My Time At Portia

I own this on Steam, so I cannot speak to the delayed patching issues users here have discussed. However, when I bought this, it met my pc specs. About 6 months or so later, it was running really slowly; I mean lagging so hard that it became difficult to play. I contacted their support. They had me change the priority in the Task Manager. Still, it ran too slowly. I had already set it down to 1/8th graphics and the rain was off. My graphic card was suddenly no longer good enough for the game. The game is, however, well worth a pc upgrade. I hope to have the money to build myself a better computer this year. You inherit a little häuslein from you father on a small island. You become a builder, creating your own workshop. The workshop will allow you to create useful items, including furniture, but also some pieces of clothing. You can also raise crops and livestock, as well as buying or renting horses. There are town events periodically in which you can participate. They are optional, though. You can dig for minerals and "artifacts". You can romance another character. If you work at it, you can even gain a pet. During the game, you expand your house and workshop, as well as the piece of land you own. There's also a camera for you to take pictures. You will receive quests, and you can spend points on character development. There are merchants in town for you to buy materials or finished items from. You can befriend all of the NPCs, except one, who serves as your nemisis. The storyline is a bit hateful, based on the assumption that you will immediately assume the worst of him. It manages to not ruin the game, however. Beware! Once I picked where to locate my workshop, I could never change it, even if I started a new game. :-( In the beginning, they offer you by the sea, near the woods, etc. Choose carefully. This is a wonderfully relaxing game. I don't miss the noise that another user feels is missing. This is great for keeping your blood pressure down.

It's truly charming, relaxing and addictive experience so far. I always liked Harvest Moon and similar games (maybe not a huge fan I am, but from time to time I really like to play these), and always dreamt about game less about farming itself, but with more other things to do, and with much more social interactions. Guess what? My Time at Portia made this dream come true. This game has tons of things to do, nice crafting, RPG elements (you gain experience, levels, grow your statistics, unlocks perks, etc.), fighting the wildlife, dungeons, sparrings with NPCs, main and side missions, fulfilling commisions, many social interactions and much more. Really fun game! Fun but not perfect- it could use some polish and bug fixing, but I believe developers will still support this game, so it will be (even) better and better as time passes.

If someone had told me that this was a post-apocalypic city builder I might have bought it earlier. The story is that everyone used to live in vaults after 'dark technology' destroyed society. You - a new villager in Portia have to help rebuild the society by assisting the town with building projects. You may choose to donate your 'data discs' which you find in the ruins to either the Church or the Research Centre. The game itself plays a lot like Zelda on the Switch. Combat is fluid. You can murder sleeping llamas and other cute animals for fur and meat. You can then cook and eat these animals. Graphics are minimal 3d, and run well on lower end systems (well at least it runs quiet on my higher mid-range box). At the end of the day though - crazy Fallout story or not - the game-play gets tired. The social life is shallow - though under 10yo think its okay. It turn into a bit of a grind-fest. The world is small, only a few minutes to cross the entire map. Most play time is spent on fetch and build quests. The notions of 'dark technology' are a bit subjective and don't really resolve adequately (though we have not finished the game yet). Low down? Good for kids but boring for adults.

Enjoyable Harvest-Moon'em-up with some interesting ideas, but definitely lacks some polish with missing animations, hard musical and graphical cuts, and some weird UI.

I really enjoy the innocence and overall theme of this game. The world feels quite large and emmersive. There is always something to do and many options. Although the game centers around crafting, you can fish, or mine as a primary occupation instead. There is a fairly deep set of social interactions with the 50+ NPCs. The game also puts very little time pressure on the player and almost every festival or activity is optional. In 100+ hours that I've played the game, I've only found one (minor) outright bug and only a small handful of features that I would like the developers to tweak. My only other observation is that there seems to be a bit of confusion about which release version this is. Some online sources suggest that the Steam release is about two minor versions ahead. However, all of the newest features that I can verify appear to be in the release. If there is a newer version, it's supposed to include more side-quests from some of the NPCs which is something I would enjoy.