My Playtime: 70+ hours
Genre: RPG
My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
You received a note stating that your grandmother has past away and that her store has come into your possession. You arrived in town and you are at once introduced to Pochico, a cute floating animal who was a friend to your Nana and was running the store until you arrived. As you make the store a success and help the town grow, you might be able to find love as well.
At the start, you began by designing your character - boy or girl. Pick a name. You pick the shape of your face and eye color. These cannot be changed. The hair (style & coloring) and clothing can be changed at any time during the game. Your character never talks and Pochico does all the talking for you. I find it rather funny when he did the talking on your dates. The main premise of this game is that you own a store that was left to you. It's your job to run the store and build up your town. I thought this would be kind of lame, but it was rather addictive. You can harvest stock from around town or from merchants around town. You sell their stock in your store and adjusting the price to make a profit. While you are running your store, you can visit other characters to trigger events. And after a point, there will be 3 candidates that are alloted to be your future wife/husband. (These dating scenes were absolutely hilarious.) One day's game time was equaled to real time 30 minutes and it flies by quickly.
The graphics were good and cute. And the wide variety of characters were definitely interesting. They were all so quirky. However, there were a few turn-offs. The first thing that I noticed was how annoying the controls were. It was frustrating that I have to push 2 action buttons when they could have streamlined it to make it more efficient. But after playing for awhile, it became second nature. The angle of the camera can be a bit annoying at certain points. You will be running straight along and then suddenly, the angle changed. You will running into a tree and adjust the directional button accordingly. You will never get the hang of that. The music was okay. I noticed that there was about 4 BGMs, changing depending on the event. But the main one that you will hear alot was the one in the store. What I thought was strange was the fact that the music looped and you know it was looping when the game went quiet for a few seconds. Then it started up again. One would think that creators wouldn't let that happen. O_o Now, the areas were too far apart and there were no real shortcuts. So, if you were in rush to reach an area before an allotted time, I was late. Pretty much one area to another took 1-1.5 hours. Another important thing to have is good memorization skills. Each significant side character has a favorite food and times/days they come into your store. You have to mentally adjust day-to-day if you want to ramp up your friendship points to get an event. I even actually took the time to write down information for each side character, so I would be prepared for their visit. Plot-wise, there wasn't one. You pretty much run a store, get all 100 characters, get events and get married. That was it. What would've been nice was a meter to know if you fulfilled every single request in the game. I hate leaving a game open ended and this is going to be one of those games since I honestly don't when the end is. There was a huge learning curve if you don't know what to do. I frequently refer to a walkthrough for help. But from what I research I've done, not everything has been truly explored or explained.
Note: I read somewhere that there was a glitch in the game. I have never encounter it. But I pretty much save every time I sleep.
For the pre-ordered price, it was well worth it for the Ember plush. However, for the current price, not so much. Try waiting for <$15. There wasn't much to this game, plot- or graphic-wise. This was a great way to fill time if you have nothing else on your plate. (I'm just waiting till Bravely Default comes out.) If you like running a store and have lots of patience, this is a great game for you. If you are looking for action, lots of things going on, romance, drama, this is not it. This game can be a bit tedious. There are huge gaps of time when events happen and can be boring if you don't enjoy playing store. I'm normally a RPGer, but for some odd reason, I actually enjoyed the game. I already invested 70+ hours, trying to get all the events. But please think hard before committing money and time with this game. This is not for everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment