There are four people I generally target:
These are the people in the first game who come in with horrid outfits and a ridiculously high budget. Unfortunately they are really picky and I've only been able to consistently sell them clothes from the brand Dazies, but by stacking things up you can make a decent amount of money off of them
Adelaide likes chic clothes, is loaded, and is generally dumb and mean for no reason. This makes her one of my favorite targets for bad business tactics. She is best dealt with by selecting the most expensive option from every single category and stacking them all together into one expensive jumble. You need to be able to stock a bunch of Enid Chen stuff in advance, but in the end she will leave looking like a clown and you will be $20,000 richer
This lady is a bad friend and an insult to the baby-doll style and so she does not get to look cool or nice. Marble Lily isn't as expensive as Enid Chen, but she will still give you a good amount of money if you pile enough stuff together. You can pick the most expensive things here as well, but I suggest making sure none of it matches because this girl sucks.
Lets be real anyone walking into my shop with that much money is already making poor decisions in life.
This pertains more to the third game, since fashion shows are more integrated into the gameplay loop. You'll probably still be doing them post-game, and it can get pretty boring waiting for the whole thing to be over. I found that trying to find a song that fits the theme of the show and playing it as it's happening can make them something to look forward to. It becomes a lot more fun when you make connections like that.
The coolest one I've done so far was 'Odo' by Giga-p and Ado during a bold-themed show.
My best example for this is that I primarily put together outfits focusing on color coordination, but it can get stale sometimes. When this happens I try to put color out of my head and focus on the sub-styles of the clothes themselves to see what would work together. It's not something that comes to me as easily, and it makes the game more fun.
With Mad Jack/Stagedive, I generally immediately pick a color I want to stand out against black, and mostly pick items that match those colors. Lately, I've been taking a closer look at how many different styles can be made out of the same brand. If you keep skinny jeans/hoodies/armwarmers together, you can get a more 2010 emo look; while if you keep tripp pants with platform heels and off-shoulder shirts, you can get more of an outgoing rave-type look. Biker jackets go really well with certain subsets of bold fashion or even gothic fashion. Subsets like these are very apparent in the first game, where it feels like some brands are neighbors wih eachother. Sonata can go very well with either Epoque or Alvarado, and you will get two very different results
This is just an example: there are a lot of other ways you can change up how you play by just self-imposing some rules to make your choices a little more restrictive. The best challenges are the ones that differ from what you normally do and make you think about things you didn't consider before. Other ones you can try could be sticking to one color pallet (pastel, jewel tones, darker tones). Or if you're playing in the winter, don't give them anything that would be too cold to go outside in. You could try to keep your stock under a certain number and work with limited resources. There are a lot of ways to make the game feel different.
This just makes her less annoying to be around.
On a more serious note, messing around with NPC appearances is pretty fun. I've been trying to make the stilletos resemble the three main idols from Styling Star. Afterwards I might try to make them look like the triple baka squad. Note that this is a very slow process so it should probably be done on the side.
Profanity filters in 3 and 4 are not implemented equally throughout the entire game. You can swear when naming makeup sets in fashion forward, and when naming scrapbook ensembles in Styling Star (test this one). I have not tested this thoroughly so it is a WIP.
Playing through the whole series, I think it's fun to compare what the gameplay loop for each game is and how they differ from eachother (post-game).
My two favorite games in the series are the DS version and Fashion Forward. It's easy to switch back and forth between them because the way I handle management differs. The limited amount of stock in the first game dictates the flow of the game. It is a tighter loop between restocking and selling out, and you can generally keep a good idea of everything that's in your store without looking things up. There are a couple reasons I adore this:
-You have to get creative in fitting different types of clothes together, since you can't just keep a bunch of stuff that goes with everything -I get to buy things more often -Trying to sell as much as possible in a short amount of time is fun for me
additionally, the game has a lot of nice features that help boost your sales, such as flyers and multiple mannequins. I could genuinely just sit in my store and sell things for hours and I would be happy as a clam. There's no interruptions and it's lovely.
On the other hand, Fashion Forward is full of interruptions, has a much larger stock, and captures my heart just as much if not more. I tend to play this game a little more like a pack rat, by slowly stockpiling my favorite pieces and making as many different outfits as I can think of. I usually focus on selling one style at a time by driving people into my store with fashion shows. It feels more laid-back, and having so many things you can do outside of your store breaks up the routine whenever you feel you need it. Even with everything else going on, you can still hide away in your store and sell things as long as you like
What these games have in common that I like the most is that they play in real-time, which makes the pace feel more steady and uninterrupted. It feels a lot faster to make a lot of money in your store since you are making all of your sales in that one day, and the day/night cycle in the other games throws off my hyperfocus, so I don't really enjoy it.
I like this game quite a bit (I'll probably get into that in another post or something), but its post-game flow feels a little janky. It has a lot of factors that make it feel comparatively slow:
-the day/night cycle cutscenes -the fact that you only get a few customers per day -two cutscenes everytime someone leaves your store ???
None of these are a huge deal at all, but it's just the fact that the most fun I have in these games is going SELL! SELL! SELL! and making stacks off of price gouging clothes that make me kind of stray away from this one. Styling Star has its strengths in its story, not so much the post-game replayability.
That being said, the amount of items, clothes, and achievements make for a lot of things to collect. I like that, but it's hard to make enough money for it when you get like 3 customers a day and two of them just want a brown bag. :/
Also, the basically unlimited stock is both a blessing and a curse. It takes away the loop that's made from running out of clothes, but it also takes away any worry about being out of room to buy more things. I think the combination of it being the end-all completionist game and being tedious to make any money kind of screws itself over.
This one is the nostalgia game for me, and I replayed it before I played the 3rd and 4th one. I remember feeling similarly to how I feel about Fashion Forward, that it was a nice contrast to the DS version that I could switch back to and focus a little more on making the outfits themselves, but I haven't played it since then. Gotta replay it before I write something here.
this is my style savvy infodump page
future plans: pic gallery, mini storefront (like the one in trendsetters)
