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Hometown Story

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hs-screenshot-2Approximately nine months after first being launched in North America by Natsume and two months since hitting PAL markets, Hometown Story has finally hit store shelves in Australia and New Zealand thanks to a new partnership between Mindscape and Rising Star Games. While it is unclear if this partnership will be extended to cover all future releases, it has mean’t that both Hometown Story and Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God (PS Vita) are now available for purchase in the region. While the game has already been de-constructed by other media outlets from its US  launch, I felt like I should put my opinion into the mix.

Hometown Story is a spin-off game from the acclaimed Harvest Moon series, which has provided a proven and entertaining mix of life simulation and farm management gameplay since 1996. Rather than running a farm and then selling your wares through other means, this time you take control of a young boy or girl who have inherited their now deceased grandmothers old store.

hs-screenshot-16Rather than growing crops or raising barnyard animals, your character must modify the story layout, collect items through several different means (From reselling to selling stuff you find on the ground / fish up) and either sell them for money or use them to fulfil requests made by villagers. From there you can improve your characters relationships with the villagers and build up a stockpile of funds which can be used to improve the store or acquire new items to sell for an even greater profit.

As with most Harvest Moon games, there are many unique characters that reside and move into the village as the game progresses. Some of these are potential marriage candidates for your character, some may exclusively be quest / cutscene givers and some may sell supplies which can be used or sold. While they have unique personalities, this does little to change the fact that they are mostly devoid of personality. This is in addition to a sizable cast of NPC characters, each with their own preferences, that come into the store and shop. Therefore you will not simply be left selling wares to the same handful of characters for the entire game. It’s a big ol’ town, and similar to Animal Crossing starts off pretty desolate with lots of empty land. As the days and months pass, more people begin to move into it, meaning that the store traffic can start off slow (Especially when starting off with a single table to sell items on) but will progressively build.

hs-screenshot-26The concepts are simple and all-ages friendly, however grasping all the mechanics may be a challenge with a lack of direction provided in-game and an in-box manual consisting of a single page describing controls. Especially as a game targeted towards a younger market, there really needed to be more guidance to ensure that players can take advantage of everything on offer. After all, just standing around the store waiting for customers to buy something can get boring in less than a minute.

Coupled with events only slowly becoming available for players to enjoy, a frustrating camera that switches angles randomly with no correlation to the direction presented on the bottom-screen map and long periods of time doing nothing, Hometown Story may not offer enough to keep the attention of younger or older gamers for long.

hs-screenshot-30One saving grace to Hometown Story is how well it is designed, featuring cutesy character designs / portraits, a fairly extensive character customization system and considerable potential to customize the store to your liking with a variety of items available to acquire throughout the game. The music is also pretty good, with Square Enix composer Nobuo Uematsu providing a number of the tracks. While the music does get repetitive after a while, it certainly helps pass the time when dealing with everything else that’s repetitive about Hometown Story.

Hometown Story had the potential to offer a brand new “Harvest Moon” experience, but while the production quality was present in the aesthetic department, its gameplay quickly became repetitive and boring very quickly. After an in-game week of playing, I had to force myself to continue playing with an expectation of something new to justify the compilation of dull characters, uninspiring tasks and standing in a store with nothing else to do. Ultimately, nothing eventuated.

With Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley and Story of Seasons set for release in the coming months, you might be better off waiting for either of these two games.

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

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