Recent reviews by Aly

i want to start off by saying i absolutely love this game and it's well worth the price point, but only for a certain audience.
you'll enjoy this game if you like viva pinata, rollercoaster/zoo tycoon, or animal crossing (decorating).

pretty much every second of my free time since this has released has belonged to this game and i'm impressed with the overall quality. it took me around 17 hours to finish the main storyline which i rushed through. i did not collect all of the creatures and did not finish all of the journals. however, the game does have ng+ where you restart your garden and most of your unlocks carry over and you can continue trying to 100% the game. the save was about 73% finished by the time i started ng+ but collecting all of the creatures takes a long time and feels a bit buggy at times.

to expand on that, creating habitats can be very tedious and annoying. sometimes, no matter what i put down, i feel like i can't meet the habitat requirements even though i've seemingly unlocked all items. it is also very rare that you accidentally create a habitat.

the "combat" is not necessarily engaging or fun, but it's also just a small piece of the game. i don't mind it, but also don't really enjoy it. more of an annoyance, which i think was the intention.

those are really my only gripes about the game. i love the decorating and that's main source of my fun and time spent. i love the ranking system every 5 days because it really makes you feel like you're making progress and gives you some short-term goals.

as others are saying, the game is indeed cozy! at first glance it may seem stressful and restrictive but it's really not. the mechanics are not punishing and it's only restrictive in a way that forces you to be more creative.

TLDR; game is not nearly as tedious as ACNH and offers a better story and gameplay experience.

--

I know everyone is comparing this game to ACNH and I'm going to, too.

Unlike Animal Crossing, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of quality of life and the amount of things to do. Even the decorating and customization is close to the same level of fun, we're only missing some sort of terraforming and (way) more items!

If this game can keep up the content updates and it doesn't add pay to win/pay for convenience this will be one of my favorite games of all time.

sidenote; pls add ultrawide support

About everything I've experienced so far tops My Time at Portia in every way. I'm enjoying it so far, but I hope that the optimization gets addressed soon. Can't run at max settings currently without getting less than 60fps with a 3080 + 5900x :(

This game is really amazing for coop.
We loved playing Slay the Spire with the coop mod, but this is a million times better after you learn the buff/debuff systems.

A very surprising amount of depth and content, I highly recommend with 2+ players.