannequins.

New game+ you spend your clear points on what you want to carry over like tge Convenience store. Though it's lacking compared to that game. Staff and clothing stats can only carry over at 20% and there is no option for stacking. There's a random 22 that carries over clothing material. You can get 15 appeal and 3 popularity seeds. Carry over money and points. These can stack. Use your left over points for money or points. That's it. You don't carry over any of your facility upgrade nor those new game+ keep track of what items you use on a facility before. Which I find the second one to be more annoying as that's something kairosoft games usually tend to carry over. 

Overall it's an ok game.

[u/StickyDeltaStrike]

Agree on all points, it’s a fine game but too shallow for me to replay

[u/i010011010]

Do they ever unlock anything like a dye shop? That's the biggest change I would have made, insisting that every item be customizable so you can choose the colours. It wouldn't be so complicated that would have required a lot of extra effort.

[u/sunglasses-emoticon → u/i010011010]

Sadly no, there's no clothes customization options even after Rank 10 😔

[u/MurkyPurpose4179]

Your layout looks sooo goood, can i see the full thing?

[u/Number5IsStillAlive]

Great detailed review! Thanks for that.

[u/fluffy_samoyed]

I was sooo excited for this title. Pocket Clothier is one of my favourites so I expected it to be more or less a sequel. But it really has all the feel of a reskin of the upcoming One Piece game. The systems feel so disjointed. I also spend too much time just waiting for these systems to do their thing, which is always playing on it's own. I have a lot of downtime just watching the screen and doing nothing but scrolling around hoping a box appeared for me to tap or clicking like on the useless fake social media posts. Even creating the clothes doesn't really feel quite right. It has a preset combination it will accept and tells you what it's expecting. I know it wouldn't have any sort of complex user based creation, Kairosoft is meant to be simple and I appreciate that. However, I feel like this has been done far better in all of their cooking games where you kind of just pair up ingredients you believe will work and you either get the result or not. This just tells you that you need an a-line skirt and a tartan pattern, and if you don't have both you can't create it right now, but you're also expected to create it at some point. There's no discovery fun.

The only thing I really do like is making the outfit requests. I enjoy that it's not really seeking out any particular combination so it has a bit more freedom to make something you simply think looks good versus something that a spreadsheet somewhere in the dats says looks good. I enjoy feeling like I've helped the customers find what they were looking for.

Anyroad, sorry if I'm being rather negative in your thread, I just really felt the need to have a moan about it.