This is overall a great game, I recommend everyone to give it a go, the best chilled out crafting game I've ever played. Loving every moment of it. The game has great visuals, a good storyline, character interactions are repetitive but enough to be acceptable, the gameplay is slow paced and long, making sure you get good value for your money and so you don't complete it in a few hours, The mechanics of the missions and the commissions are rewarding and very addictive.
I got this game from Humble Bundle a while back, I'll be playing way over 100h+ and getting all achievements, Great value. 10/10

My Time at Portia begins when you unexpectedly inherit Pa’s workshop on the mysterious island of Portia. Now, it’s up to you to fix up the house, get your builder’s license, and help the townsfolk improve the town and their lives. It’s set sometime after an apocalypse wiped out the previous civilization, but that part is quite vague. It really only comes up when you speak to members of the Church of Light or with the researchers, who have opposing views on past technology that you may find buried in the local ruins.

Visuals

My Time at Portia looks pretty good. It’s not as crisp or vibrant as I would have liked, but it certainly doesn’t look bad. The scenery is a vaguely European seaside village, and doesn’t look to special or inspired. The map is fairly large though, so there is a lot to explore. I do wish the town had more hints to its post-apocalyptic setting. As it is, it just looks like any other farming simulator.

The character models really grew on me. When I was creating my character, I wasn’t too impressed. But once I got into the game, I started to really like them, There’s a decent about of diversity among the residents’ style and appearance which is nice. The animals are also adorable and varied from the pink cats to the giant Mr. Ladybugs!

Sound Effects + Music

The background music in My Time at Portia is alright. There definitely aren’t enough tracks though, as I immediately noticed the loop in my short first play session. The music also abruptly cuts off whenever there’s a load screen. I’m not sure what could been done about that, but I know in other games the music either continues or fades out, not simply muting.

Gameplay + Controls

My Time at Portia is a life simulator with RPG elements. The focus is heavily on collecting and crafting. Collecting is easy enough as collectible materials are laid out around the map and sparkle when you approach. Other items can be collected by interacting with the environment such as trees, large rocks, the ruins, and fishing. There are a ton of materials and items to collect. Even on my first day my inventory was full to bursting!

Crafting is extremely involved and I like that. You don’t just walk up to your workbench with the required materials, select what you want to make, and make it instantly. Well, that is how it works for the workbench, but you also need a furnace to forge raw materials into other usable forms, and the assembly deck to combine crafted objects into something new.

You don’t get eased into the complications of collected and crafting either. Aside from your first two missions to create basic tools, you’ll immediately have to make a bridge which has several steps to it from collecting the material to making other tools to transforming some materials and eventually crafting the bridge pieces. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but it also forced me to explore and learn right off the bat. No down time in Portia!

My Time at Portia does use an XP and HP system, so you can’t do everything in one day. You use Stamina for every action you perform which limits the amount of activities you can do in one day. I actually never fully depleted my Stamina even though there is a ton to do, mostly because it takes time to get anywhere and figure out what needs to get done. Meanwhile, you’ll earn Experience for each action you take as well, which levels up your character. For each level, you get a skill point which can be used to select upgrades on the rather expansive skill tree.

The game also appears to have a curfew. Time runs differently on Portia. If you’ve played any of The Sims games, you’ll be familiar with the approximately one real world second to one in game minute passage of time. So while it may seem like you have a long day ahead of you, it’s gone in a flash since you’re constantly so busy. However, even if you have more Stamina, the game gives you a warning that it’s late and you need to go home. If you don’t go home and get into bed, you pass out, but just teleport into bed and wake up the next morning, losing about 5 hours of in-game time.

The game only saves when you get into bed, so I can kind of understand it requiring that you head to bed each day so you don’t lose progress. But couldn’t it have implemented periodic autosave or even a manual save button? I don’t like having time stolen from me when I can still get things done. You can’t pull an all-nighter by managing your stamina by eating food, since the game will just send you home.

