more like mid dreamer [fashion dreamer thoughts & review]

I believe it was once Copernicus who said, “If you’re making a fashion-based game, you should at least be able to save your favorite outfits you’ve made for easy access later, like, why would that not be an option?”.

It's not really news that I'm a diehard Style Savvy fan. It's a very well documented trait of mine:

Following Style Savvy’s fourth game, Styling Star, which came out at the tail end of the 3DS’s life, all I’ve wanted over these last couple of years is to see Style Savvy on Switch. More than I would want to see certain relatives of mine. And my prayers were semi-answered when Fashion Dreamer was announced earlier this year, which was being made by syn sophia (partnering with Marvelous, not Nintendo). Rather than the player running a boutique with predesigned clothing brands like in Style Savvy though, you’re instead creating new pieces of clothes and trying to become an influencer.

This is not a bad idea. Later Style Savvy games have had the fashion design aspect to it, but have been pretty limited, to the point where I didn’t even use them very much outside of when the game would have story-required plot beats to make something. There's only a handful of designs you could make, and they pale in comparison to most of the offerings of the in-game brands.

I would rather die than sell this

So I thought this shift was perfect. If they aren't making Style Savvy (and according to randoms in my DMs, apparently Nintendo has kept all the rights to the content of Style Savvy so they had to make this game from the ground up, but take this with "my uncle works at Nintendo" levels of grains of salt as I have no way to prove this) and want a new break, this is the best way to do it. Luring the fans of the previous games in while also going in a new direction that can bring in new fans.

...I have no idea how to segue into now talking about how this game is really bad, so I'm just gonna say— guys, this game is really bad. Even calling it a game is being painfully generous, because there's hardly anything to do in it that makes it feel like a game.

I'm going to be comparing Fashion Dreamer to Style Savvy Styling Star a lot in this post (because it was the final game in the series), as well as previous Style Savvies— not because I just wanted this to be Style Savvy 5 (though that would have been nice, but again, I was looking forward to this being something new), but to show how syn sophia has done this kind of game before without the glaring flaws that are present in Fashion Dreamer.

The Good

The Bad

Closing Thoughts

The Good

The Fashion Customization is Incredibly In-Depth

Like, yeah. They killed it with this. There's a lot you can create. I can't really complain about this because this is undoubtedly where all the focus went to in production, and it 10000% paid off.

You can really go all out and make whatever you want. The more you make, the more your brand level grows, and that means the more types of clothes you can unlock to make. It's honestly fantastic, the sheer amount of depth here is really great. I really have nothing else to say but that I would love to see this reused in a much better game.

I would say this game is perfect as a dress up doll game/if you have 40 OCs but can't draw and need a consistent art style to design them in. Of course, other Style Savvies are also like this, but other Style Savvies don't have men. Hey speaking of something else that's fantastic about this game:

There Are Men In This Game

I am the biggest advocate for including the option to be a guy in things that are geared toward girls. For every Style Savvy game, I've wished and wished that a male player option would be added (right behind the option to be chubby, but I'll take what I can get), and we gradually inched toward that within the last four Style Savvy games. Of course, you can't play as a guy in any of them, but Styling Star including an entire men's boutique you could help out at, however limited it was, was awesome and promising for the future.

So when Fashion Dreamer showed off how you could be a guy in its initial trailer, I was pretty excited. And the customization available is pretty sweet, you can be anything from a twink or a disheveled old man. It's genius.

Now why do I care about this despite not being a guy? It's because there are guys that like these games. And not only guys (see: my age), but probably young boys that found themselves liking these games, too. I think that boys should feel welcomed in things that are traditionally thought of as "girly". It helps break a stigma ("lol you like this thing that's for girls? what are you, gay?") and I think also helps boys realize that they can like cute things, too.

Unrelated image of Cure Wing.

I do think it's a bit cheap that some things are locked to certain body types. In both Japanese and English, they refer to each body with letters; type A is the feminine body, type B is the masculine body. You would think that because of this lack of explicit genders, it's free reign for everyone to wear anything, but unfortunately, we live in a society, and type B can't wear cute dresses or other girl-fitted things. I can acknowledge it would probably take a lot of time to make every piece of clothing fit every body type, but still, just a bit disappointing.

