My Time At Portia (PS4)

Really fun game. Hard to get off at times. And slow at other times at farming materials. Love the friendship/ dating element. Overall, very fun game. I love it and one of my favourites. Great storyline! ❤️

I've read several reviews of My Time at Portia, comparing it to Stardew Valley but in 3D. While I can see the comparisons as a life/builder sim style game, this game has a much different format. Instead of spending each day tending your crops or animals, and steadily expanding your operation to include more and more ways to generate wealth. My Time at Portia put you in charge of a workshop, and the primary way to advance is to take on contracts where you need to build something for the townspeople and the businesses. You also can make friends with the locals, building up your relationships by performing odd jobs, giving them gifts and reaching higher friendship tiers where they help you in new and different ways. The townsfolk are also friends with each other, so if you improve your level with some people, you'll find that their friends also like you more. It's a delightfully intricate system that simply keeps you playing for "just one more day" to see how you can improve, or complete that project you were working on. This all means that you are more interconnected with the town, than in something like Stardew Valley, as you see it improve and expand as you fulfill story contracts. One jarring thing about this is that instead of the slow-but-steady advancement you get in a game like Stardew Valley you get sudden leaps forward in fits and starts: Initially, it can be a chore to do anything with your workshop and friends, you're not really given a thorough tutorial and some of the story contracts require you to have tools and equipment that can take you a LONG time to create, meaning that much of the early game is a case of trial and error in claiming materials, processing them into new parts, and then building something complex like the farm's water irrigation system. The sense of pacing can seem strange when you're sitting on starter quests for long stretches of gameplay while you figure out what you actually need to do. Additionally, progress often seems grindy... you might spend "days" in game digging through the mines for the appropriate metals or hunting monsters for relic pieces, then a wait a few more days waiting for your furnaces to complete the alloys, then more days converting them into things like steel frames and boards. There is no fast option, but this is where it differentiates itself from games like Stardew Valley where you wake up each day to water the plants and milk the cows, in Portia you always seem to have something else to do *after* you finish your current task: your work leads to more work, which sounds dull but can be calmly engaging knowing your efforts contribute to a large project. As to the aforementioned "fits and starts", while you can grind your way to success with odd jobs, rewards start flying in FAST once you finally get your operations up and running. Because the town has an in-game rating system, once you top the leaderboards you get simply loads of cash and reputation thrown at you at monthly intervals, simply for doing what you've always been doing. And because the social system is so interconnected once you start making friends, everyone seems to start liking you and giving you things. All put together means that you go through what seems like a long period of not knowing what you're doing, to feeling you've suddenly mastered the game and wonder what to do next except grind towards the next big project. The pacing feels slightly off, when a more balanced progression might have been better, but it doesn't ruin the experience because the rewards really make you feel like you've earned your progress, it just means that instead of slowly consolidating your funds and work to move to the next tier of progress, you go from not having very much to suddenly being able to afford your new house upgrade and workbench improvements overnight. Technically, the controls feel clunky sometimes, leaving you stun locked in enemy attack patterns and frantically trying to get out of the way, but some attacks are just annoyingly unavoidable no matter what you do. Also collision detection will occasionally get you stuck on bits of scenery, or trapped between objects, causing you to have to mash the jump or roll buttons to unstick yourself. However, my real genuine issue with the game is the loading times... which can really be annoying when you're moving from day to day, or even just transiting from area to area. In a game that depends on the passage of time, you often spend too much of it looking at the loading screen for a minute or two, which can feel like an age when you know that minute could have been spent doing something useful. Those aren't hugely glaring flaws in themselves. I'd still recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a good life sim, because when you put in the effort, you actually feel like you've been rewarded for how much work you've had to do.

Been getting a lot more single player games recently and was looking for something a bit more relaxing. After a lot of searching, this was one of the titles I went for. First off before I mention any negatives, its a very enjoyable game. Can be very relaxing but depending on how you play it, it can be the total opposite where you're running around like a lunatic trying to get as much as you can done in a day as there is genuinely a lot of depth here if you go for it. The game doesn't hold your hand much. Always felt there was more I could be doing and until I watched some guides/walk throughs, I didn't realise how much I was missing or making my own game harder. Also worth mentioning there are a few issues. Frame rates drop at time, missing dialogue which really annoys at times, especially when you only hear one sentence when in fact 4 people are speaking multiple lines and other little niggles. All that said, I'm enjoying it a lot and this may get a second playthrough somewhere down the line as I know it'll be a lot easier once you know what you're genuinely doing.

fighting is easy and non scary, graphics glitch a bit. But there is so much to do, with fishing, exploring, meeting people, building up your home and workshop, continuous quests and stories, adversaries, pets, mining, finding hidden rooms.

I've been waiting for this to release on PS4 for a long time. I am NOT disappointed! I've played many other sandbox games, and this puts them all to shame. There is so much to do in the game, and you aren't forced to do anything that you don't want to do. It's the ultimate chill out game. I was amazed at the modest release price too (£25) - but they dropped the price by £3 shortly after release ;/ Still ... Worth. Every. Penny.

I’d just like to say that the 1* is for the game and not for the seller, they deserve 5*+ as the product came very quickly! However if you are thinking of purchasing this game please consider PC first. The game takes up to 2 hours to load a save game file (this is on a PS4 Pro) it has various audio bugs (no music in any menus) Team17 will ignore any comments/emails/messages you send to them. Please do not waste your money. TheGameCollection has many other titles that are worth your money.

Really nice chilled out game. Building things and running around the town. The storyline is a bit basic and slow and the fighting is so easy. Main problem is the laggy slow menu system. To view your inventory which is literally all the time. You open up the menu and slowly tab across like 4 times to get it. Like what is that about. So weird and it's so slow. When you're building something you need things in your quick select to use them so you find yourself just fighting with the menu over and over. Kind of spoils the experience. Seems like such an easy thing for the devs to fix.

This game is dangerous. Much like Stardew Valley and Yonder, this game is seriously addictive. It's very much a 'I'll just do one more day...' and then you find it's 1am and you can't stop playing. It's cute, fun, entertaining and will last a good long time. If you like games like the ones mentioned above, along with Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, this game is for you.

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