Garden Story (Switch eShop) Review
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Games are often about escapism, and Garden Story offers another way to lose yourself in the virtual world: the protagonist hero is a grape, charged with great purpose. Concord (see what they did there) is nothing more than a young man, ripped from kindergarten to fill the role of guardian after his predecessor decides to leave town, a role that will require them to defeat the insidious Rot that has infested the land. .
The Grove, where Concord lives, is divided into four seasonal towns: Spring Hamlet, Summer Bar, Autumn Town, and Winter Glade, but Rot has affected each of these towns differently, and you’ll have to visit each of them. to repair the damage that rot has caused.
You see, Garden Story may lure you in with its Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley aesthetic, but this game about community and saving the world turns out to be an RPG in farm simulator clothes.
Little Concord can unlock and upgrade different weapons, from the standard sword-shaped pickaxe to the wide-area-of-effect hammer to the dowsing rod, which serves as both a fishing pole and a ranged weapon. The potion system is also relatively complex, with different types of “Dew” offering various benefits in addition to healing some of your HP, and even different bottles that vary in both the time it takes to use them and the amount of Dew they need. can hold on.
The skill tree is also unique: instead of allowing Concord to gain permanent upgrades or level up through experience, Concord will unlock “Memories” and “slots” in which to save them. Memories are linked to Guardians of the Past and are usually something like “Drinking [flavour] Spray 10 times “or” Defeat 25 slimes “, and there’s also a bonus for discovering each guardian’s grave. You can change them at any time, some will help you find rare materials, which are used to upgrade tools and spray bottles. , and others will add additional health or stamina points to your various bars.
The quest system is quite similar to Stardew Valley’s “Help Wanted” requests: Every morning, two or three new quests are added daily to the village bulletin board. These are drawn from a list of many and divided into three categories: defeating monsters, fixing things, and gathering resources. Each of these has its own experience bar – completing the requests will earn you XP on each one, and leveling up will unlock new monsters and new tools in the village. They can get a bit repetitive, but at that point, you’ll probably be level enough not to bother with them anyway.
At the end of each village quest, you will have to complete a dungeon crawl and fight the boss at the end. Each dungeon has a different theme – one city dungeon is a sewer with a Rotberg problem, another is a bookworm chewing on a library, and while the first boss is MILES tougher than the rest, they were all pretty fun. However, the riddles in the dungeons were consistently difficult. Or maybe we just aren’t smart.
Grahm Nesbitt’s soundtrack, which plays in the background as you explore, is wildly sunny, jam-packed, and enjoyable, and it fits alongside Stardew like something we’d hear in the bathroom (we promise, it’s a big compliment. We like the music of the bathroom ). And the game, as you can see from the screenshots, is lovely, as long as you are a fan of its art style; there’s a lot of adorable attention to detail, and the color palette is designed exactly for people on the go.
But the main problem with Garden Story, like many RPGs, is that it sells out too quickly. Once you get to a certain point, maybe the third or fourth city, you’ll probably find that the weapons you use the most are completely level, and you can’t be bothered to do the grinding necessary to level up the others. in case. Enemies never get much more difficult, despite more interesting and challenging variations appearing; You’ll probably have enough HP at that point (and stacks of bottles full of Dew) so you can fight your way through with a tank.
The “Memories” you have equipped are likely locked too – it’s much more useful to have two extra HP and a faster Stamina recharge than to have a smaller buff that triggers when you drink a specific type of spray, so the fun de The reorganization of your character structure is significantly reduced due to the unevenness of Memories.
And while we love many of the Garden Story systems, abhorred The inventory. Of all the things you can level up, why not Concord’s pockets? Instead, players are limited to 25 slots (in a resource-heavy game) and items no stack. However, they are stacked in the village inventory, a box that can be found throughout the map, where Concord can keep his extras. They only stack to 15 though, which is a bit arbitrary, especially when you’re trying to gather 15 of something for an update and 8 of the same for something else.
This, in a nutshell, is our second great grape Complain to Garden Story – You have some really clever and unique ideas, and then you end up blaming them with little reason. The building / crafting system is great, but it’s limited to VERY specific areas on the map, and it’s mostly decorative. Likewise, the clothing system is completely cosmetic, it even says “cosmetic only” on everything, including backpacks (WHY). Plus, there are items you get that, as far as we know, end up with almost no use, which feels like a missed opportunity.
The quest system, which forms most of your daily activities, must be accessed from the message board, and it’s hard to remember where they are as the map won’t tell – a problem that comes up later with fast travel. and other points of interest. And the day / night cycle, which seems like an incentive to get things done and then leave before the monsters of the terrifying night appear, ends up being a bit toothless when you discover that the night It never ends, and therefore there is no rush like Harvest Moon to get home before passing out.
But. BUT. All this just complaining Really it sets when you’ve been playing, as we have, for hours every night. To be honest, we were totally addicted. Sure, it’s frustrating to get stuck due to gathering material, but there’s a lot more to do once things open up. Gardening, fishing, fighting, talking to villagers – Garden Story may be a little sketchy, but it makes up for it in breadth.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to finish the game completely. We made it to the last boss fight before a fatal mistake brought us back to the Switch board; we’re pretty sure the next patch will fix that. However, the fact that we went this far and enjoyed about 85% of what the game had to offer is still worth a lot. As a comfy old sweater that has a couple of holes in it, we can’t help but love Garden Story despite the strange imperfection.
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