My Time at Portia

One of the first game that I "double dip" both on my smartphone and now Steam. I bought this bundled with My Time at Sandrock back in 2022. Honestly, I didn't finish this game all the way to the end until I started playing Sandrock when it's out from early access phase. So I will compared both of them directly.
Pros :
It's Cozy/farming sims game like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, you named it. And, in this game you play in 3rd person view, with some some kind of base building mode for your farm/workshop and there's "automation" mode, something that you could find on Factorio or Satisfactory kind of games I assume.
On top of all gameplay features that you could find on any other Cozy/Farming Sims game, This one has some unique feature called Jealousy. As the name suggests, you could get in a relationship with several bachelor/bachelorette at once and if you get caught by another npc that you have relationship with, just like in real life if you get caught cheating, you'll paid the price. Add some more spiciness and uniqueness into this game
Cons :
(This one is fixed in My Time at Sandrock) You can only pick 1 commission per day and you can't improve it further whatsoever (your biggest source of income early on in the game).
(This one is fixed in My Time at Sandrock) In some instances, you need to equip the resources or material in your one of your quick bar slot that only have 9 slot to finish some task. Like early game Assembly Station (to build something) , Cooking Pot (for cooking), and some missions that requires you to place the one you've already build at designated location.Basically you need to open your inventory and shuffle things up back and forth every single time.
(This one is fixed in My Time at Sandrock) Your backpack inventory, your storage box and your factory storage box are not interconnected. And again you'll need to transfer them manually back and forth
This game has more than hundreds if not thousand different items. Sorting them in different storage boxes and sifting through them all when you need it is nice and all, but I wish this game has search function to search an item(s) in your inventory and storage boxes.
All in all, for the sake of story continuity definitely play this game first before Sandrock. Because if you play Sandrock first, it feels so hard to go back (at least for me).Definitely recommend this game. Buy both of this and Sandrock. And this game always on deep discount here and there on any Steam sales event.
7.5 / 10

I think a simple way to tell you how much I recommend this game is the following: my mom, wife, and I all got obsessed with it, and we're all very different gamers. This is a phenomenal game! Can't wait to try out Sandrock.

My Time at Portia is a fantastic cozy and chill game.
To me it's got some Stardew Valley vibes, but instead of being focused on farming (which is possible in Portia as well), it's more focused on completing commissions and quests, by creating or building items.
It's also one of those games with a nice detailed Wiki which is a great help. Besides the things I mentioned, you can also raise animals, increase relationships with the NPCs, participate in (holiday) events and decorate your house/garden.
The combat is simple, and pauses when you open your inventory so you can heal in peace. Also if you die during a boss fight, in most cases you just respawn at the boss while you have full health & the boss health didn't change.
A full price of €30 you will definitely get your money's worth if you're going by the €1 for 1 hour rule, though the game regularly goes on sale. As I write this, it's 80% off, so you can pick it up for €6 which is very much worth it if you like cozy and relaxing games.
I've enjoyed my time here and I'm looking forward to trying out their follow-up game My Time at Sandrock & eventually My Time at Evershine which is currently in development as well!
Portia only has singleplayer mode, but Sandrock & Evershine both (will) have online co-op.
Achievements
Going for 100% completion is a grind and there are some missable achievements, so it's worth to check out a guide beforehand if you don't want to start over multiple characters.
The game automatically backs up the last 10 days you've played which is very helpful, and you can also create your own backups in the "Load" list in the main menu too. This is great for some achievements like the marriage ones so you can go back to a previous save instead of having to divorce and lose friendship points for example.
10/10

