Something Mobile: Love Nikki

Something Mobile: Love Nikki - Dress UP Queen!

Okay, okay. I know what you're thinking. 'What the heck game did you pick out, Joyce?' Believe it or not, I have actually come to really like this game even though I don't normally play 'dress-up games'. In fact, I think I've only played three in my life at this point. One was a random Barbie game I barely played when I was five and the other was this fashion game on the DS that I did actually finish. That's it. I'm not really a fashion person. Yet, somehow I've been playing this for five months now.

So why did I pick up this game? They assaulted me with ads and I wanted to see how bad it was. Yup. Sometimes when an app throws enough ads my way, I'll download it just to see how accurate the ad is. (Fun fact, Words Story [the stick figure escape prison thing] garbage and false advertising) Love Nikki, however, surprised me.

Basically, it is what it says. A dress-up RPG game created by SuZhou Nikki Co. (Now Paper Studio and published by Elex on April 20th, 2017 for Android and iOS. You unlock clothing, you dress up your model, you earn points. Sounds simple, but it's really not... for better or worse. Every item of clothing has style ratings (mature, cute, simple, gorgeous, etc) and some have style tags (traditional, army, European, etc.) and depending on your match, you need to have different ratings and tags.

The matches come in several forms since there's a lot to this game I'm going to make it a list. (This game is a monster)

• The Journey/Main Story: There are 22 chapters currently released, each chapter has about 13 (give or take) contests to participate in that give a little bit of story in a cutscene... before someone challenges you for one reason or another. There are two difficulty settings for this section, Maiden and Princess. You can do the Princess version after completing its Maiden counterpart for different rewards, but only three times a day. 
• Stylist's Arena: Here, you compete against other players in set themes (Randomly chosen from a small, ever repeating pool). You can either make a new outfit each time or hit Finish ASAP to just use your best scoring outfit for that theme.
• Competition: The one oddball. Every four days a new theme is announced and people make their outfit as they see fit rather than looking at style ratings. Instead of the point system, everyone votes on the best outfit. 
• Stylist Association - Commission: This is the co-op section. You join an association and you work together to complete sections just like how the main story works. Chapters and everything.
• Stylist Association - Style Contest: Twice a week for an hour each, the Style Contest opens for association members to team up with one other member to do a contest. You earn special items in this that you amass together to craft unique outfits. 
• Dream Weaver: (This bit is weird) A section that gives more backstory to the other characters you meet. It doesn't use the chapter system so you're not just competing. There are sections that just require you to craft certain things or collect a number of gems. In the end, you get these things called spirits. I think they give bonuses to their respective style ratings, but I'm not entirely sure. 

In addition to the dress-up, there's a whole crafting system, clothing evolution system, and clothing customization system. It has a standard stamina system. Several shops and currencies including coins, diamonds, star coins, and crystal roses and last but not least a random drop section including The Pavilion of Fantasy which gives one free drop a day, the Pavilion of Mystery which gives two free a day, and the Time Yard, Tower of Zen, Corridor Clock, and Porch of Misty which give a free drop every 48 hours... or you could pay extra. 

TL;DR The whole game is basically just a lot of collecting other clothing to make more clothing that sometimes to compete and earn points and get more clothing to get farther to get more clothing... This game is crazy, my brain hurts.  

It took me two months to figure everything out and I only just figured out a good way to do the Stylist's Arena. This game is insane. Oh! There's also a plethora of random events that happen that would take another page to explain so... I'll leave it at just the base game. 

So now that you know what in the world Love Nikki - Dress UP Queen! is, we can get into what you came here for. 

Controls and Learning Curves

When you first start the game, there's a small tutorial that shows you how to get started, but after that, this game does not hold your hand. As I'm sure you've gathered, there's a plethora of sections in this game. There was no tutorial for the Stylist Association, Stylist's Arena, or Competition. (I can't remember if there was anything for the Dream Weaver, but that section isn't bad) Competition is the only one I could see not needing one. The others really should have had a tutorial.

I managed to figure out most of the game on my own, but I did eventually get stuck and had to look up the wiki. Not the biggest sin, but a little frustrating nonetheless.

The game also doesn't do a very good job at explaining how the clothing style ratings and tags work and how they factor into the point system. I only use a guide at this point. You need such high point values that it's impossible to figure out without one. Again, not the biggest sin, but it takes away the feeling of accomplishment at making your own outfit.

Everything else is simple though and the menus are fairly straight forward.

Graphics

It's like playing a manga. The whole game is 2D and the cutscenes are graphic novel style.  I see some of the stuff other people have unlocked and I'm immediately looking at how to get it because it's so cool/pretty/awesome to look at. (They're doing their jobs right I guess.) Every set really is a work of art.

