Imagine Figure Skater

"Nice for young girls, but what else?"

Actually, there's nothing else. This game is a simple and boring skating game, where a girl (who you may name, apart from choosing her appearance from three possible ones) tries to succeed in the ice skating world.

Every day, your character is given two different tasks, which are the ones of increasing a certain stat by one and learning a new move. Considering that your character only has three different stats, all of which can only be increased once a day, the game is basically telling you to increase those stats every day, alongside with going to your teacher for the initial learning of a new move.

These new moves are learned by simply performing a small mini-game with the stylus: basically, for correctly performing a move, you have to complete a minor task, which may include rubbing as quickly as possible, drawing circles, moving small starts and hearts to an empty all, among many others. As for stats, they are gained by completing mini-games, all of which increase a different combination of stats. Those mini-games include a rhythm game, making pairs, making one image look like another, throwing discs to penguins and even a curling match, the only one also available as a 2P wireless game.

After advancing several days, where you just have to perform the tasks stated above, your character will eventually reach her first tournament. There, you can pick between several songs and, mindlessly ignoring their rhythm, you can set several moves for your girl to perform, while the music is being heard. Then, you'll have to perform them twice, in a quick succession, with the first being a mere training round. Upon completing that task, you get to do it all over again. After this last round, it will be over and, if you did any good (which is quite easy), you'll get some more money, which you can spend at the shops.

They usually allow you to purchase new accessories, clothes, color schemes or songs, which you can later use. Sure, they are not a major appeal to keep on playing, and they hardly influence the game, but it's better than nothing. They surely increase the play time of this product, which has quite a few, if you forget ignore its repetitive nature. However, in terms of replay value, the game seems to have barely none.

In terms of graphics, the general audience of this title will be happy with what they find, since everything is clear and shiny. In the 3D scenes, when your girl is skating, she is slightly undetailed, but you'll be too busy playing to realize it.

Apart from the songs heard during the skating contests (which you can choose, and they are always quite good), the other tunes are just unimportant and uninteresting, the kind of thing that you may end up skipping or, as usual, turning the overall sound off.

While this is an interesting game, the low skills required for most mini-games and the largely repetitive sequences show that this is probably a title aimed at a younger audience, probably more appealing to girls. Hardly any knowledge of the Japanese language is required to play it, but there are probably much better titles for this very same audience.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/07