Weapon Shop De Omasse 3DS Review.

So it wasnt that long ago that I just had to talk about Steam World Heist a brilliant indy game which I have recently just finished, it took me about 14 hours but I loved every single one of them. Well when I puchased Heist I also purchased another 3 or 4 indy games on my 3DS as there was a big half price Indy sale going on and I thought why not grab a bunch of stuff while its cheap? One of these games was Weapon Shop De Omasse, which I hadnt even started up until yesterday. In all honesty I wouldnt have turned it on yesterday night if not for the fact that I was really suffering and needed something to try and occupy my mind enough to fight back against the pain, Long story short I had a very damaged Wisdom Tooth which had become infected and the infection was causing me not only great pain but it was also causing me to shake and sweat and well it had me really messed up. There is only so long you can howl like a wolf and it turned out that the earliest I would be able to get help would be 7 the following morning so I flicked on the 3DS and loaded Omasse.

Ok so to provide a little background (about the game not my tooth), The Guild series was a bunch of small indy style games produced by Level-5 for the Nintendo 3DS in cooperation with various game designers. Originally four of these games were released in Japan on a cartridge as a compilation. Over here in europe though these games were released as individual downloads, 3 of them came out duringh the fall of 2012 but one of them Omasse didnt make it to the eshop until febuary 2014 basically because it needed a lot of translation. I had at the time followed news about these games but I dont tend to like to pay much for digital games, heck I prefer to ignore them completly and just stick to physical releases most of the time, but I do love a good sale and so well I just kind of jumped on the indy sale. Infact I also grabbed Crimson Shroud another of the Guild games but I havent tried that yet.

 

Now as soon as you start up the game you can see why it took longer for it to come out over here, it is a very text heavy game, but it is also a pretty original kind of game. The game is set in a sort of typical RPG world a world in which you would usually find youself dropped into with a dagger and dungeons to explore, but there is no exploring here the whole game takes place inside a weapons shop, a weapons shop you work in as an apprentice blacksmith. You dont go out in to the wild to slay monsters or hunt for treasure, you are not the hero this is like a sort of reverse game its like someone was playing Zelda or Final Fantasy and enterd a shop and wonderd what it would be like to see the game through the eyes of the shopkeeper. I know that might sound crazy to people who havent played this but trust me it is actually a very fun and intresting game.

 

So you start of in the shop able to make a handful of weapons, None Player Characters (NPC's) visit you and tell you that they need a weapon to complete a quest with. Now your shop has come up with this novel approach where you dont sell weapons, no you rent them out to people, people come tell you they need a weapon and then leave, after this you have a bit of time to make a weapon for them before they return and ask for it. Soon you will find that you have returning customers and the more they come back and have you rent them equipment the more you get to learn about them, there character, there story and the wider story of the world around you. The game is a very story heavy game, yes there is gameplay to it but the gameplay is very simple and its not what keeps you playing really, its the story which keeps you going. So the gameplay is a mix of basic decision making and rhythm based gameplay, so someone will come and say they need a weapon and you work out what weapon to make by reading into why they need it and what kind of thing they prefer and then when you make it you do it via a rhythem game. Basically you have a large hunk of metal laid out on your work table and you see the way you should tap it, it might be tap tap tap, or tap pause tap pause tap and whatever it is you need to do the better you manage to do it the better the weapon will turn out.

 

If you make the right weapon for the right person and do a good job of it then that helps that person to be successful in there quest and then they will return the weapon you rented them, and they will pay you, give them a badly made incorrect weapon and they will fail there quest and youll see neither your weapon returned or your pockets lined. right weapon means a successful quest and payment to you, but loan out the wrong armament and you might not hear back from your customers again. You find yourself getting wraped up in to peoples stories, you want to see them come in again, to find out how they are getting on and what they are up to.

In conclusion I think that Omasse is a great game that not enough people have heard of and thats why I wanted to do my part to make sure that more people hear about it. The game is kinda niche so its most likly very diffrent to the rest of the games you have been playing on your 3DS and its well incredably charming, its a basic game but its so easy to pick up and it really draws you in. I would give this game a Strong 8 out of 10 and recomend it.