Likewise, the clothing system is entirely cosmetic - it even says "cosmetic only" on everything, including backpacks (WHY). The building/crafting system is cool, but it's limited to VERY specific areas on the map, and it's mostly decorative. This, in a nutshell, is our second major grape gripe with Garden Story: it has some really neat and unique ideas, and then ends up kneecapping them with little reason. The enemies never really get massively harder, despite more interesting and challenging variations turning up you'll probably have enough HP by that point (and stacks of bottles brimming with Dew) that you can just tank your way through. Once you reach a certain point, maybe the third or fourth town in, you'll likely find that the weapons you use most are fully levelled up, and you can't be bothered to do the grinding necessary to level up the other ones just in case. And the game - as you can see in the screenshots - is lovely, as long as you're partial to its art style there's a lot of adorable attention to details, and the colour palette is pitched exactly right for the relaxation crowd.īut Garden Story's main issue - like a lot of RPGs - is that it runs out of steam a little too quickly. Grahm Nesbitt's soundtrack, which pootles along in the background as you explore, is earwormily sunny, jammy, and pleasant, slotting right in alongside Stardew as something we'd listen to in the bath (we promise, that's high praise. The dungeon puzzles were consistently hard, though. Each dungeon is differently themed - one town's dungeon is a sewer with a Rotberg problem, another is a Bookworm chewing through a library - and although the first boss is MILES harder than the rest, they were all quite fun. They can get a little repetitive, but by that point, you'll probably be levelled up enough not to bother with them anyway.Īt the end of each village's quest, you'll have to complete a dungeon crawl, and fight the boss at the end. Each one of these has its own experience bar - completing the requests will earn you XP in each one, and levelling them up will unlock new monsters and new tools in the village. These are pulled from a list of many, and divided into three categories: defeating monsters, fixing things, and gathering resources. The quest system is actually quite similar to Stardew Valley's "Help Wanted" requests: every morning, two or three new daily quests are added to the village noticeboard. You can switch these around at any time - some will help you find rare materials, used for upgrading tools and Dew bottles, and others will add extra Stamina or health points to your various bars. The memories are tied to past Guardians, and usually are something along the lines of "Drink Dew 10 times" or "Defeat 25 Slimes", and there's a bonus one for discovering the grave of each Guardian, too. The skill tree is unique, too: rather than letting Concord gain permanent upgrades or levelling up through experience, Concord will instead unlock "Memories" and "slots" in which to keep them. The potion system is relatively complex, too, with different types of "Dew" that offer various buffs as well as 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 can hold. Little Concord can unlock and upgrade different weapons, from the standard sword-like Pick to the wide area-of-effect Hammer and the Dowsing Rod, which serves as both a fishing rod and a ranged weapon.
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