A TV Sitcom in Video Game Format –

Falling in line with the other quirky games in Level-5’s downloadable Guild series, Weapon Shop de Omasse puts a new spin on the RPG formula. Strangely enough, this game was actually headed by a Japanese comedian instead of a well-known game designer. Unfortunately, the end result corresponds to this humorous profession – jokes are place ahead of gameplay.

Instead of playing as the unassuming hero tasked with ridding the land of evil, the player takes on the role of a blacksmith to empower would be heroes, questers, circus twins, grandmothers, and even basic NPCs. Crafting and maintaining weapons replaces dungeon exploring, monster grinding, and leveling up. The goal is forge quality weapons so heroes can successfully finish stereotypical RPG quests and eventually the Evil Lord. The better the weapon, the more money and materials are awarded which is used to make even better weapons. So even though this isn’t a typical RPG, the elements of one are still in place.

The problem is there isn’t much gameplay to speak of. Outside of forging new weapons by tapping the screen to music Guitar Hero-style and mindlessly rubbing the screen to polish weapons after use, there is no user input. These simple tasks can be completed in seconds and there really is no way to lose or mess up. Sure, if you miss-tap the screen when forging a weapon it won’t be as strong but there is no way screw up the polishing segment – you just rub the screen until the weapon is shiny. Poke this for 15 seconds, rub that for 10 seconds. And that’s it.

Weapon Shop puts its emphasis on humor and there are some chuckle worthy moments. In between forging weapons, the player has constant access to the Grindcast, the game’s built in Twitter feed. That’s right, this game has its own made up social media news ticker. When customers leave the shop, the player hears details about each quest through this text feed, complete with hashtags and RPG jokes. Fans of RPGs will definitely get a kick out of this creative writing but the gameplay undoubtedly takes a backseat. Further, it might take minutes for customers to walk in with their weapon requests so the player is often left with nothing to do other than to read these humorous text updates. The game even encourages the player to speed up the scrolling text by holding down the L button, putting a bigger highlight on the script’s content.

Just like a live audience TV sitcom, this downloadable 3DS eShop title takes its comedy seriously as characters are introduced with a laughter and applause sound clip, flamboyant NPCs act as customers, and goofy dialog is constantly bantered. Originally, this game was supposed to launch next to the other Guild01 eShop titles but the massive script and translation effort is probably the reason why this title took so long to reach the US. With that said, this download is more of an e-book written for RPG players as opposed to an entertaining interactive experience that gamers are used to.

Weapon Shop de Omasse is a bizarre concept that provides something unique but there basically just a whole lot of nothing going on. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy my time with this game it is just that the empty repetitive grind doesn’t outweigh the humorous writing.

3/5

Not As Good As: Crimson Shroud

Better Than: Aero Porter

Also Try: Inazuma Eleven

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com

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