My Time at Portia Review

By Miranda Sanchez

As my tiny boat sailed into the equally tiny port of the city-state of Portia, I couldn’t help but look beyond the small town and toward a decrepit tower looming over its peaceful villagers; I wanted to go there, and it didn’t take too long before I did. My Time at Portia is perhaps one of the most pleasant post-apocalyptic games out there, every part of it full of potential and an interesting sense of optimism. You’ll find it in the goals and accomplishments of its people, and in My Time at Portia’s design as a whole. It teases unreachable treasures off in the distance and lists items with parts I haven’t yet encountered, letting me know there is something new still waiting for me. After playing over 65 hours, I’m still finding more to explore and build in My Time at Portia. This town sim with an emphasis on building and resource management (and some RPG elements thrown in) is a fun adventure that, despite its flaws, I had a hard time putting down.

Humanity is rebuilding in My Time at Portia. Civilization as they knew it was destroyed, and now many, many years after humans emerged from living underground, city-states have formed and your player arrives in Portia to follow in your father’s footsteps and become a builder. Learning about this world’s odd history has been intriguing, though the story and characters are generally far less charming than what you’d find in something like Stardew Valley. The goal of the story itself is simple: expand Portia and become the top builder in town. I would have liked to have seen a more interesting driving factor for expansion other than money and prestige, but obtaining both is still a fun endeavor thanks to the impressive number of things to do in Portia and My Time at Portia’s appropriately scaling growth.

Building the Basics

My Time at Portia’s calendar has four months with several weeks each in a year, and the first few seasons serve as a solid tutorial –but even with so much to do in Portia, I didn’t felt like it was dragging me around to see every attraction. Instead, it let me explore everything at my own pace, though it heavily encourages players to start by accepting timed building assignments. Building is your first priority in My Time at Portia, and the first commissions were designed well enough to help me establish a foundation in my routines for gathering resources. After either mining for ore, collecting wood, fighting monsters, or gathering other basic materials, I’d add them together in a recipe to build an item.

At first, gathering starts as simple as picking up stray wood and rock piles, but eventually escalates into cutting down massive trees with a chainsaw. I would sometimes dedicate whole days to just gathering resources for my next big project, but as I progressed, I gained things like the chainsaw to collect resources faster. I appreciated that as things got more complicated, new tools and services would arrive not long after to help me grow as a builder.

Those aids were important as I received complex schematics to build even bigger and more important items. They required me to process basic resources into different things before they could be used. Sometimes you have to process goods several times before they’re finally made into the right component. I enjoyed pulling out a notepad to track just how many carbon steel bars I’d need to build an item. Then, once done, I’d submit those items for rewards, town favor, and money. I enjoyed this cycle not only because I found it to be rather relaxing, but also because the biggest assignments you’re given directly change the town. 

When I wasn’t focused on building, I was participating in one of Portia’s unique holiday events and other activities that have some sort of minigame element, like for fishing, cooking, or taming a wild llama that I captured. The minigames are plentiful, and it was always a nice surprise to come across a new one. The complexity of the minigames vary quite a bit too, so it was helpful that most of them have simple tutorials. However, much like other farm-sim games, the onus is on the player to discover the finer points of My Time at Portia. It took me several in-game weeks to realize that I could kick trees more than a few times for special goods and that a notification would pop up to tell me when the tree was out of items to drop. This could be irritating to some players, but for someone like me who likes to live and learn in these worlds, I enjoyed the surprise of discovering something new.

I Just Want to Be Friends

The one learning curve I did have issues with was figuring out how to please my fellow Portians. My Time at Portia’s relationship system relies on the player chatting with residents daily, giving them presents, and playing games or sparring for relationship points. Presents give by far the most relationship points early on, but with My Time at Portia’s impressive number of items, it’s difficult to figure out exactly what’s worth giving away. Very few item descriptions give clues to what might be liked by others, and even items I thought a person would enjoy based on their personality usually didn’t work out. Building relationships in the early stages takes way too long without that important information. On the plus side, gaining friendship with one person awards you free friendship points with the people closest to your new friend.

At first glance, a majority of the characters seem more like caricatures rather than real people, and their starting few dialogue lines don’t always make sense. Look, I get it Russo, you’re a dedicated butler, but there’s no way you’re always getting food for someone at all hours of the day as he claims to be doing when I talk to him. The clumsy dialogue early on thankfully take far better shape after gaining people’s friendship and during events. New dialogue lines did make me feel like they were trusting me with better information about themselves. New friendship levels also mean more activities, which further diversify what you do in My Time at Portia.

Once friends, you can accept or extend invitations to “play.” It’s a weird title for the mechanic, but it’s basically a bundle of minigames you can do to increase your relationship. You can launch fireworks, chat under a tree, play minigames and eat in the local pub, and plenty more. The activities change if you’re on a date and if you’ve built up Portia to a certain level. I particularly enjoyed seeing how my efforts to develop Portia returned to me in fun minigames and events. For instance, one mission asks you to clear a supposedly haunted cave so that the mayor can turn it into a tourist attraction. After completing that mission line, you can go in that cave alone or with a date to hunt “ghosts” for points.

Eventually, you can go on to marry select people in Portia. What I like about this marriage system is that your partner will actually help around your workshop. And, if you marry the right person, you can receive discounts at their shop or helpful stat bonuses – though you can get lesser levels of these benefits by just becoming friends. Overall, the relationship system is worth investing in, but I do wish it were tuned better so that the start of a relationship felt less like a chore.

Adventure Time

The RPG layer of My Time at Portia is light and easy to manage on top of everything else. Leveling up gets you more stamina, which powers most things you do, plus improved health, attack, defense stats and a point to put into one of the three skill trees – there’s one for battling, another for gathering, and the third for social. The skills were essential to increasing the efficiency of activities since they mostly offered passive bonuses. For example, as I needed more resources, I invested points in the gathering skill tree for a chance to get double item drops. It ended up being incredibly helpful – and lucrative. 

One of my favorite things to do in My Time at Portia was mining. It’s a relaxing and repetitive hunt for goods within the earth that pairs well with podcasts and audiobooks. There are several mines in Portia and each of them house different kinds of ores and relics. The relics are old-world items that are split into various parts and can be reconstructed. Yes, there’s yet another layer of things to do in Portia. Those relics can be donated, sold for a fair bit of money, or placed in your house for bonus stat points that increase your characters stamina, attack, and other attributes. I’ve been obsessively trying to reconstruct all the items I’ve found, and some of them have proven to be extra difficult. The tracker I use to find relics has already been upgraded once and has been incredibly useful in my hunt. It seems no matter what I do, Portia continues to encourage me to keep going for more because it still has more to offer.

Completing big story requests open new areas on a surprisingly large map, and in those new areas are at least a new type of resource, a new mine, or even a new dungeon. Some of the most fun missions were the ones where I accompanied the local peacekeepers in taking on larger groups of enemies to solve a bad situation. Otherwise, the dungeons were yet another good way to change up my days.

Combat is simple hacking and slashing, but the variety of enemies keep things interesting enough. The dungeons are divided into several levels, each with their own rooms and a boss in the last room. Though I liked how dungeons were often a mix of a few basic puzzles and a handful of enemies, I do wish that the boss waiting at the end of each level were different. Some dungeons share bosses, and the ones I encountered only really required me to have some extra health items and a higher level than them to defeat.