Review

[Witosław]

Initial interest

It's an interesting situation because at the beginning I found out about "My time at Sandrock", which was announced. When I first saw this game, I became interested in it. We have a fantastic and post-apocalyptic atmosphere of the game and and this in nice 3D graphics. When I started researching this game I noticed that it had mechanics similar to Stardew Valley. That's why I decided to buy this game.

In-game activities

In this game you can: collect raw material, mine raw material, unique resources and relics in the mine, create resources, build structures, complete orders, make friends and romance with the locals, make an appointment, play mini games, catch fish, take part in festivals, grow plants, breed animals, deliver repaired relics and rare fish to the museum (but it must be built first) and fight monsters.

The features that caught my attention the most

+ This is the type of game in which our character takes on the role of a constructor.
+ the game also has a storyline with main and side missions that allow us to develop our character.
+ the meeting system is very well done. You can plan when and where the meeting will take place and choose the most interesting places to spend time.
+ A huge number of NPCs that are not generated by the game. I was surprised that there is a game where there will be many residents who have their own story and give our characters side quests and requests. Moreover, almost half of the inhabitants are also marriage candidates.
+ The order system is a mechanic that allows you to place orders with a company to deliver common raw materials that are easy to collect or mine to the workshop. To use this option, you need to advance the game's storyline and have plenty of money to extend orders. Additionally, it is possible of expanding the company to supply more raw materials. This idea is brilliant!

> the combat system is interesting, but not entirely well executed. Our character can fight and avoid opponents' blows (which is almost like in Dark Souls). You can also challenge one of the residents to a duel. You can also fight bosses in the game. Unfortunately, there are also moments that, in my opinion, should not be in this game, such as: The blows dealt by our character can temporarily throw opponents off balance and interrupt their attacks. If an opponent has a slow attack, they won't hit at all because our character is constantly keeping tche off balance. Some weapons are poorly made, for example: great war hammers. Our character with such a weapon performs slow blows, but they unbalance almost all opponents for a very long time, so long that the opponents are unable to perform a given action at all, in addition, this weapon has a wild charge similar to swords. Not only are our character's attacks broken, enemies also have broken attacks, such as: "Flame Variant" has a lazy flamethrower attack and constantly faces our character, and cannot be knocked off balance while using the flamethrower. "Chief Honcho" one of the boss's attacks is lightning fast and has too big hitboxes, and "Sasquatch" has one of his attacks that has an absurdly large hitboxes. Initially we get quite well-made opponents, but later we will get increasingly worse-made opponents. You cannot save the game at any point. If our character loses a fight, he teleports to his home or away from the opponents with full HP, leaving the opponents unchanged. Additionally, when we fight against regular opponents, bosses or antagonists, regardless of the location, only one music always accompanies us in combat.

> There are dangerous ruins in the game where the player can take on a challenge and receive a reward for completing it. The rewards are unfortunately a bit low and the time the challenge takes is large. The first time we get unique items and resources, but if you repeat the challenge, you will get less resources and no unique items. There are also failure limits for challenges and if our character exceeds the failure limit, the challenge is considered a failure and the game throws the player's character out of the ruins.
An interesting but rather weak idea. In my opinion, I would remove challenges and add free exploration (just like in the mines) in search of, for example, unique resources or raw materials.Additionally, the deeper you explore the ruins, the more resources or raw materials you will acquire and the stronger enemies you will encounter. It would be nice if every now and then at the "Civil Corps" headquarters there was a quest related to dangerous ruins, in which you have to, for example, defeat a boss in the ruins. For completing the task you can receive greater rewards than in the tasks from the "Commerce Guild".
> I'm not a fan of this idea with voice actors. It's nice when game developers add the ability for characters to say their own lines, but I think it's a risky idea because in some cases, characters don't say their own lines or the voice actors change
> A lot of things weren't cleaned up after the game's release. I'm talking about models and textures that were created for the first version of the game, i.e. "The Flying Pigs and the Skyshark Pirates", which was supposed to be a completely different game. Instead of changing these models and textures, the developers left it as is. Sam, Arlo, and Remington were supposed to be pilots. Oaks was supposed to be a hunter. The most unchanged character is Paulie, who was supposed to be the main antagonist. He has the "Skyshark Pirates" logo on his shirt, and if you look closely at his portrait, you can see he has a weapon.
> I'm not a fan of the leveling system. If the game had an option to scale enemies or let the player decide when to add their character's stats, that would be fine, but in this game the system automatically increases our character's stats without our consent. Because of this, statistics determine how many mistakes a player can make in combat and how many hits they can land on an opponent. Because the combat system is poorly executed, I didn't feel the impact of the leveling system.

