izigame.me

Save your money, there are better cozy games out there. It really pains me to write that. There are so many areas of this game you can tell they just gave up on, slapped a mini-game into place, & shoved it out the door. It's a shame since it really has all the makings of an incredible game but without the follow-through to get it there.
This is the first cozy game where I played all day long IRL & still managed to be productive in said real life. I would get so bored playing this, I'd set the controller down to go do housework. Seriously, I did 2 loads of dishes, laundry, vacuumed, plus cleaned the bathroom yesterday, all while the game ran. That 23 hours of playtime I've clocked as of now is a tad fictitious. I've never played a cozy game where I stopped to clean IRL - and most of my Steam library is cozy games.
On the positive side, the art style is amazing. The artist / team did an masterful job of creating a look a feel that is unique, beautiful, and fits the game exceedingly well. The story is a good. The night market itself is fun. That's it.
There is a day/night cycle but you control it. You have limited energy that you can replenish by eating, up to 3 times per day. When you're tired, you go to bed. When you take the bus somewhere, it's night when you return but you can work until you decide to sleep - no passing out at 2am in this game! The game feels far more relaxed because of that, BUT you have so little to do you end up bored - a lot.
All resources & crafting is done through mini-games. None of them are particularly hard but none of them are well explained either. It took me several failed attempts at the game for gathering paper/wood/stone/metal/bamboo (same game for each) to grasp the instructions skipped a step.
You can only grind for one resource per day. As you progress you unlock areas you visit by bus but you can only go to that one area which contains one primary material. Some areas have secondary items but not much & energy is short. There is a fixed number of resource nodes in each area so when you've exhausted them, that's it. The cap on visiting only one place per day gets frustrating since there are some areas where there are no resources but you need to go there to talk to someone - you lose the whole day.
All cozy games have grind but this one takes it to a whole other level of suck...
The worst of the resources are sand & clay. You need to by a shovel ($1,200ish) to unlock a metal detector (??) mini-game that costs $20 per session. To get ONE sand or clay:
You go to the vendor, spend $20, get through 2 lines of dialogue, Mineko runs off screen, then a tutorial, then play the actual mini game (about 10 seconds), then Mineko runs back, unveils the 1 clay/sand (& maybe 1 other thing), another line of dialogue, repeat. EVERY SINGLE TIME you have to repeat that whole process.
It took me just over REAL LIFE HOUR to get 20 pieces of clay! I have 2 quests (atm) for clay objects - needing a total of 90 pieces of clay!! It will cost $1,800 and several real life hours to get this. F that. The money isn't a big issue but the real life time is. I discovered this just after learning there's a second village expansion so I KNOW I will have requests for the other 6 clay recipes. This is where I stopped playing the game completely.
All the crafting benches stack on top of each other in your bedroom. By the time you the last one, the stack is nearly to the ceiling (literally) & completely obscures a large section of the trophy shelf that runs along the wall. What's the point of trophies if I can't see them?
Requirements for recipes show a picture of the resource w/a quantity number. It doesn't tell you what a resource is. You get access to chop paper (seriously) but most of the paper crafting recipes require a 2nd type of paper you eventually you learn is washi paper. One sheet of Washi paper is made with 3 mulberry branches (???). Its a huge pain to get mulberry branches & not all trees drop a branch. A SINGLE BRANCH - unlike wood/paper/ bamboo which drop 3 - 5 items each time. One recipe needs 20 washi papers - 60 branches!
As with all cozy games, tools & benches are super overpriced to force the player into a more measured progression. This causes issues for progression with villagers. Some villagers ask for things as for 1st or 2nd request that require multiple tools/benches to be unlocked so talking them is pointless as they just repeat the quest dialogue.
Some requests require you to buy things only available at the night market. I learned the hard way that the rotation of those items is not well balanced. One kid wants a specific type of candy that I didn't buy the ONE time it was available, in early spring, as I needed an expense tool. I stopped playing at the end of Fall year 1, it never came up again.
Several villagers request items that aren't available until you upgrade the night market MANY times. Others request things that need winter flowers - in spring year 1. A flower vendor does open at market but no guarantee which flowers will be sold - or that you'll have enough money to get the quantity you need. When you get to the temple, you have to craft 6 temple flower bundles - which requires Sakura flowers. I ran out of sakura flowers at the end of summer. It wasn't until Fall week 3 I could buy them.
There are many bugs, here are a few:
1) At the end of the market night is a tally of how much money you made, how much the market leveled up, your best selling item, etc. Except after the first few the tally stopped working. For a while every market night said I made exactly $144. My last market I made over $3,000, it said I made $295 but also showed my top selling item made $506?
2) I've managed to open the inventory screen and the journal simultaneously. I had to exit the game.
3) There's a mining node in the 2nd mine that instantly says you failed the mini-game, The bubble it appears in shows a wood texture only, and it stays there until you leave the mine. After the 2nd time I realized that node was bugged & stopped trying it.
4) If you have to turn in 2 windows, for example, they need to be the same quality or they don't count.
5) When i finally made all 6 temple flower bundles, 1 apprentice said I needed 2 "perfect" ones. I didn't have any perfect ones. It didn't matter. The game just decided my regular ones were suddenly perfect & accepted them.
6) The temple quest should apparently be completed in summer as the post-completion dialogue refers to it being summer despite it being fall when I actually completed it.
7) The inventory system is horrible & glitches constantly. You cannot sort your inventory manually but it has some sort options - but they don't work. When you have to put items on display at market, I can view "crafted items" but when I pick one, then go back, the sort will show Crafted Items is selected but shows ALL items until you shift it to something else & then back to Crafted Items. There is no sort option for fish.
8) If you want to sell something to the general store your options are "Sell One" or "Sell All" That's it. You can select quantities elsewhere but not when selling which is frustrating when you have an overabundance of something, need some quick cash, but it's all or one at a time. To sell one means you completely exit the sell screen & have to go through the process again - and it's a bit involved.
9) There are 3 museums- 1 for fish, 1 for market food, & 1 for rocks/gems. I need 1 more gem for the that museum but it won't accept the "Sparkly Rock," the only rock it won't accept.
10) You can fish both fresh & saltwater fish out of any body of water. I've found 2 fishing spots so far: docks (ocean), dark woods (freshwater lake). Mostly you'll buy fish for the museum from the market once you unlock those upgrades.
I could go on but Steam limits reviews to some mysteriously small character length.