Bloomtown: A Different Story

If the devs ever bother to change the subtitle size from "laughably small" I'll consider changing my review. This game is supposedly "controller compatible", but yeah that only applies to t he controls, not how people usually play with a controller, because if you sit any kind of distance away from the screen the subtitles are barely readable and even then you're not reading it without eyestrain.

Really fun game. I loved the game mechanics and art style. Game has some tricky puzzles but nothing that was overwhelmingly frustrating. Great story as well. Recommend picking this one up especially if its on sale!

the gameplay is alright, the stroy isnt that interesting, the animations for little things like sitting down or crafting are just to long. the combat is a solid 5 /10 questing feels like a hassle

Bloomtown is, at least for me, like stepping back into a SNES RPG that I'd eagerly wake up early on Saturday morning to enjoy. Only it's better, because the visuals, dynamics, and soundtrack are absolutely next level. I could write a short novel on everything magical & beautiful about Bloomtown, but instead I'll just say that it's a thoughtfully developed game, well balanced, and hits right in the 90s retro nostalgia. I genuinely hope for a sequel, or else I'll be replaying Bloomtown soon enough.

The game doesn't pretend it isn't OBVIOUSLY knocking off Persona so I'm not gonna either, but for such a naked parody it approaches the concept with a genuine sincerity along with the type of lovingly genre-aware humor I've come to appreciate from Lazy Bear. Above all, it's a lovely bit of Americana nostalgia. It's effortlessly cozy in its presentation and as someone who grew up in the rural midwest during the previous millennium, I can attest that It captures a highly authentic perspective - even down to the radio store being in a refurbished barn. The framing of the story as kids being sent off to grandpa's house and playing through this big fantasy epic during summer hits so close to home, it's hard for me to not be completely enamored on principal. It's a short and sweet experience, maybe a little too short, but it stands in a comfortable contrast to the games that inspired it. Not every game NEEDS to be 100+ hours long, and while I wish there was more replayability, I'm thankful that it didn't drag on long LONG past the point of being fun like modern Persona games tend to do. It also lacks the time pressure of Persona, meaning you can take your time and explore all the content without needing to use a guide to route it out in advance. All that said, while I don't want to spoil any of the content because I think you should play it for yourself if it interests you, I /do/ have some specific gripes I think people should be informed of before jumping in blind; There are some parts of the game that are a little rough. Even though the dungeons are generally pretty short and straight forward, I still managed to get lost because not every part of the map you can interact with is obvious. This problem REALLY comes to a head during a chase sequence that was so frustrating I had to actually look up what I was doing wrong - because the game telegraphs to do something COMPLETELY different than the actual solution. Another issue I had is the pacing and leveling. Enemies do not respawn while you're in a dungeon and dungeons close after beating the boss - this is fine for a game that's relatively short and focused like this, but the problem is that if you speedrun a dungeon you can end up under leveled for the next one with no easy way to correct your mistake. The starting guardians are also ridiculously bad at downing demons which makes building your initial team a bit of a slog where you need to intentionally capture certain demons to even be able to down others. These two problems together mean if you're playing blind you can accidentally get yourself into a situation where you have no effective attacks against enemies 12 levels higher than you. I don't even think this is necessarily a bad design choice or flaw even, you DO have to make specific choices to end up like this and even then it's not insurmountable, it just wastes your time resetting the dungeon over and over for respawns to capture/grind back up to the level it expects. I'd love to see DLC or 'infinity arena' type of mode that gives a bit more to do with the end/post game or push the tactical aspects of combat a little further, just because I want to spend more time in Bloomtown. As it is though, it's a strong, simple RPG that'll give you a solid weekend worth of content. A decent time to money value at full price - an absolute steal if you get it on sale.

Yes.

Over all Bloomtown is a cute pixel art turn based JRPG. I played through most of the optional content and got about 30 hours of playtime total. If not doing optional content you could probably finish in about 15 hours. What the game does well: - The pixel art is cute and well done. - The sound track is excellent, if a bit lacking in variety. - The game as a whole is cohesive but varied. Up until the last third there’s enough new things being introduced that the game stays very engaging. - Fast travel is easy and convenient once you’ve explored an area. - Exploring feels fun and generally rewarding for most of the game- once you get to the city things start to feel a lot flatter. Prior to that there’s all sorts of fun surprises. My only real complaint is that the game lacks depth, both in terms of mechanics and in terms of story. I expected that with the story given that the main characters are pre-teens, but you generally know little to nothing about the people you’re trying to save. The plot is very predictable. The mechanics are also quite shallow, especially the Stardew-esque ones- gardening, fishing, crafting. The combat gets quite stale by halfway through the game and bosses are completely immune to status effects and resist all magic types, making them basically big bags of HP to whack with your sword. The moves you can learn are all variants of the same four or so bases with a different element. The elements have different status effects but there’s not enough variety there to make up for the repetitive bases. Character locations in battle are fixed so there’s basically no room for exploration of combat roles. If the game is on sale and you’re looking for something cute and fun but fairly mindless I think it’s a great choice!

Juego pequeñito, pal verano y si te mola 'Persona' y Stephen King te gustará