My Time at Portia

Look, My Time at Portia is a perfectly nice, pretty game, but it suffers from a severe case of "Older Sibling Syndrome." It walked so its sequel could sprint.
If you are a die-hard cozy game fanatic who needs to inject every single crafting simulator directly into your veins, buy it. You’ll have a lovely time. But if you’re a regular human playing this today, the entire experience is going to feel distinctly... off.
Playing Portia now feels like trying to build Ikea furniture while wearing oven mitts. Controls are pure, unfiltered jank, and the resource grind is less "relaxing weekend hobby" and more "unpaid internship for a town that can't manufacture a basic brick without your divine intervention."
The real problem is that My Time at Sandrock exists. The sequel takes everything Portia tried to do, does it a thousand times better, fixes the clunky controls, and adds actual soul.
Buy Portia if it’s on a 90% off sale and you want to see the historical ruins of the genre. Otherwise, skip the green pastures, accept that the desert is superior, and just go straight to Sandrock.

This game looks cozy, but it really isn’t by default. My Time at Portia is an efficiency and progression game disguised as a life sim.

You can play it slow, chill, and make it cozy and farm, socialize, decorate, take your time but progression will be very slow, and you will miss out on a lot of advantages. The game heavily rewards planning, early tech unlocks, and good stamina management. If you don’t optimize at least a little, everything just takes longer.

You’ll always be grinding for materials and juggling stamina while chasing commissions and story deadlines. Progression unlocks new zones, machines, and systems, and you can visibly see the town change and grow as the story moves forward, which makes your work feel meaningful.

The characters are a big highlight. NPCs are charming, relationships matter, and befriending people gives real gameplay perks. The setting is post-apocalyptic, but handled with a light, hopeful tone that keeps things warm instead of grim.

If you enjoy efficiency-focused games like Factorio, Satisfactory, or Farming Simulator, this will probably click.
If you prefer slower, more traditional life sims like Harvest Moon-style games, you can play Portia that way, just expect slower progress and more friction.

Pros
-Satisfying efficiency & optimization gameplay
-Town visibly changes as you progress
-Charming characters & meaningful relationships
-Post-apocalyptic setting with a lighthearted tone
-Strong sense of long-term progression

Cons
-Very grindy
-Constant deadline pressure
-Stamina limits can feel restrictive early
-Cozy playstyle is possible, but heavily inefficient

TLDR
You can chill but Portia really wants you to optimize. Great if you like planning and progression, less so if you want pure relaxation.

