Évaluations récentes de Tammabanana

It definitely scratches a magicked-up Stardew Valley itch, and I love the three towns' worth of breadth to the world... but.

There's a shocking amount of... I wouldn't quite call it bugginess, because it appears to be working as intended; it's just the intention is careless and doesn't stand up to even superficial examination. Characters you shouldn't have met yet show up at all the festivals, for example. The dragon recommends you visit the nature town before the moon town, but the monsters on the way to the nature town are higher level than the ones on the way to the moon town. The levels of the monsters don't scale upwards in a gradual manner; they might be level 15 on one screen and 40 the next. There are quests that seem to trigger from having reached a specific skill level, but they ask you to acquire materials you actually haven't broadened out into.

I guess what I'm saying is: I am enjoying it, but only when I don't take it too seriously; there are definitely moments when something shocks me out of the immersion and I realize that, actually, I care table-flipping amounts about internal narrative consistency and reasonably paced quest lines, and I have to walk away for a while before I can enjoy it as a simple delightful popcorny magicky tri-town farm sim.

The paper dolls are lovely; the comic strips, charming; the storytelling, thoughtful and witty. That would have been enough, I think, to make me love it.

But then I realized that the dialogue in every comic, every story, changes based on the characters' personalities, relationships, transformations, histories, etc. That you can bring old heroes into new campaigns, further develop their skills and stories, build families. It's amazing.

Gameplay accounts for maybe 400 of my 877 hours "on record", as I write this review. The other amazing thing about this game is that they built modding tools into the game itself; you can write your own comics and campaigns, create your own transformations, etc. Absolutely fascinating.

VERY BIG CAVEAT: this game has infinite inventory, but no inventory management UI. You can't even sort your bags manually. (A tedious workaround exists: new items always go into the bag at the end of the list. If you have a small enough stack of items, you could shuffle them to the end of the bag by placing them in the cauldron/store and then putting them back in your bag.)

I love it anyway, though; I'm a sucker for good characters, and these ones are adorable, both in graphics and in personality. And there are CAT PIRATES, and their background music is the bomb. You haggle with customers via a card game; you get better cards by improving your friendship with the other characters. Friendship can improve just by interacting with their shops/services, but it improves more significantly if you spend chunks of time on them.

Time management is in the vein of Recettear; there are six time-chunks in an active day, and two passive overnight chunks that are NOT represented on the clock but contribute to your potion-brewing and your heroes' travels. Opening your shop takes two time-chunks; ranking-up a friend takes one; going into town takes at least one (but potentially many more, since that's where you have the chance to encounter friends). Gift-giving, purchasing, and swapping between shopkeepers while in town are free; hanging out and ranking up are not.

There's no freeplay at the end of the 50-day competition window, alas; you win and that's the end. I don't totally object to re-playing the competition arc to get to know the world and the characters better, but the game mechanics are otherwise so similar to Recettear that I didn't expect it. I neglected deepening friendships to prioritize saving my soul from the debt collector, thinking there would be plenty of time to get to know them later, but, no. (I got to about Rank 4-6 on most of the characters, in that timeframe; good enough that I didn't have trouble with card acquisition, but narratively, I was getting to a point in each relationship where I wanted to know more about them and what they were going to do next, and that opportunity was cut off by... winning the game, I guess. I don't really feel like I won, with a dozen stories left unfinished.)

Kid-safe, IMO, though I advise they play in Casual. My kids (6, 8) panic when they see tarrs, and then there's all sorts of screaming for mommy to come save them. Reading ability increases enjoyment of the game - particularly the storyline - but isn't really necessary for gameplay. The plort market is surprisingly good incentive to practice math skills.

Also good from an adult point of view; the slimes are super cute, and you can make largo combinations of your favorites to make them even cuter; there's thinking and exploring and planning involved. It's replayable in the same way you would re-read a favorite book - the only thing that's changed the second time around is you - but it's long enough, and detailed enough, that there's still a lot of joy in it even if re-reads aren't your thing.

I wish there were more customizability of your ranch; it's limited to choosing what to build on very specific spots, and changing some colors around. It's not much of a builder.

But honestly, the cuteness of the slimes cannot be overstated.

Kid-safe, IMO; the monkeys are super cute, the balloons an unproblematic villain, and can be figured out even without reading skills.

One of my favorites, even from an adult perspective: there's quite a bit of strategy involved; there are a lot of different ways to combine difficulties/maps/challenges to (a) fit a game into the window of time you have available, and (b) provide lots and lots of replayability.