Recent reviews by Dyne

I came across this from a Youtuber who played the early part of it and it piqued my interest. This is a game where the simple artstyle doesn't detract from the game in the slightest. From a jungle full of monkeys to a desert with shrews, there are plenty of places to see in this enjoyable, but not very difficult Metroidvania. This is a fantastic starting point for a more casual gamer who is new to the genre. If I had to state a couple of gripes with the game, it's that the English translation has some grammatical errors/misspellings along the way, but given that the dev team are not native English speakers and that obtaining some of the items to contribute to the museum can be a bit of a grind.

With a few hours left in the special promotion as I write this, at under $20, it's a great bargain!

Decidedly Mixed

So, I picked this up for about $11 a few weeks ago and despite the huge amount of time into it, I'm really mixed. Is it worth full price?

Pros:
-Enjoyable music
-Customization doesn't cost energy as with other games of this type
-Charming characters
-Not a particularly hard game, which is great if you prefer casually gaming
-Really charming minigame in the form of Tarrott Monster

Cons:
-Up until the midgame, it's a bit of a grind - in this game, you have 9 different tasks that you level up by performing that task. On top of that, you only have a finite amount of energy each day, so up until the midgame, there's a bit of weighing which thing to focus on
-Speaking of hobbies, you unlock a shop that allows you to only boost six of the 9 abilities, the other three you'll have to grind out
-Once you unlock the last area, which is done by returning books to a library the game runs out of steam, unless you want to go for the achievements - as I write this, I have about 85% of them unlocked and there's no real usage for having to mine 6000 times since you'll probably have a fully completed town by then
-The game mentions that you can help out your townspeople, but what's not mentioned is that in order to complete a segment of the game, You have to help out one of your townspeople in order to get an item that aids with completion - to alleviate this, perhaps mention could have been made regarding that? Even the villagers mentioning this would have went a long way
-Speaking of the townspeople, aside from helping them with building requests and quests, it would have been nice for them to help out in the town in some fashion or be useful while hanging out with them
-Once you hit Level 99 in a hobby, depending on said hobby, you get an item that seems like a reward, but is largely useless
-Quest rewards aren't that worthwhile - given the effort, you'll get either 50 or 100 Dewdrops (the currency of the game) - there is a completion bar at the bottom of the Quest board; when filled up, you will get anywhere between 1-3 chests in your town that will contain an item to use in the Casino or the aforementioned 50-100 Dewdrops
-See an item that you really want, but short on cash? Unless you play the casino and earn Dewdrops that way or explore one of the game's two dungeons in the hopes of getting enough chests with enough Dewdrops, you'll have to go to town, sell items, and wait until the next in-game day to receive Dewdrops. Did I mention that some of the shops rotate their items? Later, you get access to a kitchen, where you can create dishes for money, but this has the same drawback as selling items

So, to answer the question above, without some tweaks to the flow of the game and/or some new content, I can't really recommend it as is. But, you'll say, you have 70 hours, so if you have this many complaints, what kept bringing you back? Despite my gripes above, I did initially enjoy the relaxed pace of the game, but the grind served no purpose in the end.