Hometown Story (1): Is it really THAT bad?

Hometown Story, or the innocent tale of a comeback on familiar premises, spiced up with a zesty, tangy touch of capitalism. A game that promises to rekindle those childhood entrepreneurial moments spent trying to sell discarded toys, home-baked cookies or flowers freshly picked up from the garden to neighbours, school friends or whoever else, with a heavy load of puppy-dog looks for good measure and sales’ sake. A game that looks sweet, lovely, comforting.

A game universally hated by reviewers, and vilified in nearly every single review it elicited. Turns out that saccharine capitalism may not be so sweet after all, if the critical cry of outrage is to be believed—but is it, indeed? Could this innocuous game really be that horrendous, that bad? Well, let’s delve into the matter. 

First, let’s have the usual bite of data. Hometown Story was developed by Toybox Inc. and released in 2013(na/jp) and 2014(eu) for the 3ds. It has been described as being in the same vein as the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory series—so much so that its very box is emblazoned with the caption “The Family of Harvest Moon”. However, this was mostly a pigeonholing forced on the game for marketing purposes, for Hometown Story is actually quite different from its elders in a number of ways. But more on that later; for now, suffice is to say that this oversimplification isn’t fair to the game and doesn’t serve it well, driving the potential player to expect something that they won’t find.  

Anyone who’s been remotely interested in Hometown Story’s fortunes had to notice that the game somewhat went through a downward spiral. It had been slowly but surely building some hype prior to its release, thanks to a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign that saw the game’s creator himself, Yasuhiro Wada of Harvest Moon fame, grant appetizing interviews to various medium, and the 3ds community was eagerly waiting for the release of this announced masterpiece. However, all that hype promptly deflated and collapsed like an overcooked soufflé, as Hometown Story was universally panned by critics the very second it was released. See for yourselves: 47% on Metacritic and 45,80% on Gamerankings. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad. 

To be honest, I had been picking up the hype like many 3ds owners, and I was really eager to play Hometown Story; however, when these horrendous reviews started blossoming in every gaming media, I was utterly dismayed and found myself balking at the idea of purchasing that game that I had wanted for so long. It took a handful of glowing user reviews on Amazon to make me reconsider the idea and finally purchase Hometown Story—and boy, am I glad that I did so. 

I have to be very honest here: I’ve played Hometown Story at length during the last month, and I strongly feel that this game has been treated unfairly by critics. Reviews were unbelievably rough towards that newcomer, which I feel is a trifle inconsiderate: when a new game formula is introduced, the least critics can do is approach it with an open and tolerant mind and try their best to identify and absorb what the game stands for and what kind of experience it wants to offer. This was not the approach favoured as far as Hometown Story was concerned, since the game was immediately lumped with the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory series, and came across unfavourably compared to these two masterpieces of farming simulation. Of course, this was a blatant case of whoever was in charge of the marketing digging the game’s grave by presenting it as something it was not; had they introduced Hometown Story as a standalone game with its own rules and as the possible first entry of a new series instead of presenting it as a Harvest Moon spin-off of sorts, it would certainly have fared better in game reviews. Indeed, to read reviews for Hometown Story is a fascinating experience that reveals as much about the current gaming trends as about the way reviews are conceived and written. It’s fair to say that reviewers have some preconceptions and expectations when dealing with a game, and should these not be aptly met, the said game will very likely get a good beating; and that is exactly what happened with Hometown Story. I feel that reviewers over-inflated Hometown Story ’s perceived flaws in order to punish it for not having met their Harvest-Moonish expectations, giving the game a very unfair bit of browbeating. I had no such expectations, for the sole reason that I have never played a Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game; I thus approached Hometown Story as a standalone offering, a game in its own right, and suffice it to say that my vision of that game is drastically different from the picture painted in reviews. A bit of positive writing about Hometown Story certainly won’t hurt, and I would like to shed a brighter light on that game, for I feel it truly deserves it. And what better way to start that by re-examining and reassessing the main critical claims about Hometown Story? I counted five of them, dutifully hammered in every single review I read; and while they may not always be wrong per se, they certainly convey a lot of, well… aggravation.

Issue #1: The camera angles are horrendous and the village is way too big

Let’s start with a minor complaint, and one that actually contains a hard kernel of truth. The camera angles are truly uncomfortable, and they tend to change so brutally and so randomly that roaming the village without getting disoriented or bumping into walls while relying solely on your visual surroundings can be quite a challenge. However, this is an issue that plagues a lot of 3D games with a moving camera—and incidentally the main reason why I dislike 3D games—and there is actually a reliable way to circumvent this issue: by using the bottom screen map of the current area displayed at all times, the player can easily orientate themselves and navigate safely. It’s a pity to have to glance at the map every two seconds instead of drinking in the surroundings, though, especially since these ever-changing camera angles seem to have been designed primarily to treat the player with sweeping views of the lush, picturesque landscapes offered by the game. Oh, well.

