Hometown Story

Quick to pick up but difficult to master, Hometown Story's a tough sell but will yield an investment of enjoyable, quick play sessions if you're patient.

Hometown Story’s attempts at setting up an involving store management game end up falling in a tiresome, repetitive and often difficult to understand challenge, where the rules are not clear and where aspects which are logic in everyday life gain a completely illogical dimension in the game. While the beginning may be alluring enough to bring some players in, the game will quickly wear out those with higher expectations.

With more polish, Hometown Story could have been a worthy successor to Harvest Moon, but sadly the final product doesn't come close to matching the highs of that famous franchise.

Hometown Story is charming on first glance, but there are a lot of problems that overshadow it.

It's charming, mind you, but it still boggles my mind how Yasuhiro Wada, the mind behind the brilliant Harvest Moon, managed to make this boring a game.

More of a game for your younger sister than you, Hometown Story pales in comparison to the many 'life simulation' games already in the market. In many ways, it's a bare-bones version of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, stripped of all its zaniness and sly negotiations. Hometown Story isn't necessarily bad but given the price tag that it commands, I'm unwilling to recommend it. More deserving games are waiting for your money.

To be honest, I have a difficult time even calling Hometown Story a game, as its gameplay mechanics have almost nothing to do with its progression. Without a massive overhaul of how progression in the game works, it would probably have been better served as a visual novel, and even then, it would have been a pretty poor one.

its not as good as the harvest moon games, but it's still fun and addicting. The only problems i have with it is that you'll find yourself running out of things to do and get bored of it, and like everyone else says, the camera really ****. other than that i feel as if it's a very solid game! with a great map and fun characters.

This game throws you right into the mix of owning your own shop without any sort of guidance on how to exactly do that. You are in a tough place trying to decide if you want to sell your product or develop your relationship with others, and evemoreso how to go about helping the town grow and flourish. If you are diehard Harvest Moon fan, you will find this system a bit clunky compared to the series, but with a little paitence it fufills the same needs of relationship development and shopkeeping maintence that makes the series warm and fun. Give it a chance, but do not go into the game with too high of expectations. This is a new series, and it has minimal simularities with the farming counterpart. Having an open mindset will help you to enjoy this new gameplay adventure that has expanded from the farming fun of Harvest Moon.

A very empty game. There is an option to leave your store, but you can't have it be closed while you're out, so customers will show up anyway and be dissatisfied. There is no dating option like HM (Although the Blue Feather is still here) only friendships, and the characters aren't actually that interesting. To get certain events requires specific conditions that you're going to need a wiki pulled up to know. Other than stocking your store with a small variety of inventory there's not much to do and you will get bored fast

It's just boring, interaction is minimal, who befriends people by selling them things?! There is no point in talking to them. The only good thing is the art, that is the thing that made me buy it but is just plain bad.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]