Rating this game is tough.
In a vacuum, it’s a worthy title. It can certainly hold itself against the other games in the genre.
The problem is, Sandrock exists, and is fantastic — light years ahead, despite having a similar user score. So I’m hesitant to bridge the gap even more with a positive review.
As a compromise, I’m giving Portia a thumbs up, but using the review to blast this game and glaze Sandrock. You know, in case someone actually reads it.
Let’s start with a positive, though. The biggest draw of Portia, and why some still prefer it over the sequel, is simply the way it looks. The game has a specific artstyle, which, while generic, is also appealing and well-suited for a cozy game.
The small houses of the eponymous town, the grassy fields, the shadowed groves, the waving stalks of wheat, all brought to life with simple, cute low-poly models and warm, pleasing colors (that unfortunately get washed out at night). It’s easy to imagine why someone would want to live here. It’s like inhabiting one of the small towns from Professor Layton games.
That is especially true because the NPCs have the same “ugly cute” look to them as Layton’s townsfolk — albeit not as exaggerated. That point is notably divisive, as many players hate this character style. I do respect the vision, though, and it helps the game stand out.
Unfortunately, the Professor Layton parallels don’t stop there, as these NPCs are about as complex, and don’t even give any puzzles to you (which would be pretty ace).
Stardew is probably the most prominent title in the genre right now, and I don’t find its characters that far removed from their cardboard progenitors in Harvest Moon either. But there’s actual effort put in, with multiple context-sensitive lines, small personal stories that progress as you develop the relationships, and accompanying cutscenes.
Portia is quite sad in comparison. Every NPC gets one standard line per day, some have an alternative one at certain times of day (like Django during training), and they do comment on festivals, but that’s it. They won’t adjust these lines based on your relationship, or even when they stop making sense. On top of that, most reactions to gifts are shared.
Sometimes characters have a unique line after you complete a major mission. Unlike Sandrock, these are incredibly rare here. The climatic final battle apparently does not merit a few words!
Friendship quests exist, but most of them are quite bland too. “Hey, <player>, I have a <problem>, get me an <item>.” — “The <item> is just what I need, thanks!”. Bam, you’re done. Sometimes they’ll throw an “actually, I need <another item> too” or “go ask <another character> how to make an <item>”, but not much more.
Let’s take similar quests in Portia in Sandrock. Both start with their respective teachers for the local school requesting the player to decorate the classroom. The Portian teacher then asks for ideas on an additional course (crafting of gardening). You pick an option, you get tasked with bringing the materials for that course, and the quest’s over. You can later return to see the students exchange a few lines on the chosen course. This is actually pretty nice as far as Portia’s concerned — you get a small branching decision and an optional scene that differs based on your choice.
And here’s Sandrock. After decorating, the player character accompanies the teacher to the library and strikes a conversation with her, which moves from books to the topic of edutainment. The teacher is a big proponent of it, but also worries that the more old-school parents won’t be too receptive to it, and is afraid to bring it up with them.
So, a few days later, the player character accompanies her to the homes of these parents, witnesses a bunch of domestic shenanigans, and helps her convince them to give her idea a shot. Then you craft a few props and wait.
Finally, the player character gets invited as one of the judges, as the kids enthusiastically play out an “election campaign”, presenting their programs for the town mayor position (like “let’s build awesome flying robots!”). At the same time, parents ooh and ahh from the gallery, hype up their kid and lightly banter with each other, judges chime in with feedback on the proposals, and you get to cast a decisive vote for your favorite.
It’s great stuff. The goal is similar, but the writing is both moving and funny, and there’s just so much more of it. And it’s not even a particularly noteworthy quest when it comes to Sandrock!
All this character talk may seem excessive, but this is Portia’s biggest shortcoming and the largest gap between it and Sandrock. There’s just little to appreciate about the people you’re supposed to get attached to, befriend and romance. You might think the story would remedy that, but no. Unlike Sandrock, who tries to involve almost everyone in the plot in some capacity, Portia only really has Gale and the Civil Corps — the rest is filled with some out-of-town NPCs. There is another character who is supposed to be important, but you get told that after they cease to be so. Woo!
Not that there is much plot to speak of. There are two plot beats — “water goes bad” in the beginning and “let’s find an ancient relic” at the very end — the latter is where the actual story is concentrated. That’s maybe 20% of the storyline. The rest has all the plot of Cities Skylines: “Let’s build a thing to make our economy go brrr”. Exciting. It’s eyebrow-raising when I see people saying they prefer the plot of Portia to Sandrock — the comparison itself is insane.
And it doesn’t stop there. Unlike its follow-up, MTaP is very stingy with cutscenes, even in regard to how little plot there is. And what you get can get… jarringly bad. Some characters are voiced, some are not — even in the same dialogue. The animation of the final boss unleashing a supposedly devastating attack is unbelievably, ridiculously low-effort, and has no sound to boot. The whole thing, no exaggerating, looks like a YouTube Poop.
The sound in general is a pain point, and another area where Sandrock laps Portia. The voice acting is amateurish, though sometimes charming in a way. But there are times when the quality goes to the gutter, as if the line was recorded with a laptop mic. Sometimes the actor stops reading and starts over. Sometimes the voice line doesn’t match the text. And the one-sided voice acting is even more prominent in normal dialogues. At least the PC is voiced, unlike in Sandrock. So that’s a point in MtaP’s favor, I suppose.
Unless you’ve skimmed through this wall of text — and I don’t blame you — you’ve probably been reading for a while. That’s probably enough time for your first metal bar to get smelted!
You see, the starting machines are stupidly slow, you need a lot to get anywhere. All the crafting starts out annoying to some degree, with the most famous one being the station that requires you to put the necessary item into the quickbar and select it. Upgrades do solve all of it eventually — except cooking, which always requires you to remember the recipe and do the quickbar dance on a time limit. It’s awful, but also optional.
Unlike combat. You can stunlock the overworld enemies forever — the issue is, they respawn almost immediately, so you can never clear out a group. And the encounters in dungeons are just varying degrees of terrible. “Flame” enemies waste your time by putting out a several seconds long autocorrecting hitbox. “Tanky” enemies take so long to kill, you push them out of the designated area and they start regenerating. Some bosses have no regard for if their hitboxes and active frames allow for rolling away or through the attack — and, yes, also autocorrect. The ranged weapons are almost useless, but you can also craft enough healing to facetank everything.
The character limit won’t allow for more, so, in a nutshell. Maybe play Portia to have a decent time. And definitely play Sandrock — it’s amazing!