There are a lot of controls and menus for this game. The basic controls, which are shown through a tutorial, are easy enough (walk, run, jump, attack, pick up). But there were a few times in my first play sessions where I had no idea what to do. Like how do I select an item to use from my accessibly inventory? The tutorial didn’t say and neither did the help tab. I figured it out after pressing every button (it’s the left/right D-pad, you’re welcome). I also didn’t know how to mine, but pressing a few buttons helped there as well. There’s also no way (that I’ve found) to “put away” an item that you’re carrying unless you leave an empty slot and select that. Otherwise, my character was always running around town wielding an axe.

This game really does not hold your hand, focusing on open exploration. Sure, it regularly gives you missions to complete and commissions so you have stable income. But it never tells you exactly where to go or what to do. There will be markers on the map showing you generally where to go to accomplish your current tasks, but it’s up to you to find what you need. By my second in-game week, I had fallen into a nice routine mixed with missions, commissions, and exploration.

One thing that annoyed me from the very beginning was socializing. You can make friends, date, get married, and even have kids in My Time at Portia. That’s all great, except it seems like getting there will be tedious. When you chat with a resident, you get +1 in your relationship, but only once per day. If you try to talk to them again, they say the same exact line. This is very limiting and frustrating. I wound up not focusing on socializing very much. If I saw someone I liked, I’d do the one interaction, but I wouldn’t seek them out each day.

Replayability

My Time at Portia is one of those games that can go on forever past the final mission. Upon starting over, you can have an entirely new experience based on the choices you make. But I don’t think it’s a game that I’d start over when I finish. I’d prefer to just keep going, since those early days are pretty rough.

Overall

I enjoyed my time with My Time at Portia. It didn’t hook me as much as I thought it would, but it’s a fun game to pick up and play a day or two at a time.

A relatively fresh take on a pretty overused concept.
I first played the demo, not really knowing what to expect, and found myself being sucked into the gameplay real quick. It's not really a game that challenges the life simulation genre with new twists and turns but it does offer some features that I didn't know I wanted until I got to experience them. One of these features is the holiday system, I think it's so much more interactive than in games such as Stardew Valley and I liked that they included some holidays I haven't really seen before. I also really appreciate the friendship/dating system that allows you to meet with villagers for a rendezvous and do different activities together or, if you're really close, take them for a ride or walk around town. It made me more interested in befriending others and I always looked forward to these little meetings.
The town feels alive, with NPCs following their daily schedules and having their own little social circles and backstories, I often was surprised by the amount of things I was able to learn about each villager just by talking to them.
The social events and quests are often a delight, though some might feel repetitive, others really challenge you and how much you can produce in your workshop. I was glad to learn that farming is not mandatory in this game because it really is one of my least favourite aspects of any life sim and it's not very fleshed out in this game either.
Personally, I enjoy this game just as much, if not more, as other, well established life sims and if you can get it cheap, you should definitely consider trying it. Now, it's not completely bug free and some gameplay aspects, such as combat and mining, are less desirable in my opinion, but if you're able to overlook these points, you'll have a sweet, fulfilling little game that might end up keeping you busy for months.

I honestly can't believe how much content is in this game. It's amazing. There is SO much to do. Everything is deeper and more compelling than it needs to be - while most games in the genre get away with straight-forward gift-giving as basically the only way to make friends, this game allows you to schedule "dates" to hang out with your friends or romantic interest. While most games in the genre either don't include combat or include fairly straight-forward combat with limited mechanics, this one has something considerably more active than most, with mechanics that rival other indie games that are considerably more combat-focused. And while a game like this could get away with basically no world-building at all, this one has a long history, an apocalypse, and religious schisms. It's just always more than it needs to be, and it's great.

+++ Beautiful artstyle
++ Cheap even when its not on sale
++ Not too demanding on graphics
+ Likeable NPCs
+ DLC Outfit is great

-- Boring level design at mining
- shallow combat

A crafting sim that, to its credit, does try to differentiate from Stardew Valley by focusing on building. There is a bit of a learning curve (I didn't quite grok mining at first) and the game expects you to explore the workbook and menus and sort out an early building strategy, which is fine. Most of the NPCs seem fairly mundane and uninteresting, but I think what kills this one for me is the abundance of crafting timers. I feel like I'm always waiting around to craft the most basic ingredients, only to wait even more after to craft those into something else. If the crux of the game is crafting, early pacing should be determined by ingredient rarity or volume rather than timers.