I waited to play this game because I heard it had issues when it first launched. This review is written in June 2024, after the game has I assume been patched at least once.

While there are some aspects of this game I really liked, other parts of it made it so I wasn't enjoying it as much as I'd hoped by the end.

Pros:
Super cute art style, and really great music. I always love a story that involves helping to rebuild a town/village that's fallen on tough times. Infinite inventory was also super helpful, as well as pretty short game days. Also, petting cats and having a little cat parade behind you!

Cons: if running over a day or two on Xbox, it would start to stutter a lot and I would have to close and reopen the game. Inventory can't really be managed as in rearranging items. You can sort what items show in the page by category, but this feature was always broken the next time I opened the inventory so I would have to go back a page then flip to what I wanted. Following cats got stuck on environment a lot. Aquiring some items, like those that needed to be purchased vs. Foraged was a real dice roll. I once had to sleep through two entire weeks to get out of season flowers to complete a MAIN story goal (I needed spring flowers and got to that story point in fall, there was no way to know beforehand or prep for this. So it was either wait for spring or hope the flower vendor at the market has it.) Some items I gave up and never got, so I didn't finish heart levels for all townsfolk. Heart levels for new townsfolk on the new east side of town didn't show up ever, either. And some folks I couldn't find later, OR for story reasons a character wouldn't be around town but would show up in the night market.

All in all, it was okay. I don't know if the game should have been shorter or longer, to be honest. I'd look forward to more games by this team and hope they got the time and resources/funds they needed to polish it a bit more.

I wanted to like this one more, honestly. I usually love games like this! The slow movement speed was a bit of a pain, but maybe a practice on patience. And I liked exploring different islands, choosing which thing I wanted to do each day even if it felt a bit up in the air. But ultimately what I couldn't handle was the fact that game game would crash at least once while playing it each evening. I don't mind an occasional hiccup in a game but when there's a consistent crashing problem, it's a no go for me. Especially if there's times where you lose progress after the crash. So this one will unfortunately be marked as Abandoned for me.

Shelved for now. A neat game, with really calm vibes. I think the idea of the player being the AI that controls the characters suit and is being directly spoken to is a cool thing, that I've seen in a few of the games I've played lately. Breaking the fourth wall but intentionally? Active third person? I'm not sure what the phrasing would be for that but I think that's cool. I'm putting it down for now since I think I want to save it as a "chip away slowly" game, and right now I'm looking for something a bit different.

Shelved. After a few sittings, I found it felt like I just wasn't having fun. The story wasn't pulling me, but also waiting through the slightly too long loading screens, and feeling like my spells weren't really improving or getting easier to use just put the low-key frustration level too high. I wonder if this may be a case of playing a game that's just showing it's age and me being used to newer/smoother experiences. A lot has happened in games since 2017, and I'm writing this in 2024. But I put it down around the time I was on my way to my 2nd large area.