I came to Portia after completing Sandrock. I also completed Portia. I do like Portia but I LOVE Sandrock.
Both games share the same core gameplay, which I found enjoyable. Portia is just a bit more grindy, requiring a lot more attention from the player early game. I found myself enjoying the extra challange but I can see players getting overwhelmed and frustrated with the lack of QOL we had in Sandrock. QOL improvements do appear later once you max your equipment. Once you get the factory the game becomes a walk in the park.
IMO the biggest gap between both games is that Sandrock had an engaging story from start to finish, charismatic characters and LOL moments throughout the game. Portia has some interesting moments but the story only picks up in Act 3. NPCs are "okay, just okay". Humor is sprinkled here and there, few and far between so the dialogue came off very bland.
That said, I found the mines and fishing more enjoyable compared to Sandrock.
I'd suggest buy this game on sale if you want to enjoy more of the builder gameplay. Otherwise I'd just go straight to Sandrock of you want more story.

I LOVE this game.
While this is supposed to be a "play at your own pace" kind of game... It's not. You only get so many hours (minutes) each day, and even when you adjust game speed, you still have to plan ahead by days or even weeks, in order not to miss anything. Each day seems like a rush to get things done until near the end of the game. You also can't just save. Your game only saves at the end of each day, so make a mistake at the end of the day and need to start over, and you start the entire day over.
The characters are really amazing, and I have played it through several times. My first play through I picked Ginger as a wife sort of at random. Then I learned her back story, and she was so relatable, I never went with another romantic partner in any other play through. Small spoilers here, so skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to know. Ginger is sick, and can't be in the light very much. There is an event each year where gifts are dropped from a balloon and everyone tries to grab them. Even though I had max reputation with Ginger, I realized that she could not participate. So I got her gifts. That is how much I liked the character. I felt bad for her, and wanted to make this make believe person happy. That is because her story is done so well.
Other characters are going to appeal to different people. I think there is probably someone for everyone, and their stories are fantastic.
People complain about the fighting mechanics, but I never had an issue with it.
I like to build things, and build up a base without having to fight things off in some sort of war, so this was great, as you start with a tiny plot of land and grow it to be huge and filled with things. However, you are in competition with another builder, so there is a drive to do it better faster, without fear of losing what you have built.
Overall I love this game, and recommend it to anyone who enjoys this kind of game.

Enjoyable, perhaps unexceptional. It tries to keep its focus on the community but in the end you've got to be here to enjoy feeding extracted resources into machines.

4 out of 5 stars
First time played and completed was in 2020 (pandemic game).
After 200 more hours, I finished My Time at Portia again, and thanks to my ADHD-addled brain forgetting everything, it was like a whole new story to me. lol Did I remember Huss & Tuss? Ursula? The Rogue Knight? The All-Source? Defeating the Rats? Nope, not a memory in my head but "Ugh, why did I marry Gust?" Rest assured, he didn't get the Husband treatment this time around (Mint did, however).
Portia is, unfortunately, leagues behind Sandrock. Pathea really took everything we loved about Portia, and left behind everything we hated, for Sandrock. But it's still worth playing, if just to understand the easter eggs in Sandrock (my memory of this game was so bad, Owen mentioned he met 7 brothers and I didn't even remember the Hulu brothers of Portia. How does someone forget THEM?).
There are a lot of little issues that add up; voice lines unvoiced, wrong dialogue being said, some quests leading no where. And boy howdy, the controls and main gameplay are hard to get used to after Sandrock.
But it's still got charm, a great story, interesting characters and is generally fun to play. I played this second time because I wanted to remember the whole story in preparation for My Time at Evershine, the third game in the franchise. I love the whole story of Duvos vs The Alliance/Ethea, the Day of Calamity, everything - it's fascinating.
I don't know if I'll ever play a third time; hopefully the memory of the story sticks from this playthrough. lol But I'm glad I played it again, and honestly, I can enjoy Sandrock even more now that I understand the Portia easter eggs. A win win!