I am still pissed that only the masculine body can wear the Christmas sweaters by the way. Like what the hell man.

The Bad

Wtf Is The Makeup And Hair Situation

In other Style Savvy games, makeup is something you can purchase and keep forever, to use whenever you'd like. This means you can hoard a bunch of makeup to eventually have tons and tons of options for customization. You can even opt for a beautician to do your makeup in game if you're into that. I'm not so I never did that, but there were probably like, five people who were and did.

In Fashion Dreamer, I have absolutely no idea how makeup works. Like, you can use some right off the bat and customize your Muse within the boundaries of that "some" you're provided, but for the rest, it's all in God's hands. I've played about 10 hours and I have only unlocked maybe three other makeup options via befriending NPCs, it seems to be randomized as to what you can get. I have no idea why they did this instead of just letting you buy makeup shades and types yourself, at least it would give you a goal to work toward.

Notice that my eyes are a different color than anything offered on the Muse customization screen because I got this done at the Beautician's, but it doesn't retroactively add the color into my collection to use later... So if I want to keep this eye color, I have to just keep it on forever until I unlock it myself.

You also unlock hair/makeup colors entirely at random. I unlocked this hours into the game and it's the only one I unlocked so far.

There Is No Story

Remember Style Savvy? It had a pretty barebones plot but a plot nonetheless and Dominic was a core Lone-Childhood Crush.

Yeah he had like 25 pixels to his name but I loved him.

Remember Trendsetters? With the upgrade to 3D they spent some time crafting a good story and had callbacks to the original Style Savvy that were charming.

But Dominic was hotter when you could see less of him.

Remember Fashion Forward? No one really talks about how creepy it is that it all takes place in a dollhouse in an imaginary world but it was a heartwarming adventure regardless.

Remember Styling Star? It had a Xenoblade Chronicles length story and charming characters that you saw grow as people and at one point there was a YouTuber Apology Video in it so it was basically a genius game.

Remember Fashion Dreamer? It had uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

There is no story in Fashion Dreamer. Not even the hint of one, like "Woah, I fell into this virtual world, what do I do? ><" a la Fashion Forward dollhouse, they just drop you in, make you complete a series of tutorial missions, and then just... leave you alone.

There's a tab labeled "Quests" with all the tutorial missions on it that will forever remain on your menu, making you think that you'll get more quests and that there will be a story, but this never updates after the tutorial ends and has not updated for me after clearing the credits.

The NPCs in the game don't befriend you like in past syn sophia games, there isn't a guy character who they're trying to brainwash you into having a crush on, there is no overarching story that pops up every now and then to remind you it exists. After the tutorial, you are left to your own devices and have to make your own fun. Making your own fun is around like hour 70 of every Style Savvy game, not minute 30????

Of course, the goal is to be an influencer! Increase your Followers and Likes by making clothes, changing your outfit, and dressing up NPCs! But a goal... is not a story... I find it so hard to care about anything at all in this game without a story pushing me through it.

The Influencer World Is An Empty Void That Depresses Me

The best way I can describe the locations in this game are like those museums that call themselves as museums, but you go inside and it's really just an over glorified Instagram photoshoot space. They are empty, lifeless, and you can tell that their only purpose is to be a pretty backdrop rather than provide stimulating content.

I'm not saying other Style Savvies didn't have this aspect, they certainly did! Similarly in those games, I didn't really care for locations that had the sole purpose of being a pretty backdrop for you to stand against/take pictures in. But they also had... Other things? There was your shop, your apartment, other stores, NPCs to interact with. In Eve, each Cocoon has a section with a salon/photobooth, a section where it tells you the latest trends/shows off new items, and a section that has bingo machines and gacha machines and the doorway to your storefront. It has this four fucking times, repeating in each Cocoon.

And yes, the Cocoons are very pretty. You can take very nice pictures in them. But that is basically all you can do. And having to walk around in this empty void of a world is truly some harrowing shit. Like when the credits rolled 6 hours into playing and I sat there looking at the screen and realized that I had seen everything there was to see, that there was no expansion to any of this and the rest of the game would be spent wandering around these soulless locations, the despair that overtook me was overwhelming.

