Bloomtown: A Different Story

i can't describe it. Just... Amazing

可もなく不可もなく

중간에 완료 안 되고 무한 수급되는 퀘스트와 퀘스트 템이 있음 후반부에 가면 없어지고 영향력 없긴 함 재밌게 플레이 했음

Hugooooo <3

This is the PERFECT summer game! It captures the chill, laid-back, and sense of young-kid adventure that summers always brought (at least for me :P) perfectly! It also seems that every single action has its own sound effect. In most 2D games, even pixel-styled (where story-telling and charm are the key parts), in-game_engine cutscenes often abbreviate the set of sounds by not having any sound for different actions in those cutscenes. In Bloomtown: A Different Story, for example, you get taught by your grandfather how to bake bread. There's a in-game_engine cutscene that unfolds and when the character opens the oven door, there's the sound of that, when the character closes the oven door, there's the sound of that. Like I said, it seems like EVERY action has its own sound. And that's the sense of incredible detail put into every aspect of this game. The color tones and particular style of pixel art compliment my previous sentiment. Animations feel polished, smooth, and overall enjoyable (everything from idle animations to combat animations). The music when exploring the "Otherworld" / "Underworld", has almost a "Zombies Ate My Neighbors" (from Super Nintendo) vibe to it -- the sort of playful, slightly silly, but NOT immersion-breaking over / under tones. The music in combat is also rather impressive. It's catchy and up-beat. Interestingly enough, a couple of the tracks have vocals, but for some strange reason it doesn't seem to get old like you think it actually would. I'm not sure how they pulled that off but somehow they did. Ordinarily, I'd be leery of, especially, combat music having vocals, because in a JRPG you're in combat all the time (many times even deliberately, trying to grind levels of your party members). In this game, somehow the tracks of the combat music that contain vocals, don't necessarily feel fresh every time, but they certainly don't make you feel like you're tired of hearing them. The combat and cast of characters in your party are kind of a motley crew of members but all feel perfectly fitting especially given the story and all the strange things seeping into the game's real world from the underworld. Things are definitely afoot! The combat is your typical JRPG, attack, guard / defend, items, etc. However, it's slightly more expanded than that. Each party member can have both melee and ranged weapons equipped so they can switch, on the fly (i.e. during their task selection in their combat round) so that they can perform either a melee attack or a ranged attack. This differs from traditional JRPGs where party members are natively one weapon type or another. Most characters get spell (I don't recall if your character can get spells or not). Some (one?) party member(s) are naturally more inclined to get healing and buffing (support) type of spells, and the others are more attack / offense based. On top of the combat design I explained, there's a rather large combat mechanic present called demon fusion. When fighting demons in the underworld, if you get them low enough health without killing them, you have an option to either perform a heavy attack on them, or subdue them. Subduing demons is chance-based in that it can either succeed or fail. If you succeed, you become the demon's master (sort of like capturing a Pokemon), it becomes sort of like your pet that you use in combat. Demon fusing comes when you are the master of more than one demon and use one demon to fuse into another demon to make them stronger. Demons that you've subdued, whether they've been fused with other demons or not, all have levels, and strength as well. The story's premise is wonderful and really starts things off by setting the vibe and pace of the feel of the game. You (the sister) start out with a cutscene riding a train with your brother (both of you are kids). Your mother has sent you both to live with your grandfather (I think it's the mother's father) for the summer. While you're both kids riding a train, throughout the game, I somehow get the impression that you tend to look after your brother almost in a parental kind of way -- or at least your character feels that way). And that's the beauty of this game's storytelling ability and nuanced character-building. Each character just FEELS organic and that they are their own person with their own story. In addition to the main story, there are tons of things to do around town and lots of little details throughout. The game carries the concept of time of day and day of week. ([i]Side note: As far as I can recall, the devs said there's no time limit on the number of days that can pass, so breath a sigh of relief :) [/i] The various things you can do around time all provide some sort of benefit but take different amounts of time to complete. There's a gym and you can exercise there (you can also do it in your character's bedroom) to raise your strength. In your bedroom, you can read that raise different character traits like Charm, Guts, and intellect. There's also a job that you get where you can make money that can then be used for buying items or weapons / armor. There's quests / sub-quests that you can do for people and earn rewards. There's also fishing. though, I haven't done any of that yet. You can even craft at the workbench in your character's bedroom, buy seeds and grow ingredients to, as mentioned before, bake various food. I think that about covers everything. Some things I could have explained possibly further but there's so much to the game that the review would just be too long lol I enjoyed playing it on PC so much that I recently just picked it up on Switch and somehow despite being the same game, it feels even more enjoyable on that. No matter the platform though, I really don't think you can go wrong with it if you're into a JRPG that channels that young-kid summer adventure vibes!

entediante