Travellers Rest Review (Faith)
I loved this game when it first came out in Early Access. It was quite playable in its state, and needed a bunch of quality of life changes (such as inventory and pulling of mats from storage when crafting) to make it better.
The game was taken over by a small studio in 2021 (if I recall correctly), and they've expanded the game's vision a lot. It's gone from being an innkeeping game to one where you run around and gather materials and explore etc. like Stardew Valley.
Oh, sorry, did you want to be an innkeeper? It's now Grindfest 2.0 instead.
This could have been a good change ordinarily, but its current state made it surprisingly unenjoyable for me when I played a fresh game.
The problem was that I had to manually grind every scrap of fuel and building materials, where it used to be just a gold lump sum paid to expand or buy items. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why some crafting stations and items are available for gold purchase while others can only be laboriously crafted, after even more laboriously gathering and crafting the materials.
For instance, first you have to gather the coal to fuel the furnace if you want to make some metal doodads needed for your item. And then you go and gather the iron ore for said metal doodads. You're then forced to feed the blacksmithing station an excessive amount of fuel and wait a while to convert some ore to 2 puny bars of iron. You then have to do this several times--using up all your fuel and being forced to scrounge for more--before you have, say, 10 bars of iron. You then have to use even more fuel to convert your iron bars to nails, and wait even longer. And all this was just to make ONE element of the item you wanted to craft. Repeat this process minus the fuel for having to make the stone parts and the wood parts etc. for your crafted item.
You will spend most of your days grinding fuel and grinding mats and laboriously digging stupid holes in the dirt and then laboriously tilling the soil and then planting. The time goes so fast that just mining a bit of ore nearby and doing a bit of farming consumes your entire day immediately.
Did you actually want to play this game to tend your inn? Sorry, no time for that.
You can't skip any days or you'll run out of coal.
There are limited sources of coal spawning each day. With crafting being so greedy for fuel, you can't afford to skip a day of coal mining or you'll fall behind unless you just want to sit around being unable to craft anything.
Yields and costs are balanced around day 200, so good luck to you if you don't make it to then.
But, my friend, you say, there is an ingame talent system where if you grind enough exp, eventually one day you will have talent points that increase your farming yield enough that you get more than 1 apple per apple tree! The problem with balancing the system around day 200 (or whatever day it's balanced around--clearly not day 1) is that in the meantime, it's not a very fun experience getting there.
A bit of struggling at the start is ok. But dragging it out so long? I'm on day 30 of the game and there is no end in sight. There is nowhere to buy materials instead of having to grind them every single day. Someone informed me that there is some NPC somewhere that is unlocked somehow, but I have not found such a person, nor does the game shown any inclination to guide me to such an NPC. How much grinding will it consider enough before it unlocks the NPC? 60 days? 90 days? 200?
This is not an MMO where you tell someone to stick it out through the grind and one day they'll reach max level and can enjoy the end game. Most people won't make it there.
This game is having an identity crisis.
I bought this game when it released because I wanted to play an innkeeping game, and I did. The game, unfortunately, seems to have changed identities when it changed hands, and now forces you to grind, with no option to simply be an innkeeper anymore--which is what it originally appealed to people for.
Frankly, if I'd wanted to sit around grinding materials, I'd have played Stardew, or Terraria, or Valheim, or whatever. This game was a lovely one when you could be an innkeeper in it, and not be forced to be a woodcutter/ blacksmith/ miner/ farmer/ etc. Keep in mind that these activities were fun at first. But once they become a FORCED daily activity that ate up most of your time because you don't have the materials to run your inn without doing these? They lose their fun really, really fast.