All you do in this game is wander around in each Cocoon, throw an outfit on some NPCs, give NPCs Likes so you can get their clothes, like clothes that appear on the screens around the Cocoon so you can get them too and. That is it. That is all there is to do. Maybe play some Bingo every now and then or spin the gacha when you get some tickets, but for the most part, you are just wandering around and doing fuck all.

i hate the gacha so much

The Internet Was A Mistake

Earlier this year I played Needy Streamer Overload. You can read my thoughts on it over on Backloggd here (I hated it so just keep that in mind), but it's a lot about the pursuit of Likes and Followers for the sake of fame and how that can affect someone. The pursuit of making your numbers go up is very empty and vapid to me. In general, I dislike stories/people that revolve around this idea that Followers and Likes are important and are always talking about them.

Now, I'm sure at least one person saw me say the above and went "Wtf Lone, you have Followers, this is pretty two faced of you", but the difference is I do not let that consume me. I don't wake up thinking about how I gotta maximize my posting or freaking out over my numbers. I post, people like it, cool, people don't care, I don't care that they don't care. I'm making this longass post knowing that probably only 13 people are gonna scroll this far down enough to read this, and I don't even care! I just need to talk about this game indepth and I don't care if no one else cares!!

...Anyways, holy shit the influencer aspect of Fashion Dreamer is so vapid and empty!

THEY MEANT NOTHING TO ME!!!!!!!!!!! WHERE IS THE GAME

Half of this has to do with the fact that I feel like there is no big reward for getting Likes and Followers. Like, yes, you do get E-Points for getting Likes and Followers, which you can use to create clothes or buy things for your showroom, so there is a reward involved. But I'm talking about a tangible reward, something that makes it feel like you're actually doing well. Like, having enough Followers to influence the beat of a story? Having enough Followers to get a special event? That kind of thing. I feel like I have absolutely no impact on this world other than seeing my numbers go up?

The other half of this is that this is where the online element comes in. If you choose to play online, you can connect with other players all over the world, see their brand, obtain clothes from them. On paper, this is a really good idea, and other games in the Style Savvy series have had this idea of branching out to other players before via having an online shop. In execution, though, I'm not sure how much I like it.

If you play online, you will immediately be greeted by tons and tons and tons of clothing pieces by other players, which you can obtain just by clicking Like on the clothes. You can do this as much as you want, you could reload the game multiple times and just collect hundreds and hundreds of different clothes as it refreshes each session. This is far too easy, and honestly overwhelming even if you don’t reload your game, because you can end up with so many pieces all at once, even if you’ve only just started the game.

I really think the Like ability should have been limited to only a few uses every hour or something? It also gives you less incentive to try and make your own clothing when you can just get all the cuter, rarer clothes just by Liking them on a screen. Yeah, you’re not growing your brand, but at the same time you can still get Likes and Followers by making outfits for other characters/yourself, regardless if your brand is involved or not.

In the online mode, other people from across the world will appear in Eve. You can Like their clothes to get them as well as give them an entire outfit, which the actual player will receive. You can also Follow other players but this seems to do nothing other than make their number go up.

The more you play online, the more Likes and Followers you'll get, since you'll be seen by people all over the world, which is why I reached the credits so fast (they appear after getting 10k followers). In fact you might get tons of Likes and Followers while you're not playing, which is oddly an incentive to... turn the game off? Lol. Because you can just go into the game at the end of the day and reap hundreds and hundreds of E-Points from all of your Likes and Followers to make clothes, rather than playing the game all day and waiting for the points to trickle in.

Really, I feel like the online connectivity was an excuse to flesh out the game less. Instead of being able to interact with NPCs like you do in Style Savvy games, now you can interact with people all over the world... It's not an equal replacement when there's so little you can do in the game, which is also already so painfully easy, especially if you play online.

There Is No Challenge/No Way To Fail

In Style Savvy, if you give a character something they didn't ask for/don't follow their request, the character will go, "Nah, I don't like this. I don't want it. Lol. Bye."

