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Bloomtown is a charming RPG filled to the brim with personality and a great amount of content. I will say it gave me a nostalgic feeling for other games, such as Hamtaro Ham-Hams Unite on Gameboy Advance if anyone remembers that ol' gem. It also reminds me of Persona 5, the tv show Owl House, and a bit of Stranger Things as well. If you like any of those things and cozy, beautiful pixellated graphics, I recommend this game to you. There is a lot of reading dialogue, but it's written well and there's a lot of snark and humor to it that I found myself chuckling at. Soundtrack is really great, however the combat music might not be for everyone as it is very JRPG with vocals that might be seen as cringey by some. Luckily, there's an option to turn off vocals in the music settings. All the other music is very well done and adds to the charm.

I've seen people say that the game tries to accomplish too many genres, but I think that's what makes this game great. There are a lot of light life-sim mechanics that add density to what would have otherwise been repetitive and dull. For example, you can go work at the supermarket for extra money, workout at the gym or home to increase your HP, farm crops in your backyard to cook with (food heals you in combat), go fishing to cook with, forage for apples in the wilds, craft supplies at a workbench with materials you find, read books to increase skills or pass time. You can hang out with your friends to learn their lore and gain new skills. I will say these mechanics are limited and can get repetitive by the end of the game, but they definitely added a lot. By the end of the game, I had way more money than I needed so I bought most things from vendors and didn't need to cook. You have "life sim" skills (Charm, Smarts, Proficiency, and Guts) and you can roll for outcomes in situations that are based on these skills. I really enjoyed leveling up these skills through doing various activities in the game. Fishing mini game is annoying IMO, but you don't really have to do it - it takes forever and it's kinda finnicky. Collecting all fish is a pain, I tried countless times to catch certain ones at certain times and never did but maybe I did something wrong. There are long animations associated with cooking and working out, but you can use the "fast forward" button to speed them up which is nice.

In terms of exploration, the map is quite large by the end but you start out in a small region and the other areas unlock bit by bit as you progress. There's little interactions all around, secrets to find, chests to open, side quests to complete. It took me a couple hours to realize I can fast travel on the map without time progressing, so I spent a while just sprinting everywhere which felt laborious especially since there are long sections where you have to go all the way around an obstacle. There are some events in the game that block fast travel seemingly for no good reason that were very annoying. The map and controls of the map could be better, you have to use a combination of up/down left/right to navigate between points of interest and quest points and i found myself just spamming them until I eventually got it right, but maybe that's just me. Also, maps of the underside (dungeon area) cannot be accessed unless you have a quest in the area, or you're in the area, and it's just not ideal when you're trying to understand your surroundings. Also you have to pay attention to your environment for certain quests, the quest log doesn't hold your hand and you have to use common sense and your memory to progress unless you look it up. This isn't a bad thing, but something to be aware of. I enjoyed "figuring out" certain aspects of the game for sure. I only had to look up two quests because the quest journal was soooo vague I had no idea what to do.. but I eventually figured it out with some common sense.

Combat is meh. If you don't like turn-based, I wouldn't let it put you off the game because the RPG elements outweigh the meh combat. The combat is very easy (on Normal) if you focus on taking out Support and Witch enemies first and just keep a million Healing items on you. Most of the fights I could just no-brain spam through but a few of them took some concentration. I find it very odd that you basically can't use any spells on Bosses - they're resistant to everything. This resulted in a boring battle where I just spammed Melee/Ranged attacks and then healed, over and over. I would have preferred bosses with specific weaknesses I could prepare for instead of them being resistant to everything and my abilities being worthless. It feels like the demon capturing and fusing was an after thought, and needs to be worked on. There are many UI things that are frustrating with it, like choosing a new skill when they level up.. you can't see what you already have, or what character the demon belongs to, you have to just remember. Just little annoyances. I will say the variety of enemies was great, animations were great, and I had fun because it was a pretty casual experience on Normal difficulty.

I ran into a handful of bugs the closer I got to the end of the game, so maybe the end was rushed? I ran into a chain of events that ended up being game-breaking and I got locked into not being able to progress, BUT I was able to load a save file from before it happened and I re-did the event that bugged me out and I had to avoid a side quest completely, which stopped me from getting the "All Side Quests" achievement. I was able to beat the game, but I had to completely change the way I played out the end of the game. Hopefully this gets fixed, I reported the bug to their team. Besides that, the other bugs were just annoyances.

Summary: There are minor annoyances, one game breaking bug I found that I had to re-do a chunk of gameplay for, and little things that could be done better. The combat is meh. BUT, the exploration, story, questing progression and game-feel are amazing. The pixel art is stunning, and the overall product gives a very nostalgic feeling, perfect for Autumn in my opinion. I love the blend of life-sim elements with the RPG aspect. I highly enjoyed my experience and haven't enjoyed a little RPG like this in a long time.