Audio

I actually never play mobile games with sound (unless it's a rhythm game). I straight up disable music and sound effects so I can listen to my own music. That said, I did re-enable it just for this. Woo. Honestly, it's nothing special. A lot of piano music and magical sounding buttons that are fairly common in more girly games.

There was actually a lot of things that just had no sound effect, which I don't mind since I don't need to hear something while I'm flicking through different hats. I'm also not a fan of button noises in mobile games since it's literally in my ear and that gets annoying in my opinion. Since that's really the only sound effect, I'm keeping that disabled.

Every chapter has its own music, however, and that was cool. The music really was nice, honestly. 
I really thought the music was nice at first and that each chapter had its own music. Upon further inspection. It just restarts the same song over for most of the chapters. It's abrupt, annoying, and happens at just about every button press. Chapter 6 is the only one with its own soundtrack. 7 has a remix of the first song and 9 - 11 has a song that starts fairly close to the first but then launches into a random accordion bit... I'm really confused honestly.

I think I'll be keeping the music off too.

Story and Characters

As I said, I've gotten about half-way through the main story. It's pretty interesting. You're playing as/following (I'm not really sure) a young woman named Nikki who woke up in a strange land, Miraland, with her talking cat Momo and are suddenly tasked by a queen to go save the world or something... It's kinda weird.

In Miraland, there's a blood curse that prevents people from being violent so they duke it out in styling contests. They're trying to stop the Queen of the Iron Roses from taking over the world by taking everyone's stuff. It's really weird.

You also make friends with a bunch of the people of Miraland as you travel from country to country. I actually ended up looking this up to see if there was a short explanation, and there isn't one. It's pretty interesting though... talking cats and convenient plot points aside. It's just a bit hard to follow since it can take so long to go from one challenge to the next sometimes.

The characters are fun, however, and can make a quick minute of cutscene fairly enjoyable. My favorites would be Momo and Bobo (a girl you meet early in the game who just sort of follows you around.) They really go at each other sometimes and it's hilarious.

Overall Gameplay

It's an engaging game. Even when I'm stuck trying to collect stuff for progression in the main story, I can work towards some other thing in the side sections. A lot of free to play games just don't have enough content so the developers try to stretch it out behind pointless downtime. While there is downtime in this game, it doesn't feel pointless. The stamina regenerates fairly quickly and is really just there so you cant just farm items. You need to plan out what you're doing.

There's really almost too much in this game and that's... not really a bad thing.

Monetary Strategy

I know this isn't a normal category, but with a mobile game, I feel it's necessary. Love Nikki is a free-to-play game with in-app purchases, as many are these days. It is, however, one of the precious few to not NEED the purchases to play. Sure, there are suits you can only get by paying money (typically $0.99) and there are suits that need A LOT of diamonds (the premium currency) to get... but you don't NEED them/can get a significant amount of diamonds through normal gameplay (not enough for everything and every event, but enough if you just get the stuff you really want). 

Outside of buying clothing they also have the option of buying item packs (dyes, bonus tickets, more coins, etc) and what they call V Privilege. V Privilege basically makes the game a bit easier and gives you discounts, not for a specific price, but for the accumulated total of how much money you've spent on 'charges'. I'm not sure how much it's worth it, but I'll admit I'm tempted to support the game since I have gotten a lot of gameplay out of it so far. 

I don't really do microtransactions though so... we'll see. 

Changes

TUTORIALS. TUTORIALS. TUTORIALS. The most frustrating part so far was not knowing how any of the Stylist Association stuff worked. Luckily, once I figured out how to get into an association, one of my fellow members was kind enough to explain it to me. It took me a while to get into an association, however.

Also, a bit more playtesting with the translations would be nice. Some of the instructions for what a match wants aren't very clear. I remember one match just having a chopped up sentence for it's required text and just not understanding what the game wanted of me. (This was before I just used guides)

I want to say a better point system since it's kinda stupid to pair stuff like in the picture, but it's really hard to judge a fashion contest remotely so... I guess I let it be. Maybe just a better tutorial on how the score is actually totaled. I like replayable tutorials for when I actually need the information... those are nice.

Yay or Nay

It's a yes from me. I'm not sure what niche I should recommend it for, however. Like I said, I'm not normally into games like this. I don't even know what to compare it to. If you want a mobile timewaster that actually feels like you're doing something I recommend it. Does that count as a niche? Maybe?

Eh, what the heck, it's free. Try it out. It's oddly satisfying and handels microtransactions in a way that isn't crammed down you're throat every five seconds.

So yeah, that's Love Nikki - Dress UP Queen!