In later games, you can more easily convince characters to buy something out of their desired fashion image/brand, but you can still utterly fail if you give them something really wrong.

Generally, this serves not only as a challenge to have the right items in stock and know what a customer would like just by looking at them, but also keeps gameplay fresh because you can't just give customers whatever. It's how I can have 200 hours logged into one title alone by doing endless boutique running. Yes, some prompts might repeat ("I need a blue shirt for a cosplay!" will haunt me in my sleep), but generally you'll have diverse clientele and will be shuffling around brands constantly.

Games with Fashion Shows in them take this a step further by forcing you to work within a certain theme or brand, and you can lose them pretty easily/it's hard to come in first place toward the latter Shows.

Meanwhile, in Fashion Dreamer, a character will say they'd like something, but you can give them whatever and they'll like it. You can give them nothing they wanted and they'll still like it. You can dress them up in the ugliest outfit known to man and they'll still like it.

Of course, the amount of heart points you earn will vary (if you give them an outfit they actually want, you could get 2-3 points depending on if your colors match), but regardless, you will ALWAYS WIN. You will always get points. And you will always get Likes and Followers for each outfit regardless of points as well.

So then what's the point of trying? I realized this pretty soon into playing and would basically just cheese every request— randomly select some pieces, give it to the NPC asking for something, and still get at minimum 2 points because they arbitrarily decided the colors matched I guess, even when I swear to god they didn't.

I have no idea what the "Trend!" means. Am I contributing to making this look trend? "Lookit Bonus" is just the "you made an outfit, nice going" reward you will always get.

Without any reason to try, there is no challenge, there is no incentive to play or be invested in what little gameplay is present.

In a similar point to how the outfits you give characters don't matter, they immediately change out of them the second you leave them alone, so the next time you see them they're either in a brand new outfit altogether or their default one. So why the hell am I gonna spend more than 30 seconds on designing an outfit for this character when they're just gonna change out of it anyways?

Quite literally 30 seconds later, the same character from above that I gave an ugly outfit has changed out of it when I went into the next room over.

Also, why are they always asking for entire outfits? Where is the variety? Why doesn't a character ask me for a fuckin green hat or yellow tank top or something? The most that happens is they'll want you to style a whole outfit around a specific article of clothing they'll keep on, but that's still just making an entire outfit. An entire outfit where the amount of effort you put in does not matter because you're still going to get heart points/Likes/Followers regardless of what you make!

In Fashion Forward, there was a mechanic where character would come by and ask for an entire makeover, and they'd be pleased with anything you gave them, down to styling their hair or makeup (holy shit typing this just now I realized you can't style NPCs hair and makeup in Fashion Dreamer LOLLLL? or if this is an option no one's come up to me for it) however you'd like. And to be honest, after a while, I stopped clicking on characters that came up with this mechanic, because getting to do whatever you wanted with them got really really boring!

Styling Star also has this present in a less obtrusive way, where you have to text a character to ask them if they want a makeover, and I've almost never used it for the same reason.

It's really, really boring to just keep giving characters whatever you want. It takes no effort. You win regardless of your time put in. They just reset later so nothing feels permanent anyways.

There Is Nothing To Do

Here is what you can do in this game:

Make outfits for yourself or NPCs. As previously stated it doesn't matter what you dress anyone in because you get rewarded regardless.
Change your hair and makeup.
Walk around very empty locations.
Play Bingo.
Spin Gacha
Like other peoples' outfits/clothes to receive them.
Make clothing to grow your brand.
Take photos of yourself and others.
Design a storeroom.

This gets pitifully boring very fast. There is no story to try and wrangle this into being something fun, you can't do NPCs hair/makeup/nails, there are no Fashion Shows, no Caprice Chalet to make quick cash, no stores to visit, no shop to run, no locations with events to go to, no real tangible way to see how your brand is doing. This very quickly becomes a "make your own fun" game, as said before.

With a stronger foundation (aka a deep story and not making the game so incredibly easy) I think the game could have survived off of just the above 1-9 numbered list, but the lack of things to do still totally boggles the mind. I think this has less than what you could do in the very first Style Savvy.

