I've played quite a few games in the Guild series, a group of bite-size, somewhat experimental games published by Level-5 (of Professor Layton fame). Weapon Shop De Omasse was a surprise because people generally didn't expect it to be localized since it featured so much text. I'd generally enjoyed the other entries in this varied series, and it got a glowing review from NintendoLife, so I thought I'd give it a try.
The game is sometimes billed as a rhythm game, but the rhythm part is pretty small compared to the rest of the game. The conceit is that you're an apprentice in a weapon shop and instead of going on a typical RPG adventure you're responsible for supplying a small cast of adventurers (and a steady stream of NPCs) of weapon rentals and reading about their adventures. So the game is actually much more like a visual novel, than anything else (albeit with an entertaining and quirky cast). The writing is consistently entertaining, often parodying the RPG genre itself as well as modern social media (the adventurers record their posts to the Twitter-like "Grindcast"). Deciding which weapon to forge for which adventurer takes only a small amount of brain power, as does forging itself. Pretty soon you settle into the "rhythm" of the routine, and reading the adventurers' reports while working on mundane tasks like polishing returned weapons becomes very relaxing. The characters are memorable and the writing generally amusing. Although not often laugh-out-loud funny, the game is generally entertaining, and at something like 10 hours long (much less if you don't read every line) it doesn't wear out its welcome.
I think the reviewer at NintendoLife was a bit overgenerous, but I do appreciate that this is a game that tries to do something a little different from the norm (and succeeds). Not an unequivocal recommendation, but fans of games like Phoenix Wright should enjoy it.
Forge these Weapon Shop De Omasse links:
- Miiverse community
- There aren't any walkthroughs written up, but the GameFAQs board for the game has a lot of info, esp. about the postgame which includes a couple more quests for all the characters but seems to require excessive grinding