My Time At Portia Review
Our game takes place in a town called Portia. After creating the character we control on a simple creation screen with options that are not very detailed but very suitable for the texture of the game and giving it a name, we enter the town. Portia is the town where our character's father lived and died. We have a workshop here from our father. After meeting all the residents and introducing ourselves in this small and cute town where we first came from the outside world, we get the necessary permissions from the municipality to run our workshop and thus the story of our game begins. The world of the game is actually a new post-apocalyptic world, there are dangerous factories and buildings left over from the old modern times around the map. In a sense, the producers have built a utopia on the destroyed modern world. This cute and small town, which lives on agriculture and animal husbandry, has taken the place of the old civilization that was regrouped and destroyed by technology. Throughout the game, you find pieces and disks left over from the old civilization while digging in the mines. You can use these pieces in your workshop and make useful tools.
Choices and Results
There are two sides in the game that represent science and beliefs and have very different views on the old (modern) civilization. One of them is the church and the other is the scientists. The church absolutely rejects old technology. It claims that the modern society that lived and disappeared in the past caused great harm to nature and itself due to technology and that all kinds of objects and tools left from that society should be destroyed and that this way we can protect the town and nature from the same fate. The scientists in the science workshop of the town think completely the opposite. According to them, the remains of the old civilization can help us with very useful inventions and innovations that will make life easier today. They think that we should research and evaluate all of them. With your arrival in this town, these old technology pieces somehow turn into new inventions that will help the townspeople.
The game structure will not force you, on the contrary, it has an entertaining gameplay. Especially the music does not bore you, normally the game music playing in the background would bore me after a while, but I did not feel this at all in my time at portia and although I have a habit of turning off the music from the settings after a while, I did not feel the need in this game where I spent long hours.
Return to Father's House
Our aim in My Time at Portia is to improve our relations with the people in this town we have just returned to, which is our father's house, and to help the town develop by producing in our workshop. At the same time, we are trying to be the first in the competition between workshops in the trade guild in the town. After each task you successfully complete from the townspeople, the town also develops and you see it with your own eyes, for example, when you build a sprinkler and irrigation system for a townsperson's field, his field is now watered with that system. Or when you manufacture dee dees and stops for transportation in the town, these are always permanent. There is a world that changes and is affected in real time as a result of the tasks you complete in My Time at Portia. I must admit, despite the many positive comments I have read, I had a prejudice in the beginning due to the childish graphics. I said, I am faced with a simple game that is made to entertain small children and does not appeal to those over the age of 9. However, as I played the game, its immersive structure and detailed gameplay gave way to curiosity and wondering what will happen the next day after the first few hours.
You have a calendar in My Time at Portia. This calendar occasionally adorns your crafting and resource gathering routine with very fun activities. This is actually the part of the game that appeals to players of all ages. There are constantly festivals, celebrations and competitions in Portia. You can register and participate in these events, and if you are successful in the event, you can buy special items from the markets special for that day. This event traffic never ends throughout the year, so you are not stuck in the cycle of constantly producing something in your workshop. You are curious about the next day and the new tasks or events that will come. In this way, the game keeps the player's curiosity constantly alive.
There are many things you can do in Portia. You can help the townspeople by taking daily tasks from the Trade Guild, or you can take your pickaxe and collect resources in the abandoned mines in the town. You can kick big trees and try to make apples and honey fall, hunt pink llamas that you cannot bear to hit and collect their fur and meat. You can improve your house and workshop with the gold you earn, learn more complex designs and produce them. You can increase your health, attack, defense, etc. features by placing items you find or produce in your home and workshop. In this way, you can decorate your home and garden according to your own taste. You can build structures such as coops or barns, raise chicks, ducks or cows and buy their meat and milk or raise and sell them.
Portia is a World Living with Seasons with a Day/Night Cycle
Portia also has a day and night cycle and a seasonal cycle. The game is recorded daily and only automatically saves when you sleep. Other than that, you cannot save the game externally. You have to finish all your work by 03:00 at the latest. After 3, your character faints and you wake up to a new day in your bed.
The game also has features such as marriage and having children. Your relationships with the characters in the town increase as you talk to them, give them gifts or finish the quests you receive. Participating in events in the town is of great importance. When you participate in these events, your relationships with all the townspeople automatically increase. In addition, many events give you resources, ores and items as gifts. So be sure to follow the events on your calendar, these festivals also open the in-game cinematic scenes, you can find the number of these cinematics in the tabs on the character screen.
In My Time at Portia, you will spend time collecting plenty of resources and producing new tools in your workshop. In the meantime, you will need to deal with the town's problems and do the tasks they need. The game's Turkish support is your biggest helper in understanding the crafting system, which may seem complicated at first. Being in Turkish is also a great advantage for young players to understand the game. The things you will need most to develop your workshop in Portia are data disks. Data disks are CDs as we know them. Although they have largely been replaced by portable USB sticks today, these data disks were the things that the ancient civilization in the game stored the most information. We can collect data disks while digging in abandoned mines. When you take these disks to the scientists in the town, they research the data in them for you and give you new tool designs that you can produce in return. Thus, your workshop develops, you can process more ore and produce different tools. If you take these disks you find to the church workers, you can buy some products from their market in exchange for the disks or you can deliver them to destroy the disks and get gold in return. My suggestion is to definitely collect these disks from the beginning of the game and take them to Petra. Petra will decipher the data in the disks and give you the designs of new tools that you can produce and need to do the tasks in return.
That's all I have to say about the game
Thank you for reading, I hope you learned about the game, have fun!

