My Time at Portia
Released: January 15, 2019
Game Length: 70 Hours
Grade: A-
Preliminary: I have just completed 50 games from my backlog with most of them being rather short, lasting around 10 hours each. There were some of them ranging closer to 20 to 30 hours each with Frostpunk being the only one lasting more than 60 hours. I think now would be a perfect time to find a couple of games with a little more meat on them. I played two hours of Monster Hunter World before ultimately shutting down the game. I understand it is supposed to have a more realistic combat-fighting style with heavy weapons and armor, but nothing grabbed my attention. Then sure enough, My Time At Portia came barreling down free on the Epic Store. I never did get around to trying the Steam Demo with a long list of options, but I figured it was cute enough to give it a shot. Some say its "Stardew Valley in 3D" while others liken it more to Harvest Moon. From their mildly successful Kickstarter page, I say they took inspiration from a quite a few games.
Adventure: There is much more to this game than just trying to craft material. You can raise animals, plant, craft objects, make friends, go fishing, repair broken things around town, install new devices that helps Portia, mine for relics, gather ore, chase down items in dungeons, fight monsters in the wild, take pictures, decorate your house, hire some assistance, dye some furniture, play darts, cook some meals, or change your wardrobe. What the game excels at is the quantity of things you can do. I might have only played about 80% of the game, up to the point of unlocking the entire map, but there were still plenty of things I left unfinished. I ended up only spending 2 in-game years, but I guess they added a bunch of things that can happen up to the 5-year mark. They even added some characters and missions that occur after the main game that help tie-in with their sequel My Time At Sandrock.
Having a large number of "systems" you can explore isn't exactly a bad thing, but play long enough and you'll soon realize that they are all rudimentary at best. Although the game will constantly evolve with growing relationships among the town members and the advancement of things you help build for the mayor, you'll quickly learn that the "status quo" remains ever-so vigilant no matter what happens. This is immediately apparent when you roam around the area at the very start of the game. You'll see treasure chests just out of reach, large abscesses of open space, giant chunks of broken metal just waiting to be repaired, and glowing locations you won't be able to interact with. It kills me that the game doesn't allow me to make progress on my own in this respect. What it does do, awesomely I might add, is let you do whatever you feel like at any given moment. Most of the missions in the game outside those regarding character development will not have a time limit (and if they did it would be 7 days for minor projects and 30 days for major ones).
Decorations: I love decorating. So color me surprised when I found out all the different things you can collect. Improving your house and adding things inside will also increase your overall stats. You can add wooden frames and add a photo to them to the wall. You can prop up a massage chair that restores your stamina or a bubble-blowing machine. Add a treadmill or a yogi mat that your spouse can use. Yes, you can get married and have a child. The game does give you the option to adopt. Gather some pigments and modify the furniture using a color wheel. Buy a wardrobe to hang your clothes. There is also a long list of wallpaper or flooring that you can preview before applying. Honestly, I had to buy and craft one of everything just to see if it did something fun and exciting.
It is just too bad that the developers butchered the whole decorating process. I still enjoyed it, but the list of things I added to my notes filled a whole page. A chair should, by default, be facing away from you. Any object that takes up an odd number of spaces can only be picked up long-ways and rotated in the direction you are facing. You cannot raise or lower wall objects without standing on something first. Even then, the item that is placed in front of the frame must be moved first before your character registers the thing on the wall. There is absolutely no consistency to what object can be placed on top of what, how much it will be downsized to fit, and the way it will lay. I would try to place a relic on a table and it shrinks to the size of a baseball. I once got a broom that could only be placed in a display case and even then it would stand straight up. The moveable wardrobe doesn't include a third slot to place the matching hat. I find it offensive that applying wallpaper is a one-time use with seasonal ones costing upwards to 8000Gols each for both the wallpaper and the flooring. Plenty of the festive decorations cannot be dyed. I found it interesting that the snowman's clothes could be dyed but not his body. I really, really wished they made the system a lot smoother.
Storage: What I really, really liked was how they handled the storage system. The number of conveniences they included for stowing away all your junk was wonderful. I also found out that using a keyboard and mouse made this process much more manageable over a controller. You can craft any number of chests, place them anywhere inside your home or out in your yard, and put whatever you like in them (even another chest) without worrying about the size of the item. Clicking on any one chest will bring up a drop-down list to every chest you have on the property. You can open any chest without exiting the menu, rename them, or drag items around in your inventory. You can right click the chest to rename them directly and change the color if you desire. You can "upgrade" the chest by dropping a bigger one on top, move the chest, or carry it through the door of your home without taking out its contents. There is a "sort" button as well as a "sort all" button that will take every item you have in your inventory into the appropriate stack in any chest with a single click of the button.
Despite all the fun things they did to help organize your junk, I have one minor gripe. They failed to apply a better way to split an item. If you have a stack of 40 iron inside a chest and only need 20, you should be able to hold the shift button and automatically pull the amount you need into your inventory. I would have also accepted a way to drag the amount you need into your inventory. Instead, the game decides to plop the second stack inside the same storage container in the first available slot even if there is an open slot right next to it. This means that I had to pull the entire stack out, then split it, and then right click to quickly deposit the remaining amount back. I won't bother talking about how different the storage system works once you build a Factory.
