Game Review - My Time at Portia

Game Review: My Time At Portia by Pathea Games
Score: +7/Fail

Start a new life in the enchanting town of Portia! Restore your Pa's neglected workshop to its former glory by fulfilling commissions, growing crops, raising animals, and befriending the quirky inhabitants of this charming post-apocalyptic land!

I got My Life At Portia for free during a short promotional period at Epic Games. It has huge potential to be a thoroughly immersive and enjoyable game you can devote a lot of time to. It largely succeeds at creating a living town experience, where you have relationships, a job (business), a social life, and much more. In short, you have a "life" -- something that MMO's have been trying to do since forever but somehow fail miserably despite (or because) it has actual real players populating the game world.

And yet, tragically, because of one little mistake -- it falls flat.

I actually love the game. Or the potential of it. But the game refuses to let me actually enjoy it.

+6 So many different features to like here, including

• Crafting - Simple with not too many steps to clutter it.
• Socialization - It makes common sense to talk to people and helps with the life-immersion experience. And it's not heavily front-loaded into a quick grind for quick results and being quickly "finished socializing" with each character.
• Exploration - Interesting locations and lore you steadily discover. And there's so much more to uncover and discover as you get deeper into the game.
• Ambiance - Charming, positive, atmosphere and art direction based on Hayao Miyazaki anime.
• Non-player characters have their own schedules and activities, and not just a job tending a counter for players to buy something. For example you might see the running club just heading back to the town fountain after their morning run; or a family head home and sit down for dinner together. Some early games like Ultima IV had living world details like this, but most games nowadays don't think players will notice or care -- except they do, in the proper genre.
• Quests that aren't simply "make this and turn it in" or "go there kill this" but advance your world lore and relationships with non-player characters.

+ Seasonal events help this single-player game capture what has traditionally been one done mostly by online multiplayer games where they have "events" to bring you back to the game for a special limited time. Just like in the real world, events throughout the year break up the monotony of life -- what in the gaming experience is roughly translates to as "grind". And by tying in the events with the community, lore, and world of Portia they further help bring the living world to life.

Fail Nevertheless Portia has one great failing, and that is the pacing. The game feels so rushed all the time that the pace completely ruins all the fun that's available. The pace at which each day progresses is so fast that you end up literally rushing through everything -- not having the time to actually enjoy all the features.

For example, early in the game you will encounter Fishing Day.

• Unless you read spoilers ahead of time, you won't know it's coming and that you need to get lots of bait -- Which can take a remarkable amount of time, especially since each day zooms to night so quickly.
• And then on the actual day, you have to breathlessly run over to the competition site from the time you jump out of bed or you simply won't get there on time.
• Then you get three rounds of competition, but only if you start very early (pretty much at the start of the event) to squeeze them in.

Even if we are not focussing on specific calendar events, even mundane things like exploring a ruin for materials and adventure become a rush.

• First, you are forced to buy a weekly pass to enter the ruin, so you are now subtly pressured to optimize your time and resources by spending the whole week doing just the ruin. (Why not just break it up into a day pass?)
• Even just trying to use up your daily allotment of activity (represented by your Stamina) will probably tick time past midnight (but magically you still go to bed and wake up 7am sharp).
• Finally, you really don't have much time during a day to even look around a ruin, much less wander the area outside of town or socialize with a few people before the sun goes down.
• And all this while you're also supposed to be working your business and following the story.

If the progress of a day were tied to the percentage of Stamina you've spent so far, that would be a great start to slowing things down so that players can actually enjoy the game.