And I'm not saying this game has to BE Style Savvy, but when syn sophia has made games where you could do so much before, why is this so empty?

mfw opening up the first Style Savvy while writing this just to feel something again... girl don't buy this outfit it's ugly

Why Does The Inventory Organization Suck Ass?

The actual clothing organization of this game is really not very good. I know this sounds like a god tier nitpick, but as your inventory grows, this is something that becomes not only unavoidable, but painfully noticeable.

Allow me to explain. Here is the screen you see in Fashion Dreamer when you want to dress up/dress up other characters.

Here is what you can filter by.

So if you click one or more of these tabs, you'll see only what you clicked; Tops, Bottoms, Onepieces, Outerwear, Socks, Shoes, Headwear, Glasses, Earrings.

And you can sort by Category, When Aquired, Your Brand, Rarity, and Most Recent. "Sorting" still shows everything all at once, just in different ways (ie, "Your Brand" has your brand appear first, and then everyone else's, "Rarity" starts at the highest rarity and works its way down, "Category" is the default and goes down the list above in that order; Tops, Bottoms, Onepieces, etc.)

You can have a "Favorites" tab that can hold 32 pieces of clothing per tab. I'm unsure of how many tabs you can have, I spawned 3, but maybe you could have more.

Now here is your closet in Styling Star.

Though it does take some of the precious bottom screen real estate, we can have access to the following categories at all times; Inners, Tops, Outers, Pants, Skirts, Dresses, Socks, Shoes, Legwarmers, Headwear, Glasses/Props, Earrings, Scarves, Necklaces, Headphones, Bags, Watches/Bracelets, Gloves. It's never everything all at once.

(Yeah, Fashion Dreamer doesn't have scarves/gloves/bags/bracelets/headphones, why?? Whatever that's not the point of this)

And here's the search screen which acts as your filter:

Note that there are SIX DIFFERENT filtering options that can get down to the finest detail.

Type (everything has subsections, ie; Outers have All Outers, Fashion Jacket, Light Jacket, Down Jacket, Hooded Top, Coat, Other Outer)
Brand (sorting by the ingame brands; April Bonbon, Kanokoi, Raven Candle, etc.)
Image (the type of image a piece of clothing has; Girly, Basic, Gothic, etc.)
Colour (more than just the regular colors of the rainbow; Light-blue, Deep-blue, Purple, Magenta, Khaki, Yellow-green, Green, Blue-green, etc.)
Pattern (what pattern is on the piece if applicable; Dotty, Flowery, Stars, Ribbons, etc.)
Price (various price ranges, can filter on what range clothes fall in)

These filters also stack. Here's me searching for Knitwear/Girly/Dotty pattern:

So why am I bringing this up? Well, when your inventory grows and grows, it becomes more and more tedious to find things to wear or give to other characters.

Let's give some examples:

A character asks you for a pink outfit.

In Styling Star: Filter by the color pink.
In Fashion Dreamer: Just... scroll through all of your clothes until you create a pink outfit. You can't filter by color.

A character asks for plaid to be included in their outfit, and they also want green in their outfit.

In Styling Star: Filter by check and green.
In Fashion Dreamer: ...Scroll through all of your clothes until your outfit has green and plaid. You can't filter by color or pattern.

A character asks for something cute, and they want a maxi skirt.

In Styling Star: Filter by either Girly/Lively (Image) or Marzipan Sky/April Bonbon (Brand), and filter by maxi skirt.
In Fashion Dreamer: I have no idea what is considered cute in this game, it could literally be anything?? Scroll through all your shorts and pants and various skirt lengths until you find a maxi skirt, because anything that goes on the lower half of your body is all grouped together into the "Bottoms" category.

You, the player, know what baby doll is and want to make a baby doll outfit.

In Styling Star: Filter by either Baby doll (Image) or Marble Lily (Brand).
In Fashion Dreamer: Start scrolling. You can't filter by image, and the only brand you can sort by is your own.

Basically, things that would only take maybe 10 seconds to find take a MUCH LONGER time to find in Fashion Dreamer because of the lack of an in-depth filter. And this only gets worse and worse the more you play the game, because you start to get a ton of items and it takes longer to scroll, it's like a punishment for having too many items? But also they want you to collect items? Am I in hell?