As for the supposed enormous size of the village, suffice it to say that this statement is simply ludicrous. The village is made of fourteen screens of various sizes, and that’s all you’ll ever see throughout the game; that hardly qualifies as huge in my book. If anything, it’s rather the opposite: I would have loved to be granted access to extra areas and to discover a couple of new screens to add to the now over-familiar village ones, but the game decided to keep it strictly vernacular and to not expand the player’s vistas. Well, be it. At any rate, even though it may take a bit of time to cross the biggest screens, it’s shockingly far-fetched to call the Hometown Story village “huge” or any other related term.

Issue #2: There is no tutorial

Here is one claim that is totally and undeniably true: apart from a couple of sentences explaining how to position shelves and items in your freshly inherited shop, there is no the slightest bit of tutorial in Hometown Story. Now, the question of whether this is a good or bad thing is quite debatable. Is it really such a big problem as far as that particular game is concerned? I honestly don’t think so. The tasks at hand in Hometown Story are extremely basic and the interface is fairly simple: as a result, figuring out the game’s inner logics and learning how to operate in the game world is incredibly fast and easy and only requires a bit of poking and probing, either with your avatar or with the stylus. I feel that this ‘lack of tutorial’ issue is nothing but a moot point that only underlines the laziness that pervades the game industry nowadays. We’ve gotten so used to invasive in-game tutorials that savagely sever the natural flow of the gameplay that it comes as a total shock to encounter a game that lets us use our brains and figure out what must be done for ourselves instead of brutally shoving game mechanics in our face. Well, I like this approach, and the gentle exploration thrill that goes with it: figuring a game’s logic by yourself is infinitely more rewarding than having to sit through millions of tutorials that you will have forgotten by the time you start playing in earnest. I’m here to play, and if figuring out the rules and logics at work in the game world is part of the game, I’ll take it gladly—all the more so as, like I said, the tasks involved are fairly basic: this is no Final Fantasy Legend II, and the risk of being seriously hindered or stuck because of the absence of tutorials is virtually inexistent. 

Issue #3: The A.I. is off the mark

This claim is but a complete misunderstanding, fuelled by an incomplete knowledge of the game’s rules. It stems solely from the fact that when you talk to NPCs, either in your shop or around town, they will very often comment on the fact that they would like to get a certain item; however, if you put the said item on display in your shop, they will more often than not ignore it entirely and purchase something completely different instead. While this may indeed appear as a case of faulty A.I., it is actually nothing more than a wrong assessment of the importance of the NPC’s babbling and of its relevance in the grand scheme of the game’s mechanics. It doesn’t take long for a dedicated Hometown Story player to realise that these demands for this, that and the other are nothing more than atmosphere elements, sweet little nothings that tap into the game’s trade theme while reinforcing it. As for the genuine demands for items, which actually do exist, they are always uttered through specific cutscenes. There is no exception to that rule, so every other demand can basically be ignored, even if they are repeated over and over throughout the whole game. (I fondly remember that old lady asking me repeatedly for a pedometer, even though there is none for sale in the game. Oh, well.)

Issue#4: The triggers for cutscenes and events are unclear

Once again, this is very much a case of reviewers not doing their homework. While the said triggers may appear ill-defined at first when one is not well acquainted to Hometown Story, they become crystal-clear when enough time is poured into the game. I’ll expand on the subject in a future post; for now, suffice it to say that there are indeed clear and well-defined triggers for cutscenes and events and that nothing happens out of the blue. The only reason why they don’t appear limpid during the first hours of play is because Hometown Story is a game that takes time to unfold and disclose its secrets to the player—and that, incidentally, is the perfect transition to the fifth and last issue of the bunch. 

Issue #5: The game is too slow, too boring, too simple

My, my. We are now leaving practical gameplay issues to venture into the much rockier terrain of game design philosophy. Now, I wonder: is it really up to a critic, no matter how dedicated to their craft they may be, to dismiss a certain type of game design as utter crap just because it didn’t click with them? Games come in all shapes and sizes, especially nowadays, and I feel this variety should be celebrated and encouraged. So yes, Hometown Story is indeed a game with a slow pace and simple gameplay mechanics that doesn’t push a crazy agenda on the player. Does it automatically mean that it’s a bad game? Absolutely not. Just because a game is at odds with its era’s dominant trends doesn’t make it a pile of rubbish. It makes it an outsider, a different proposition, and I feel such a stance should be at least acknowledged and respected. Now, one has to admit that the peculiar brand of slow-motion that defines Hometown Story is very much a hindrance in the way of critical acclaim: most of us gamers want some fast retribution, some immediate pleasure, and most reviewers simply don’t have the possibility to spend dozens of hours poring over a single game to uncover its depth and richness. But that’s the way Hometown Story wanted to play, and we have to deal with it—or not, as most chose to do.

So, I hope I managed to balance things and to give a more positive image of Hometown Story. I feel that reviews have been quite unforgiving with that game, tramping it and giving it a critical beating that was mostly unfair and undeserved. Granted, Hometown Story may have been asking for it by painting itself as something it was not—i.e. a Harvest Moon spin-off—and favouring such an indolent pace, but that critical mauling was still very ungracious and uncalled for. In my next post, I will give my vision of the game, before offering some tips and tricks to progress easily through it. As for now, thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!