My Time at Portia Xbox review: A lovely mashup of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing

My Time at Portia is a unique take on the life-sim genre, assuasive you to build up a local concern on the ruins of a high-tech civilization (probably our civilisation). In a world where the use of loftier-tech gadgetry is frowned upon, you arrive in Portia with the deed to your father'south rundown workshop and neglected lands. Similarly to other games in the genre, your job is to tidy the place up, rebuild and restore the workshop to its former glory, fulfilling commerce orders from the local township, farming and selling crops, and much more than.

My Time at Portia is expected to launch on April sixteen, 2022, and for fans of games similar Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, it'due south well worth a wait.

A chill life sim

My Time at Portia

$30

Lesser line: My Time at Portia is a relaxing game, once you lot get by the frustration of learning its systems.

Pros

Bonny fine art
Tons to practise and run across
Addictive

Cons

Systems are hard to unpack
Clunky controls and menus
Janky engine

What you'll dear nigh My Fourth dimension at Portia

My Fourth dimension at Portia has some bonny presentation, with vibrant colors, charming music, and a pleasant cartoon aesthetic. Gear up in the city of "Portia," the game is, perhaps somewhat ironically, postal service-apocalyptic, built atop the ruins of an ancient, high-tech culture. The citizens of Portia live a simple life, albeit aided to some degree with the tech of the past, deciphering bits and pieces from fragments of technological relics buried in ancient tombs and dungeons. After creating your graphic symbol and heading to the metropolis, you receive the deed to your begetter's workshop, setting up a business organization to provide the local townsfolk with your services every bit a carpenter and designer.

My Fourth dimension at Portia
Publisher \| Squad 17
Developer \| Pathea Games
File size \| two.six GB
Genre \| RPG / Simulation
Age-rating \| For ages 10 and upwardly
Players \| Single-role player
Platforms \| Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC
Cost \| $29.99

My Time at Portia's inviting aesthetic is betrayed somewhat by its depth and complexity, although that'south not necessarily a bad thing. At the beginning, yous're bombarded with tons of options for things to practise, achieve, and explore, including abased ruins that can be mined for ores, structure tables for filling orders from the local townspeople, and wide open areas full of quirky characters to talk to.

My Time at Portia incorporates systems and features from many other games. You can fully build and customize your dwelling, upgrading the size to arrange more machinery and farming planters for harvesting and selling crops. The game also has an quondam school Warcraft-style talent tree, with 3 columns of skills to upgrade your character every bit you level up. Y'all tin can specialize in gathering and crafting, social systems, or combat, and besides gear up with new weapons and armor to improve your chances in the game'south dungeons.

The game'southward sizable map is divide into a desert surface area, a grassy plains surface area, and a marsh area, with a few other supporting locations for budding explorers. It's upward to you lot how you want to progress through the game since most of the activities yield experience points (EXP). You tin fish, hunt, and cook, as well as hunt monsters in the local surface area. Almost everything yields some grade of crafting materials, from kick trees to rummaging around in animal dung (seriously), and learning where to find all of these magical objects forms part of the game's challenge. To upgrade through the game, you'll have to earn enough coin (or "Gols," in game), besides equally the corresponding crafting materials throughout.

Upgrading and building your dream workshops and farms is fun and addictive, alongside the game's many side objectives, like building relationships with the local townsfolk, and furnishing and customizing your abode, but the game has a few bug.

What you'll dislike about the My Time at Portia

The game runs at around 30 frames per 2nd (FPS) and is quite stable, across a relatively large open world expanse with many interior locations to explore. However, it's not the most polished game, lacking a 4K Xbox 1 10 patch, with crude animations and collision mechanics. Targeting and attacking but doesn't feel that bully, then it's probably a good thing that the emphasis isn't on gainsay prowess. Withal, the game feels like information technology actively fights confronting you every bit you try to thumb through its menus, some of which oddly utilize d-pad directions for choosing items, rather than the standard "A" button. It seems as though the game was ported very rapidly from PC, without much thought given every bit to how it might handle with a controller.

Those familiar with these types of games probably aren't strangers to grinding, only Portia takes this to fatiguing extremes. The game will often give you quests for stuff y'all tin't yet create, and the whereabouts of the reagents to create them are either hard to track down or are simply unavailable due to requiring upgraded facilities.

Which, by the mode, likewise require exotic and elusive reagents, or have to be performed via buildings in the boondocks rather than inside your firm. The game allows yous to upgrade and move around certain facilities in your base, but others take to be washed so from a shop in town. It's frustrating having to run between areas to perform the same tasks, having to annotation down all the crafting materials y'all need. Many aspects of the game in this surface area could have been streamlined.

The complexity might give it a level of depth that some fans appreciate, but for others who but want to chill, Portia feels needlessly aggressive in its overlapping crafting complexities, which go far across many similar games in the genre. I am a fan of games with a heavy emphasis on crafting, only even I establish My Time at Portia to be a fleck of a slow grind.

None of these complaints are what I'd phone call deal-breakers, however. And if you're a fan of learning your way through complex crafting systems, My Time at Portia's complexity might even be appealing to you.

Should you buy My Fourth dimension at Portia?

My Time at Portia won't do enough to sell you on the genre if heavyweights similar Stardew Valley oasis't already. While going 3D literally adds another dimension, the game's clunky menus and systems detract from the fun of building, crafting, and selling, but the general gameplay, dungeons, art fashion, characters, and light-hearted storylines are enough to make the early confusion worth suffering through.

My Time at Portia could use some polish to meliorate things like menus, positioning objects, and cursor positioning with a controller, but once you get used to its idiosyncrasies, it's a relaxing and rewarding experience.

Build a community

My Time at Portia

Rebuild your father'due south workshop legacy

$30

My Fourth dimension at Portia puts a fun spin on the life-sim genre, but it could do with a few post-launch polish patches.

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