Also, here is the weirdest feature that was neglected to be added to Fashion Dreamer's inventory screen:

Or, two, really.

There is no remove all button. You have to scroll all the way to the item you're wearing and press A to take it off. I know this sounds like a nitpick, but again, when you can have HUNDREDS OF ITEMS, or even just HUNDREDS OF SHIRTS, this is insane. Especially when everything takes a couple of seconds to load. Like, okay, I guess I'll scroll down all of my coats to find the one I wanna take off, oh I scrolled past it because none of the coats loaded and I landed in the socks section, let me scroll back up and wait for everything to load this time.
Alternatively in this scenario, I could scroll to the coat section, press A on a random coat, and then press A again to take it off instead of finding the exact one I was wearing, but oh my god this is so tedious regardless.
The remove all button was great for having a blank slate to start a new outfit on, but in Fashion Dreamer you have to spend a good minute scrolling and taking items off to actually get a blank slate. Why did they do this. Did they do this to extend gameplay time be honest with me syn sophia
There is no scrapbook. This makes even LESS SENSE to me when the whole point of the game is to try and "influence" people with your fashion and your outfit choices.

"What's the scrapbook?" You might be asking if you haven't played Style Savvy (which if you haven't and you're still reading this, Jesus Christ, thanks, but go play one). The scrapbook is a feature where you can save outfits you like for easy picking later.

Pretty nifty, and despite my small selection on this screen here, you could save a good amount of them (30 in Styling Star).

For some reason, despite the fact that your inventory can reach up to 5000 pieces, despite the fact that they put an emphasis on making cute outfits with your brand, this feature is not in Fashion Dreamer. No, if you made a good outfit, you better just fucking remember how to make that shit again later or never change your clothes!

You can mark items as "favorites", but then that becomes redundant when you have a lot of favorites, it doesn't solve the problem that you have to reassemble the whole thing, and it doesn't change the fact that a much better system previously existed in syn sophia games! It was save, tap again on the scrapbook screen later, and BAM, it's on. Why remove such a quintessential "show off your cute outfit" fashion game mechanic?

I guess you could also "save" the outfit by putting it on your mannequin in your storeroom, but that means every time you want to change into a presaved outfit you have to walk all the way to your storeroom and put it on? And you're gonna run out of room or mannequins sooner than you'd run out of room in the scrapbook. Again, this is super tedious.

Closing Thoughts

I Got Really Hyped For A Game Yet Again And It Turned Out Bad— Does God Hate Me?

Yes. Moving On

If You Have A Friend Who Works At Marvelous Or Syn Sophia Can You Tell Them The Goodwill Of Fashion Game Fans Can Be Won Back If They Just Made An Actual Game Instead Of Releasing A Demo For $48

Playing this game is basically like if you had all the weapon/armor/spell customization and tech you could pull off in Elden Ring, but you were only allowed to play in a 12x12 room and not the actual open world.

The fashion designing aspect of Fashion Dreamer is incredibly good and holds a lot of potential. If it was in a better game, a game that felt like it held syn sophia's past knowledge for what made their previous fashion games good (a fun story, a good endless gameplay loop, some challenge, a fun world to take part in), it would undoubtedly be a smash hit.

But as this game stands right now, I can't even see myself spending 20 hours in it, much less 200 like I've done with all of the other Style Savvy games. And I'm not really alone in this, because fan opinion has been pretty lukewarm-to-negative as of writing this post.

I genuinely hope that this doesn't scare away syn sophia/Marvelous from ever making a fashion game again, and I think that people would show up to a new game if you made it actually good in the aforementioned ways. Or if they No Man's Sky'd this and did mad updates to make it better, but the latter seems so incredibly unlikely I have to just bank on Fashion Dreamer 2.

FASHION DREAMER - 1/5 STARS. MAKES ME REALLY SAD TO THINK ABOUT IT.

PS: If you're still here and haven't actually played a Style Savvy game before, I would recommend Styling Star or Fashion Forward. Of course, neither are available to buy physically in America, and the eshop is closed, so go pirate it! Who even cares anymore we're all gonna die one day.

Lone's Game Thoughts

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