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!
AH!! *cue internal screaming* my goodness, I regret not finding this earlier! T^T well, I am a year late but better late than never I guess. ^^ I just wanted to thank you for your posts about this game. There's a lot of bad reviews about Hometown story, it was hard to find a blog that didn't include the reviewers landslide of complaints about the game. ^^" Anyways, I agree with you when you say that this game takes time to unfold and I think its wonderful. Too many of us (myself included at one point) are used to games that give us quick success that waiting for a game seems impossible. Hometown story is indeed a cozy game, very different from my experience from playing Rune Factory 2 and 4 (they're very good games though!) and its a good different. So, yeah, before this comment becomes too long, thank you again. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks a million for the kind words! Comments like yours always make my day. ^___^
DeleteAlthough Hometown Story is far from being the epitome of gaming perfection, I always thought it was given way too rough a grilling by reviewers. Granted, it's slow, a bit clunky and sometimes slightly buggy; but there are tons of games out there that display similar flaws and didn't get as much venom as Hometown Story. Maybe Hometown Story got that rough treatment because it had been presented as the successor to Rune Factory and Harvest Moon prior to its release and failed to live up to the hype... Oh, well. So far, it has been one of my favourite 3DS games and I still have very fond memories of my playthrough!
I, too, have only found your great review of this game now. Personally, I was looking forward to buy it once it was first announced, but then I got to a spot were I was mostly playing the same games all the time so I didn't really buy or check out new onws - so I was fortunate enough to kind of miss all the bad reviews. I just got it a few weeks ago when I saw it for a pretty decent price, started it on a rainy Saturday, and played it for seven hours straight, and I'm still enjoying it after more than double that time. So thanks for you trying to save a great game's reputation ^_^
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for the kind words! ^^
DeleteOne of my main motivations for writing this trilogy of posts was the desire to compensate for all the bad press written about Hometown Story. I felt the slandering of that game was a bit over-the-top and figured out that a bit of positive writing about it couldn't hurt! Despite all its flaws, Hometown Story provided me with 70 hours of fun and I wanted to pay hommage to what has been one of my best 3DS experiences so far. It's great to hear that you're enjoying it too! :)