The Rainsdowne Players

This is a fun, simple game that requires a little bit of skill in reflexes to play. The idea of building up your fan base for your two person acting troupe is cute, and collecting cards and getting check marks in Snail's hint book were what really kept me playing this game before the story started to kick in. It's a very small environment that you're playing in, and you spend a lot of time playing the same mini games over and over to earn coins and unlock new cards which can be pretty big cons if you don't really enjoy collecting as a game concept. It's a genuinely interesting little town so if you like to talk to NPCs and complete collections, you'll like this game. There's three ways you can put on performances, so when you get tired of one you have two others you can switch too. There's also a card game and a shooting game where you can simply earn money and not worry about putting your ideas in order for a play. I do want to note that I personally had a lot of trouble getting the timing right for the singing performance, so in reality I only had two options for putting on a performance. Again I don't know if this is just me, or if the timing really is off for the singing performance. Once you advance in the story, the plays become less about your reflexes and more about solving puzzles to please certain audience members; to get them to love your play and give you a new card, you have to put the proper cards in the proper order when creating your play. As it turns out, I'm not that great at putting the cards in the right order. I don't even have half of the card collection and I'm already stuck in the game, unable to figure out how to put on the right play even for audience members that only have one or two requirements for loving your play. Though you can pay Snails for hints on the proper cards, they won't tell you the proper order. Talking to audience members doesn't necessarily reveal the order that they want the cards to be in either. While some of the requests are easy enough to logically set up into a proper story, some requests are so vague all you can do is just keep making up different plays and hope one hits. Given how repetitive the mini games are, it gets frustrating very quickly. I would like to keep playing and finish what is honestly an interesting story, but no one has made a guide for this game or done a complete play through, so there's no outside help to get you past a part you're stuck on. Since I can't in good conscience say this is a fault of the game, I still recommend it.