What do I think about the action in the game's plot?

Placing the action in the plot is a very difficult challenge when dealing with games of the "Cozy Life" genre. Pathea took on this challenge and created a game that had the most action in the "Cozy Life" genre, competing with the "Rune Factory" series, which also belongs to these genres. Pathea has also added cutscene and antagonists to the game, so expectations are higher. The beginning of the story is good. Our character meets locals residents, completes tasks, solves problems, and defeats minor antagonists and bosses (this is also the stage where well-made opponents appear). There was also one setback, when our character defeats the first antagonist and and comes out of his hideout, we can see a cutscene in which the "Civil Corps" is hostile towards our character! I don't understand what purpose this was supposed to serve and why the game developers put this animation in a cutscene. Continuing the game's plot, we unlock the desert (here we have worse created opponents), we solve the boss problem in the cave, explore the ruins and discover the main goal of our character. Now that we have the main goal, the game developers also had to add the game's main antagonist, who is supposed to cause very big problems. And the word "very big problems" means that the main antagonist is too exaggerated. The game's creators decided that the antagonist would always defeat our character and the "Civil Corps", regardless of the players' experience and skills. I really don't like it when game developers start using my character for stupid actions, and then I watch my character lose the fight or get captured in stupid or unexplained ways! And I understand that it has to be consistent with the game's plot, but the game creators need to add some alternative results of the duel to these events, that my character actually has, for example, a combat mastery level and almost defeats the main antagonist, but he quickly runs away, and it's not like there's only one result: the main antagonist always defeats our character! Sounds absurd. At the end we have the final battle with the main antagonist. The game creators decided to raise the level of impressions of this mission, but I think it didn't help and only made the impressions of this mission worse. Do you remember that the main antagonist always defeats our character? Yes, they used it in this mission too! I thought it couldn't get any worse, but the game's creators decided to make the plot even worse. The final battle with the main antagonist is not the final mission! In the Final Mission, our character must build a very complex structure that requires hard to find raw materials and resources. To get from the final battle to the final mission, you need to complete several main missions.


I consider the challenge that Pathea took on to be a partial failure. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the developers had a small budget and a small number of specialists needed to create the game. Additionally, the requirements for the challenge were very high. I also have to criticize the idea of ​​a final battle that does not end the game's plot, something like that should not be in the game! It does not give satisfaction, only frustration. The beginning of the action in the story is good, but the ending is horrible!

To sum up

I really liked this game. I got something completely different from the typical "Cozy Life" games. Instead of focusing on farming, I focused on creating structures for missions and commissions. In addition, there are also main and side missions, so I wanted to stay with this game as long as possible. But as you can see, there are also things that I didn't like, such as the combat system that should be improved, and the action in the story that should be changed a bit (“the final battle that doesn’t end the game’s story” is, in my opinion, the worst idea ever created by game developers). But other than that I have to agree that it's a really good game that was meant to be a completely different game. Pathea did a good job changing and creating the game.

[Sstavix]

Good job with the review! I would disagree about your assertion of the combat, though. Since it is a cozy life sim, the combat should be fairly simple. The target audience doesn't really want to deal with complicated controls or techniques, especially with the main function of the game to be building machines and socializing with the residents of the village. There are some weak points to the game, but in my opinion the combat system isn't one of them. It is about on par with what I expect from the genre.

[Witosław]

I know what you mean, it's all about keeping your opponents off balance. I said that there are opponents who are constantly thrown off balance and they need to be fixed. However, you claim that this is necessary to make the game easier for its intended players. It's hard for me to say, because I'm the type of player that focuses on a difficult fight and since you say it's more of a hindrance than a help to the target players, then I'd have to agree with you. In my experience, the combat system is so bad that I had to make the combat easier while playing.

[BattlePlayer2024]

Great

[chrisbamb]

I'm still pretty sure that you just don't get what a cozy game is meant to be. It's meant to be COZY, not Skyrim or Fallout. The combat is secondary to everything else that is part of a cozy game.

[Witosław]

I understood two topics in this comment

1. "My time at Portia" must be a "Cozy Life" game - This is a nonsensical topic, of course this game has to be in the "Cozy Life" genre. This genre of games with combat elements cannot contain scenes of violence like in Skyrim or Fallout.

