My Time at Sandrock is a healthful and story-driven open world life simulation RPG from Pathea Video games. Set in the identical post-apocalyptic world as its predecessor, My Time at Portia, you tackle the position of the city’s new builder, a a lot wanted one because the city of Sandrock just isn’t as grand because it as soon as was.
The sport begins with character creation and it’s frankly unbelievable! The choices are glorious, permitting you to make a personality as cute, cool or goofy wanting as you’d like. The one draw back is that there are gendered clothes designs, that means you’re locked out of skirts and clothes when selecting a masculine body. Likewise, you’re locked out of fits and shorts choices when selecting a female body, though there are nonetheless loads of pants and shorts obtainable to female characters. It will be nice sooner or later to see all characters have a selection from all of the clothes choices obtainable, however for now it’s only a minor element to concentrate on when making your character.
Talking of characters although, as you’d anticipate from any RPG, there’s a complete solid of characters so that you can get to know in Sandrock. They’ve great, numerous designs and personalities, though the voice performing does depart a bit of to be desired in locations.
Aside from just a few minor visible errors with the character fashions I ran into throughout my time with the sport, the townsfolk of Sandrock are an enormous draw for this recreation. I discovered myself within the strangest conditions with them and had my favourites – and least favourites – change all through the sport. A lot of the characters of Sandrock have their very own little storylines — some weird or annoying, and a few unhappy, candy or inspirational.
Be ready for the lengthy haul on this recreation although, the story may be very lengthy. On the time of writing, I’ve not completed the story but, or really feel I’m even that near the tip regardless of placing intensive hours into it. That isn’t fully a nasty factor nonetheless — the pacing and development really feel much more pure than it did in My Time at Portia. Typically, it feels snug, and relying on what number of commissions you’re taking, the duty load you have got naturally ebbs and flows all through the sport.
Whereas some gamers could discover the downtime between story occasions to be irritating, it may be helpful to have this time to construct up assets or full duties that you just in any other case wouldn’t have the time for. Sandrock additionally lets you change the velocity of the sport, from 0.6x all the way in which as much as 3x velocity.
I discovered myself switching between the slowest and quickest speeds relying on my duties or missions. I had no errors doing this, and the sport allows you to alter it at any time as a lot as you need, so I feel it’s an awesome characteristic to have contemplating the character of the sport.
The builders’ use of humour all through the story and characters helps this recreation tremendously, and nothing takes itself too significantly in the absolute best approach. It’s a enjoyable time at Sandrock, even when issues by some means preserve going fallacious for the city.
Sadly there are some downsides to Sandrock, the most important being the visuals and efficiency on Change. Character designs are nice and enjoyable, however their fashions are sometimes low high quality, which may take you out of the expertise at occasions.
The body fee may be very uneven, too, and whereas I don’t notably thoughts efficiency points like this, I do know it’s an absolute deal breaker for a lot of. I’ll admit although that in some environments the framerate slowed to virtually a slideshow, although fortunately these areas had been restricted in quantity and infrequently in non-compulsory areas.
The poor render distance can be very noticeable, with frequent pop-in of property that may be each sluggish and sudden. Greater than as soon as I’ve run into one thing while using full velocity on my mount that I couldn’t see till I hit it. When loading out and in of buildings there can usually be a delay in loading property too, together with (however not restricted to) total buildings, folks and animals. It may be very disorienting, however the recreation does type itself out pretty rapidly typically.
Typically, the sport additionally has fairly a little bit of loading, the longest occasions being if you open the sport or when getting into a cave or ruins. Once more, this isn’t actually one thing that bothered me, however is one thing to remember should you don’t like a number of loading screens or lengthy wait occasions.
Do you want stock administration? Sorting by way of intensive and seemingly limitless quantities of supplies? Effectively then, My Time at Sandrock is the sport for you! Or not, I assume. Joking apart, the administration of things will be hellish on this recreation. You simply find yourself with so many issues. Significantly, so many.
