Parent's Guide: New Style Boutique 2: Fashion Forward - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is New Style Boutique 2?

In New Style Boutique 2, you take on the day to day running of a small clothes shop in Beaumonde City, with the aim of revitalising its inhabitants' interests in fashion. By picking out clothes, putting together outfits, and doing customers' hair and make-up, you'll be able to grow your store, expand the stock you can carry and take part in fashion shows too, helping to put Beaumonde City back on the fashion map.

How do you play New Style Boutique 2?

A very light and simple shopkeeping game, most of your time with New Style Boutique 2 will be spent manning your store and serving customers. Each will give you a vague-ish description of the thing they're looking for, be it a check-patterened pair of shoes, a yellow cardigan or something cute and girly - and it's up to you to match them with the perfect piece from your inventory, without going over the budget they have in mind.

Pick something they love, and they'll buy it - but if you can't find something that meets their tastes, they'll leave empty handed (although they do always give you a few shots at getting it right). As you sell stuff, you'll need to keep an eye on your stock levels, before heading over to the local Exhibition Hall to buy more key pieces to sell - although this is nowhere near as complex as it would be in real life, keeping its young target audience in mind. With thousands upon thousands of items to choose from, across a surprisingly wide range of fashion styles, you'll be able to personalise your shop's inventory to your own personal tastes, whether you prefer girly and feminine or bold and sporty.

How easy is New Style Boutique 2 to pick up and play?

Generally speaking, it's pretty easy to match customers with their dream piece of clothing. For starters, people tend to ask for very vague categories of items, so the chances you'll have something that at least kind of matches is quite high. You'll also quickly learn which brands are representative of each style, picking out something by Marzipan Sky for a girly girl, or a lively piece by April BonBon for the more cute and colourful individual. Hairdressing and make-up tend to be a bit vaguer, but you can get a good idea of what your clients are looking for by simply choosing to ask a few questions about their ideal haircut, while they'll provide a photo for the latter. As always, folks are fairly forgiving, and even if you don't get it 100% right, they'll still likely be pretty chuffed.

It's important to note that this is a very light shopkeeping game - you don't have any overheads in your shop, it doesn't cost you money to employ staff or keep the lights on, and so it's nigh on impossible to run out of money. This is a game that's less about the business side of running a shop, and more about helping the ladies who come in leave with a new favourite fashion.

For the youngest of players, a fairly decent reading ability is required, as there are no voice overs to speak of in New Style Boutique - everyone's orders, requests and conversations are placed solely through text, although things are always fairly simple.

Sample Sentences:

• "Can you pick out some pink earrings for me?"
• "So I've come here today for something light blue. I don't mind what you pick out as long as the colour is right!"
• "I don't usually like to spend too much on my clothes, but I'll make an exception this time."

As a game about running a clothes shop, New Style Boutique 2 is about as squeaky clean as they come, with absolutely nothing in the way of sex, violence, bad language or gore to speak of. The outfits you create are all totally safe and not provocative in the slightest either.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS