Despite complexity and design of games, sometimes the simplest of features can be some of the most effective. The ability to customize your character’s clothing is definitely one of those for me.
It’s strange because, in real life, creativity in my wardrobe is exactly what I lack. I wear khaki pants, T-Shirts and button-up shirts. Basically, wear the same generic clothing every day, and I’m okay with that. My personal attire aside, for some reason in video games I can jump into customizing my characters clothing for hours. I’ll often make sacrifices, like giving up money I could have used for better gear, to instead get a cool shirt that makes my character look fancy.
Note to self: Get rid of those glasses
I don’t think I realized how much I liked building a character wardrobe until I bought Phantasy Star Universe: Ambitions of the Illuminus. That’s mainly because the clothes didn’t affect your stats. I could completely customize my character’s appearance without the fear of any detrimental stats.
So while I can appreciate the different character outfits in Xenoblade, it feels like I’m still being forced to wear the highest stat equipment. It ties one hand behind my back when it comes to customizing my character’s get-up.
I’ve been wondering if I’ve wanted to try an experience really dedicated to this. Nintendo released Style Saavy on the Nintendo DS, which essentially was a big game of dress-up where you also run a store. Nintendo recently announced the sequel as well, called Girls Mode 2 in Japan. We’ll have to wait and see if that gets localized though.
If it doesn’t, I might just jump into the DS version and see what happens.
Comments