The builders have helped this in just a few methods, although. Firstly, you don’t have to hold issues in all places on a regular basis — should you don’t have quest objects in your particular person, you possibly can normally hand them in anyway. This retains your private stock far more manageable.
There are some conditions, like fishing, the place you do want all of the related objects in your stock, however these conditions are pretty unusual. Storage containers even have an awesome sorting operate, even placing objects into stacks in different close by chests when mechanically sorting them. Actually, that has been a lifesaver for me and my a number of hundred rocks that I by some means collected.
There’s a lot to do in Sandrock, and fortunately the sport type of allows you to tailor that for your self. Don’t like elevating animals? Not an issue, it’s non-compulsory. Hate farming? Additionally non-compulsory — after the farming tutorial, that’s. Don’t need to gather relics for the museum? No worries, you don’t actually should. Don’t need to stroll but additionally don’t need a secure? It’s cool, simply hire a mount.
My Time at Sandrock affords you all kinds of actions, and whereas some are essential, like mining and chopping wooden, there are lots of elements you possibly can virtually fully ignore with little to no penalties. Whereas there’s fight within the recreation, I’ll say it’s not that large a deal. It’s fairly easy, and though you possibly can completely carry out quite a lot of advanced actions in fight, it’s very button-mash pleasant if that’s the way you need it, which personally I do.
The abilities system additionally displays this pick-and-choose methodology of gameplay design, with 4 totally different ability bushes and extra choices inside these. All ability factors are particular person to every class, so should you’re not farming a lot there’s no must go down that route and waste ability factors there.
Sadly, this recreation just isn’t with out its points. It’s price noting that I used to be enjoying a prerelease model of the sport, so some errors are prone to be mounted earlier than launch or are being labored on already.
The worst problem I had was with merchandise descriptions — when shopping for from a retailer or wanting by way of a storage field you have got the choice to toggle descriptions on and off. The issue was that I might solely toggle them on as soon as after booting up the sport, after which each time after that it simply wouldn’t work. It made it extraordinarily troublesome to buy the appropriate objects or take out the appropriate objects from my storage because the icons are sometimes small or very comparable.
One other error I had was with the buildup of sand on my machines, which you’re presupposed to mud away to maintain them operating. But typically there could be no sand, or I had already dusted and the sand buildup sign was nonetheless energetic. Simply selecting up my machine and placing it again down labored to repair this downside with out interrupting any work they had been doing, so it wasn’t actually disruptive as a lot because it was annoying.
There’s additionally an merchandise restrict within the console model of Sandrock, which isn’t defined wherever and was very complicated to determine. Ornament, farming and basic objects all have totally different limits — for instance, farming has 20 obtainable slots earlier than you’re unable to put any extra. This positively stumped me after I was plotting out a farm and bought an error message that advised me I had too many objects in my yard.
The final issues I need to point out are much less points and extra oddities. When carrying something in Sandrock, you have got your outfitted gear after which outfits that are purely visible. In terms of protecting gear, I discovered that I might put on sandstorm safety in simply my outfits and it could work the identical as if I had it outfitted, but with poisonous protecting gear it needed to be outfitted. There appears to be no consistency with this, and since equipping the poisonous safety removes all different clothes it then takes up stock area.
Lastly, having a mount, they like to climb on my machines? In the event that they had been in my yard and never within the secure, 9 occasions out of 10 they’d be on my recycler. I like that they’ll stroll up virtually sheer cliffs and run proper excessive of individuals, however on the subject of some particular staircases, completely not, they only hate them. Like I stated, it’s not likely an issue, however it’s bizarre.
Total, My Time at Sandrock is nice enjoyable. In case you loved My Time at Portia or comparable video games, then you definitely’re very probably going to get pleasure from this one too — should you can look previous the efficiency points. Although its console launch is a bit of behind the PC model, and there are some issues to easy out, I nonetheless advocate it for followers of the style. I actually loved the challenges of being a builder in a bit of city stuffed with attention-grabbing characters, mishaps, sandstorms and mysteries.
Score: 3.5/5