Before you even say it, yes, I know what you're thinking about yet another Imagine game. But wait! Don't go! I'm not going to say what you think I am about it!For as horribly as the past...I don't even remember how many Imagine games have sucked, this one somehow, miraculously....didn't! I don't know if they got one of their older game programmers/illustrators back onboard or what, but this game is surprisingly MUCH better than I'd anticipated it would be for 'just another makeup game'.
For starters, you'll immediately notice the difference in animation style once you boot up the game. It's not the lousy 3-D graphics that Imagine has so fondly taken under their wing, despite the fact that they don't look very good on a DS. No, these graphics are the adorably cute anime style graphics that we saw the likes of in Imagine Master Chef and Imagine Ballet Star. This immediately set the bar a little higher for my standards and expectations of this game, as it already seemed higher budget than many of its sister titles. Sure, the music sounds like something out of a 90's fashion show, but... what else would you expect from a makeup-themed game, right? It DID borrow some of the sound effects from Imagine Master Chef, but that's alright. I can overlook that, because they're not bad.
Now. Your character, of whom you have 3 different types to choose from as your base (I personally chose the 'cute' style one because - hey! She looks almost just like me!), has traveled to a prestigious makeup artistry school, to learn from basically the best of the best in the world, with the intentions of learning everything they can from them so that they may take the new title of the world's greatest makeup artist. A lofty goal, certainly. You go through lessons on just about every type of makeup (except nails...I don't know why they left that out) to learn how to use them and how they benefit you. (I found on a few of these, you can learn some real life tips that I didn't know a lot about. Also, they stress the importance of toner, moisturizer, and sunscreen as necessities.) In between lessons, you'll be practicing on clients who come in to the university, looking for help with their makeup. It's your job to ask around town for tips on how to achieve the look that they want, procure the necessary cosmetics, return and then do their makeup. Pretty simple.
Of course, this isn't the whole game. Oh, no, no at all. Following in the footsteps of Imagine Ballet Star, everything is not a hand-out here. You actually have to work for your money to buy cosmetics, hairstyles, and fashionable clothing (the latter of which are completely unnecessary, but I'm a perfectionist who likes to complete her games to the most thorough of her abilities...thus, I collect everything). You start out at a job in a restaurant, washing dishes. As lowly as that job seems, you'll quickly find out that you can easily earn the most money at one time through this mini-game. (I'm also overlooking the fact that they entirely ripped off this mini-game from Imagine Master Chef.) Then you can move on to a cafe where you decorate cakes to fill customers' orders, then on to a florist's shop where you dole out the right number of flowers in specific numbers to customers, and finally to an amusement park, where there's two possible job routes: filling balloons or reading announcements over the PA system. (For a mild dyslexic, the latter of those two is almost cruel, as you have to quickly find, at a moment's notice, each line individually of the announcements.) Being the realist that I am, I like the fact that the game stresses that, despite trying to pursue a career in makeup, you'll need a side job to support your means, since surely you won't be earning a living off of doing makeup alone.
As an aside, and I guess to help flesh out your plot line a little bit more, you'll find your character falling for a boy and going out on dates (innocent ones, nothing trashy that the younger crowd shouldn't be seeing) with the boy on your days off. I won't say where exactly this leads to, since I don't want to give out TOO major of spoilers here - you'll have to play for yourself if you want to find out the answer to that question. ;)
There's only two things that I find particularly strange about this game, and only one of which is an actual complaint - the first is just something I find a little odd. At the beginning of the game, your instructor equips you with a compact. But, oh! It's not any ordinary compact, you see. It doesn't just house makeup... it also doubles as a PDA. It's where you receive your emails and take notes. Now, I don't know about you, but I find that to be just a little bit strange, don't you? And now, for the complaint. It's just a small complaint and doesn't hinder gameplay or anything, it just makes things a little more difficult than I feel they need to be. You navigate through the map screens with a series of arrows. Now, if you were to lay out the entire map on a 3 x 3 grid (so that there were 9 squares total), there'd be....well, a couple of squares missing. No big deal, except that the game doesn't compensate for this, and will toss you into places you shouldn't be if you were trying to go to X location, then you try to go back where you came from and end up elsewhere. That part annoys me, and made trying to figure out where things were at first somewhat difficult. That's my only real complaint about this game though, so hey! Kudos to you, Imagine; you've finally made a game I couldn't just mercilessly rip to shreds!
Overall, this game's actually pretty good! Therefore, I've no choice but to give it a good rating, despite it being an Imagine game. I think I'm going to rate it an 8 out of 10 makeup brushes.
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