Because I don’t want to repeat myself, I recommend you read my ongoing Fashion Forward journal: Part 1, Part 2, and the Weekend Report. Consider this my final writeup, upon which a score will be applied. There are a couple things the game surprised me with that I hadn’t experienced yet, but they both turned out to be somewhat underwhelming.

First of all, I sold an outfit to a girl who took me to the beach afterward from a new map location (the train station). We took a picture together, but there wasn’t actually anything to do at the beach, it was just a pretty backdrop. I sold an outfit to another girl who took me to what I gathered was Fashion Forward’s version of Paris, but—again—it’s just a pretty backdrop. We ate crepes and took a photo together (photos can be shared on Miiverse). Then it was right back to my normal, now dull life of doing hair and makeup. I did sell an outfit to a woman who was loaded and spent almost $600.00 on a single outfit.

Then she implied that she’d like to come to the Exhibition Hall with me, and that I should talk to her when I’m ready. So I talked to her again, and she wanted another entire outfit.

This happened four times.

Eventually, I assume she ran out of money (or it’s a bug) because she invited me to go to the café with her, at which point she mentioned that a new photo studio had opened. So I ran over there and got my picture taken—an activity that cost $50. This is where modeling contracts will eventually happen. After this, I finally unlocked the ability to DESIGN MY OWN CLOTHING. This is something I’d wanted to do from the get-go. One of the clothing vendors asked me to design a striped shirt for them to sell.

Fantastic, I’ll just head up to the 2nd floor of my store and stitch together this striped shirt. Easy! You can choose the pattern, the color, and whether or not the shirt has solid-color sleeves.

This task was easy, and the vendor loved my design. But then I tried to design my own piece of clothing from the ground up. I found an emblem creator. I was ecstatic until I realized that I could only choose from several pre-designed emblems, including a medieval-looking crest, a flower, and a winking kitty. You can add to these emblems, but you can’t erase them and then draw, say, Shantae or Mega Man. My spirit was crushed. I dreamed of an entire line of Mega Man shirts, each with a different Robot Master. That dream was crushed yesterday. It looks like clothing design is a lot like selling clothing: somebody has a particular order, and you just have to pick the right variables to satisfy them.

When it comes down to it, that’s a summary of Style Savvy: Fashion Forward.

There are aspects of this game I really enjoy, but so much of it feels like window dressing for a menu-based algorithmic customer satisfaction game. You could build a robot that could play Fashion Forward. The things I really wanted to love—fashion shows and clothing design—are disappointingly shallow, while most of my time is taken up restocking my store because people keep buying everything. I’m a successful small business owner, but I need more employees. And really, Rainbow needs to get her eyes checked.

And for real, this game needed Twitter support. Miiverse isn’t gonna cut it.

My recommendation is to play the demo. If you really like it, understand that Fashion Forward doesn’t really evolve much beyond those walls. You might be okay with that, but I’m finding that I’m not.