Weapon Shop de Omasse is a game developed and published by Level-5, a company well known for their Dark Cloud games back in 2000 and more recently their White Knight Chronicles Series and Ni No Kuni releases. Weapon Shop de Omasse was first released in Japan back in November 2012 and took until February 2014 to be brought to the English speakers of the world. In its simplest, Weapon Shop is a Fantasy Rhythm game with some slight shop management simulation thrown in, but is it worth the purchase?
Story
The game starts off telling about the previous fight with the Dark Lord where several heroes fought against him and won, causing peace to sweep over the lands. In the times of peace the minerals of the land slowly dwindled and the materials needed for excessive weapon production were hard to come by, putting blacksmiths and the like out of business. Yuhan, the “hero” of the game brings up the idea to rent out weapons on a per mission basis to keep the weapon business alive, along with his clients.
Along with your master you make weapons within almost every type you can think of, Swords, Daggers, clubs and more. You then rent this weapons out to incoming heroes on their quests within the world, either to save princesses or to retrieve a family heirloom.
The overarching story of the game is that the Dark Lord is returning and you must increase your blacksmithing skills to create the weapons that will be his downfall. Along with creating better weapons you will also help the heroes who will be the ones to fight the Dark Lord by giving them weapons to allow them to complete their own quests and become strong enough to best him.
Among the overall story each and every named character has their own history and story to follow, either by talking to them or listening in on their adventures. From the wannabe Hero to the out of place foreigner or even the transsexual beauty man, you will be learning their personality and what they most want in their adventures.
Gameplay
The main mechanic of Weapon Shop is that of weapon creation, which is dumbed down a lot in this game. You simple select the weapon you wish to make, from any of the recipes you know, add a material or leave it bare and bring it to the anvil. Every weapon type has a different song and beat to follow, which can get a bit repetitive when you are working on just swords. Once the music starts you get ready to tap the screen in a fashion similar to beat and rhythm games, but also making sure to hit the weapon on its separate parts similar to the system used in Dragon Quest X. Keeping the beat and the heat allows you to add additional stats to the weapon, making them sharper or more damaging in the separate areas; Slash, Pierce and blunt.
Besides the weapon crafting you will also decide what weapon suits which customer, for the named ones they will mostly use the same weapon of their level, for Example Jean will use Swords with the Slash parameter for the majority of his missions so we would select one of his level to allow him to finish his mission. For the random NPC’s we can select a variety of weapons for them, as well as the level of the quest they undertake.
Along with the weapon side of things there is also a slight bit of RPG action in this game in the case of the weapons that return to you must be polished to use the exp they gain from completed mission, strengthening them for later missions. You also have to handle your gold to buy materials for new weapons or to enhance them with special attacks and effects to insure success.
Whilst you await the return of your clients and have no weapons to polish or forge you watch as Yuhan walks about the shop, dusting or petting his dog. Or if you want you can check the Twitter feed… I mean Grindcast, which allows you to listen in on the conversations your clients are having and the battles they are undertaking. These can give some insight into the characters and are sometimes vital to understand who the characters are, for example one of the Heroes is found to be attacking toys and rocks instead of enemies which you would miss if you didn’t keep up with the Grindcast.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
It wouldn’t be much of a review of a Rhythm game if I didn’t discuss the music, which is actually pretty well done for a handheld game. The music doesn’t contain any voices, but simply has beats and drops that allow for you to follow the music with the tapping you must do to make your weapons. Besides the music used in weapon creation there are several soothing and calm music pieces used within the shop or in conversation which keeps the calm atmosphere of the shop.
Whilst the music is made to a good standard it is however overused after the first couple of hours, creating swords to the same beat or even listening to the same song when talking to the Hero the weapon is for gets tiresome. The Sword theme seems the most overused as it is also the theme used for talking to heroes most of the time. It would have been nice to have a few more songs in the list for item creation, though I do applaud that the designers did change the beat taps for the songs on the higher level weapons.
The themes in this game don’t seem to fit together too well in my opinion, as the atmosphere and graphic style seems like it is marketed to kids but the stories and language used suggest it is for an older audience, with people swearing and referencing sexual things. The art style is very cartoonish with some anime influences, whereas the weapons are rather realistic with a hint of cartoony feel to them. I feel as if the game would of benefited from having more similar art styles and themes rather than having as many different looks as it does.
The story parts of the game mostly come out of the Grindcast, which can be missed most of the time if you need to forge more weapons as it only tells you one comment at a time and sometimes misses out a hero or two. The time between incoming customers and the amount of time you spend forging and polishing weapons really hinders your ability to keep up with all of your Regulars in their quests.
This game has a of familiarity with the game Recettear : An Item Shop’s tale, but lacks the in-depth parts that made Recettear a great game like managing your store, changing the prices on items, keeping relations with your regulars and actually getting to use the stuff you sell and equip the heroes with. Weapon Shop feels too empty to be considered a standalone game and I see why it is a part of the Guild-01 series.
Overall I give Weapon Shop de Omasse a 3/5; it can be an entertaining experience, especially if you only want to play it for an hour at a time whilst waiting for something in real life. There isn’t much of a pull to play this game for long periods of time as the repetitive nature starts to grind on you and becomes boring quickly. Fans of Rhythm games will like this new addition to the genre but other than that there is little to excite players.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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