SHORT

A pretty decent farming (crafting) simulator. The game is quite grindy and has some sound bugs - that can be forgiven. The setting, plot, and soundtrack, might be worth it. It will take you about 150 hours to finish the game and get all the achievements.

LONG

My Time at Portia is a farming simulator with an emphasis on crafting. The 3D gameplay is surprisingly good, especially when it comes to exploring the map, managing the workshop, and interacting with the environment in general. However, the learning curve is a bit steep, and this, coupled with the complexity of crafting, can be a bit daunting for some people during the first hours.

The combat is mediocre, nothing special, a bit of a hack-and-slash mixed with souslike - it feels good when you land a critical hit, but the enemies, dungeons, and bosses are quite boring and repetitive. The AI ​​pathing is pathetic (enemies have trouble climbing steps and ramps).

Although the graphics aren't very impressive, the map is very pretty and the setting is great. The town of Portia is super charming and has a unique style. However, some regions of the map feel empty and lifeless, with huge areas without any kind of interaction.

The plot is cool - nothing spectacular, and the individual stories of the NPCs are also nice (some even funny), you'll be able to have a few laughs and create some connections with at least some of them.

The part that impressed me the most, both positively and negatively, was the sound. The exploration soundtracks are very good and provide a great ambiance. The voice acting is also surprisingly good. Now, the entire sound design part is terrible, the combat soundtracks are boring, repetitive and trigger at random moments, most of the bosses have no sounds - this also happens with some dialogues and cutscenes.

Do I recommend it? Totally! Considering the sound bugs, I wouldn't pay full price, but this game is often 80% off. It will take you about 150 hours to complete the game and get all the achievements.

It's far from Stardew Valley if you're looking for a similiar game. It's more towards crafting and building, and you do have a lot of grinding for materials to do at the beginning of the game. The characters are a bit more childlike with their demeanor, design are a bit lackluster too. The midgame towards end is so much more rewarding and fun though, but you do get bored of it after a while, i ended up downloading some mods to get through the more grinding missions easier by reducing the action time for certain digging / cutting.

Do get it if it's on a discount, otherwise i think it's alright to miss.

Recommended with caveats. It's decently fun in the beginning, but less so as the game drags on. There's a reason only approximately 8% of players have completed the game.
Some of the issues I had:
- The game only saves when you sleep. You'll be used to it if you've played Stardew, but that doesn't mean it's good game design.
- You had better enjoy fishing minigames. The fishing minigame in Portia is better than most farm/life sims, but I know it's something many fans of the genre dislike. Fishing is, hands down, the fastest way to make money in this game. The second fastest is mining, which is just pressing the action button ad nausem while eating the occasional meal to replenish stamina. When it comes to making serious cash to upgrade your workshop, fishing is king in Portia with farming and manufacturing not even coming close.
- The longer the game drags on, the less frequent main story events occur. I could have easily beaten the game in the first year if some story events didn't take so long to trigger. This made late game feel like a slog to me.
- Marriage and children don't add anything interesting. There are achievements for each and that's honestly the only thing they're good for. Hiring a worker is better for your workshop than anything your spouse will contribute and children are a complete waste of time.
- Titanium bars would disappear if I placed them in factory storage. It was only titanium bars that had this issue. Nothing was using them and they weren't "hidden" in any way, which is an excuse you'll often see people making in online forums. It's a terrible bug that cost me hours of wasted time trying to figure out an automated work around before I decided to give up, keep them in my inventory, and manually craft the items that needed them for the final mission. It was the only part of the game I found truly frustrating.
Despite its flaws, My Time at Portia is an interesting take on the genre, with far more emphasis on building and manufacturing than other similar games. Just don't go into it expecting 3D SDV and you'll probably have a decent time.