2. Combat is secondary - so according to you we count it as an additional activity. And from what I understand, additional activities in this game include.: catch fish, grow plants, breed animals and deliver repaired relics and rare fish to the museum.

If you say so, what activities do you need to take to complete the main storyline of this game?

I am waiting for your reply

[chrisbamb]

I'm not going to bother because I believe I and many, many others have given you multiple responses on the topic in other Forums and yet you continue to bang the same drum.

[Witosław]

So why did you write this comment, and in a review that didn't fit? Why do you want to forcefully explain to me that this fight is not the main activity in this game? Some players treat it as their main activity, while others treat it as a side activity. I might as well write in the review what I think about fishing in this game.
I learn from my mistakes and I know that I shouldn't write pointless comments and lead discussions that do nothing anyway and only piss off players. Your comment makes no sense. Is the game supposed to be cozy? It's cozy. Is the fight secondary? For yous it may be, but others treat it as first-rate.

Sorry for the little argument in the comments, but I hope you understand.

[chrisbamb]

That's just it though. Players who play these type of games don't really care about the combat aspect. Yes, it is a necessity for completing the game but it's also the reason why it ISN'T like Skyrim, etc because the demographic for these type of games does not want fighting.

This has been explained to you (especially in the multiple threads about combat you created in the Sandrock Forums) by virtually everyone who plays these type of games.

Yet, despite this, you continue your 1 person campaign about the combat system. You get blocked by people and people leaving snarky comments BECAUSE you keep banging the drum about it, even though people have explained it frequently to you. You keep saying that you have learned from past experiences, yet here you are again doing exactly the same thing.

You frequently bash the Developers of the game who have poured love into their games and continued to develop their games after completion. This part for me is especially despicable of you when there are thousands of Developers out there who release a LOT of unfinished games, abandonware, etc.

Comment back all you want, but this will be my last word to you on this subject.

[Shneekey]

Here's my take: Is the combat system good? No, it isn't. Should it be? Ehh... that's an interesting question, actually. Let's dive into this, shall we?

Our viewpoint character, for all that it is something of a blank slate to project onto, has a history and something of a backstory already. Your character is a builder. Not a soldier, not an assassin, and not the sort of 'courier' whose job description includes 'getting this package through Fiend territory'. In short, your character may know how to look after themselves generally speaking, but they're not a highly trained combatant. So it stands to reason that their combat style is... simplistic.

They can hold their own against other citizens of a relatively peaceful area. If they work at it, they can even hold their own against members of the local militia, after training in hazardous ruins to obtain necessary materials. But that only gets you so far. The difference between a skilled brawler and a trained professional is... significant. And the Builder is definitely the former, not the latter.

Sandrock, for all their attempt at revamping the combat system, didn't really change much. Sure, you have four different weapon types, which means you have variations in reach and attack speed. You also have a couple of extra ranged weapons that are at least somewhat functional. However, they didn't fix the jank inherent in the combat system. Because again, your character is a Builder, not a Soldier, and certainly not a Knight.

Combat is mandatory in the game, yes. But that doesn't mean your character has to be any good at it. Sometimes, it is good to highlight the flaws of a character along with their strengths.

[chrisbamb]

Very well put. That sums up the combat in the game perfectly and that is how it is meant to be in a game like this - secondary.

However, the OP will still bleat on about how they want a system that's on a par with Skyrim or Elden Ring, etc.

[Witosław]

I must admit that you gave me difficult comments to explain, but I will try to answer something anyway

You know what? I really don't understand you. First there was a topic about combat as an additional activity, and now we have a topic about our character related to the game's plot. I already wrote in my review what I think about this game. I do not want to discuss any longer whether this is a main or additional activity. As for our character, do you really want him to be dependent on the game's plot? So he constantly loses to the game's main antagonist because the game's plot dictates so? Because I don't.

[Shneekey]

Originally posted by Witosław:

I must admit that you gave me difficult comments to explain, but I will try to answer something anyway

You know what? I really don't understand you. First there was a topic about combat as an additional activity, and now we have a topic about our character related to the game's plot. I already wrote in my review what I think about this game. I do not want to discuss any longer whether this is a main or additional activity. As for our character, do you really want him to be dependent on the game's plot? So he constantly loses to the game's main antagonist because the game's plot dictates so? Because I don't.

Why not? It's a fairly common literary trope. It's not like this is a self-insert power fantasy isekai story, after all. You're allowed to lose at combat when combat is not the focus of who you are.

Also, the Knight isn't the game's 'main antagonist'. He is an antagonist for a brief section of the main plot, at best.