My Time At Portia

I've bought this on early access on Steam. It was fun to play even then. Now it has more packed plot, and I can feel it's upgrading and evolving. It reminds me of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley titles although it's in 3D, not focused on farming only and world looks much bigger there ready for explore - half of it is still a mystery to me. If you like such themes then I would totally recomend it to you :)

I really was enjoying the game but there are some severe issues. The most and important of all is the save points. It ONLY saves when you sleep. Need to leave in a hurry? Tough shit, drop everything go home lose an ingame day of work because... reasons. Spent who knows how long doing stuff and got a lucky drop of a bunch of work and game crashes? Well screw you sister and the colorful llama you rode in on cause it is gone. Seriously even a Dark Souls like save style would have been better. Even an auto save or SOMETHING. I am tempted to refund the darn thing. The game has voice acting which is good. Can tell it was chopped together and probably recorded in various parts of the world in someones bedroom or car. The voices sound good, but they sound disjointed. Despite that I still like them. The game looks great and has a nice feel, but the save game nonsense is severely annoying.

Starting out, it felt like a story driven 3D mine craft. Except it seemed even better: You got a social system, RPG-style level ups, perks to pick, you may sell and buy things, there's farming, breeding animals, crafting, exploration, collecting collectibles, riding, decorating, it got mini games, dating, the town sees progress, people have birthdays and events, there is a lot to do. It's addictive, it's fun, it's colorful and cute. Could have been 5 stars. Except... then you look at how much impact each action actually has and that feeling sours: "Oh boy, 20 minutes and that meter hasn't even moved one pixel". In the end, that's too much grind and too little gameplay spread across too much time at Portia. Two things kill the game (for me - you may disagree): You cannot manually save the game. It saves only when going to sleep at the end of the day, meaning: Once every 20 minutes. So when you decide to play a round of "My Time At Portia", you have to keep at it for 20 minutes or your progress is lost. Can't choose a slot to save your game to either (better hope your file never gets corrupted, for there is no backup). Plus everything takes forever. Progress is painfully slow. All you build requires resources. Basic resources need to be farmed, meaning, that at times you will spend 20 minutes clicking to mine rocks for the smelter. Better resources require processing. The processing runs automatic, but takes time, like in those bad smartphone games, where you have to wait for the project to complete, then come back and click on it to collect the produced resources. And everything you build takes ridiculous amounts of everything. 75 ore, 150 wood, ... plus processing time; some parts can be collected, bought, or assembled, others need to be farmed as rare drops rewarded for killing monsters. Your reward: 40 hours to reach 200 out of 1200 social points with your next-door neighbor. Don't buy at full price.

I played a lot of this game when it early access as well as many updates into the full release. I enjoy the crafting in it, but most of this game feels like it never left early access stages. There are plenty of graphical and spelling errors as well as many half voiced lines that do not even match the text. A lot of characters did not even have voiced lines at all and they have still even been trying to update the game to give your marriage candidates character stories and quests. I cannot reccommend this game to anyone, especially since it has been a while since release and the updates have barely made a difference.

I love everything about this game, from the visual style, the hopeful setting of people recouping peacefully after a worldwide catastrophe instead of Mad Maxing it. It's a farm game in the guise of building game, with a handful of play directions you can go to fit your style. They're still adding things, and it's all fun. Sits well on the shelf with Harvest Moon, Staxel, Stardew Valley, Graveyard Keeper, and the sort. Enjoy. (I got it first on Steam through Humble, and wanted to buy it for someone else who likes this sort of game without having to tie them to the platform, for those curious about the title)