Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS) review "Crafting weapons and renting them to a crew of JRPG heroes isn't nearly as thrilling as it sounds..."

Weapon Shop de Omasse is a quirky rhythm game, one of four titles originally included in the Guild 01 compilation in Japan. The developers at Level-5 were reportedly hesitant to release the game in North America due to the amount of translation required and the diminutive audience they believed would exist here for a distinctly Japanese experience, but they finally relented just recently.

In the game, you assume the role of Yuhan, a youthful apprentice laboring at a weapon shop run by a grizzled old blacksmith. You have convinced your mentor to train you in the art of blacksmithing, and you hope to sustain the venture with a unique business model: weapon rentals. Instead of selling a bunch of gear to travelers and adventurers you won’t ever see again, you loan it out to the locals and collect payment only when those brave and honest souls return from successful quests. This is a good time to build a reputation as a purveyor of fine tools of destruction, too, because the Evil Lord is rumored to be on the verge of return.

At a glance, Weapons Shop de Omasse appears to have a lot in common with a popular “chapter” from Dragon Quest IV on the Famicom, which revolved around a weapons merchant minding his shop while also battling to save the world. The execution here is quite different, however. Numerous RPG trappings are alluded to in the dialogue and elsewhere, but gameplay focuses almost entirely on weapons manufacturing. That’s virtually all you do when you’re not conversing with clients.

Crafting is a simple enough process. First, you select a weapon that you would like to create from your gradually expanding catalogue—usually with an eye on potential stats following a request from a client who is planning to embark on a particular adventure—and then you are taken to the table and basin where you must turn a hunk of metal into something more useful. There are other points to consider, such as elemental refinements, but they don’t change what happens next: a rhythm mini-game.

In that mini-game, you tap the screen with your stylus in time to simple music beats. You can also rotate and flip the metal, or stoke the forge’s flames to maintain the required temperature. Mistakes are permitted, to the point where it’s actually rather difficult to completely fail in a crafting attempt. The quality of your output suffers, though, unless you’re able to exhibit at least some basic competence.

Once you successfully craft your chosen weapon, you can optionally enter another mini-game to polish it, which requires you to rub your stylus on the screen until the equipment shines with a pleasant sheen. You can perform the same chore when a hero returns from a campaign, as well. Doing so gradually improves the quality of your wares beyond any initial stats, which is important because it increases the likelihood that heroes will return in one piece and pay your fee or hand over bonus materials they discovered. Over the course of a 12-hour campaign, you’ll likely craft something like 100 pieces of equipment and polish some of the more popular items numerous times. In case you’re wondering, that gets old very quickly, which surely explains the inclusion of a feature called the “Grindcast.”

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Staff review by Jason Venter (March 08, 2014) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.