Profit: When I first started crafting, I had this preconception that I could craft and sell whatever I made in order to buy the things I needed to progress the story. I became Linda, Destroyer of Trees! This didn't last long as I quickly did a search for "Do trees grow back in My Time At Portia?" when there weren't any trees the next day. In case you were wondering, they do grow back in a few days. No, I found out that anything I made barely covered the cost of making it. You actually had to put forth effort increasing every bonus you can find - making friends with the right people, checking to see if the adjusted market value is higher than 110%, allocating points in the right skills, and only building what was offered on the commission board. I even tried other methods like cooking and raising animals. Then the most ridiculous thing happened. I realized that spending five seconds catching a single fish gave me more money than selling anything I could craft. Two fish sold more than an auto rickshaw. Catch a rare fish and you'll be swimming in 5000Gol!
Now, I'm not exactly sure why the developers made crafting purely for the sport of progress while making the act of catching fish to be your primary source of income. Unfortunately, this process continued on through the rest of my gaming experience. I was able to upgrade my home, my workshop, my assembly line, and buy all the wonderful things from all the lovely townspeople by selling one week's worth of raw fish. Even spending the 15 in-game minutes cooking the fish depreciated its value ten-fold. I suddenly stopped bothering with commissions altogether and only crafted things for the mayor.
Friends: The buddy system is essential for so many things. Not only do you get discounts for all the stores, but they will also net you some cool rewards. A lot of the side missions won't start until their bar reaches a certain level. This starts off very slowly at the beginning of the game when you can only earn one or two points simply by talking to them, sparring with them, or playing rock-paper-scissors. It might seem daunting when you see it can take up to 500 points just to be able to see where they are on the map at all times of the day. The good news is that practically anything can increase that value. Completing specific commissions, giving them the right kind of gifts on certain days, putting things in the museum, becoming friends with their buddies, and applying yourself in festivals can increase your relationship from 3 to 50 points. Once they become your buddy, you can take them around the block jumping on see-saws or playing darts for a whopping 25 points.
However, the entire system is broken. Aadit, the only person whose relationship status lowers when sparring, somehow still loves to receive weapons. Django, a well-known cook who likes seeing rare dishes, will only give you one point for anything except Seafood Paella or Delicious Roasted Ribs. Why is Antoine the only person who will accept a sapphire ring? Why does the doctor and nurse like their own store-bought goods but not my crafted first aid kits? I thought that maybe asking the general public about their favorite food would help me find something they would like to eat, but 90% of the meals I made went to waste. Commissions and their occupation are perhaps the only clues you will get to what they like. If they show up desiring something specific, you know you hit the lottery. This process only works somewhere during the second year. Until then, the best you can do is drag them around all day as they watch you do whatever mini-game that is available all by yourself. I thought that maybe they would take me some place when they came running to my workshop early in the morning, but no - this method results the same as if you decided to invite them in the first place.
Time: There is no telling how much time I spent on this game. My Time At Portia allows you to progress as fast or slow as you want. You can proceed at 100% game speed and use just enough stamina before the day ends or knock it down to 50% game speed when you want to spend more time decorating your house or exploring. You wake up at 7AM every morning to do whatever you want until you "pass out" at 3AM the next day. You don't have to worry about rushing back home for you immediately get ported back to your home with absolutely no penalty. One major thing to be aware of is your game only saves upon waking up out of bed. You can choose to "sleep" at any time to push on to the next day if you don't feel like waiting out the end of the 20 hours. On occasion, your game time will "pause" for a wide-range of activities like planting fertilizer, conversing with people, or accessing any menu interface. Although your time does not increase while inside a dungeon, you will need to "expend" a number of hours before entering one.
Calendar: Of course, every good builder must continue to be aware of what goes on each day. Trust me when I say that it takes a long time to figure everything out. You can race against your rival to the commission board when the doors open, catch someone out for a stroll, say hello to a group of people eating at the diner, or interrupt a teacher to hand out some gifts to the children. You can help inspect things on the weekend or listen to Lee give a sermon on Sunday. The good news is that you will receive a visible notification whenever there is an important event about to happen. This includes festivals, special announcements during Fireside Meetings, and when it becomes time to hang-out with someone. It is entirely possible to miss out on one of these important events if you decided to hit the bed early. If so, sometimes you will receive a letter that quickly debriefs you on what happened (even if you were there).
Summary: My Time At Portia is a game that does its best showing off everything it has to offer. Everyday you will be learning new techniques, new shortcuts, and new ways to adapt as you progress through the stone age, bronze age, and iron age. You will be thrilled when you realize you can own a horse, get around to using your very own camera, or discover something as trivial as bartering stone for wood from the construction store. They purposely draw out the game so you will want to experience each season with every festival at least twice and open up those areas just out of your reach on the map. However, as much as they ironed out all the complaints and fatal bugs over the years, digging too deep into the game will only reveal a hollow shell. There still seems to be a lot of missing features and things left unfinished, especially when unlocking certain areas during the main mission. Instead of offering you a bunch of new things for every section you unlock, you will only receive maybe one or two new recipes (if anything at all) to add to your repertoire. You can still spot remnants of the developers' last-minute adjustments as you look into ways for building efficiently. As much as I enjoyed my time playing the game, there was certainly a point where I was trying to rush to an end that never came. I only recommend playing it if you are interested in an alternative building experience.
1-23-2021