Hot Springs Story

开罗君你好难等，等我了六十年。

The second English release for Kairosoft, Hot Springs Story has you manage an onsen theme park. You can tell this game laid the groundwork for what every other grid-like management game Kairosoft made would eventually become. There are two playthrough types for this game: the normal playthrough and the 100% run. The normal playthrough is just a chill, fun time where you build and expand your onsen while trying to figure out the best combos for your buildings, upgrade facilities, and invest in finding new people. That's basically it; there isn't much meat and potatoes here. It's just a simple grid combination builder with some extra sauce thrown on top. The 100% playthrough is perfectly reasonable right up until the final achievement: "The inn that Kairobot also recognized." To unlock this achievement, you must get all 48 guest types to a popularity score of over 90. This would be fine if there were new endgame gameplay loops, but since the game relies on just three simple mechanics, it devolves into an AFK simulator. The game becomes far less fun and feels more like a chore. Kairosoft completionist runs are known to be pretty grindy depending on the title, but this one was mind-numbing for sure. At full retail price, Hot Springs Story doesn't deliver anything close to the Kairosoft titles that came after it. Its sequel does everything this game does, but ten times better. Stick to other games in their vast catalog.