Garden Story is charming and adorable in its look, but stale and boring in its feel. The stamina-based combat feels sluggish with attacks doing chip damage and taking multiple stamina cycles to defeat single enemies. This improves as the stamina bar increases, but is never entirely rectified. The loop of completing errands is interesting at first, but repetitive by the end of the game, especially with repeated errands and the resource grinding necessary. Farming elements are barebones, every character talks for way, way too long, and the dungeons are too short to feel memorable. I wanted to enjoy this game, but found it mostly boring instead.