Recent reviews by Arabella L'Araignée

Woo, now that I've completed the main story, I feel qualified to give a review.

This is an amazingly cute game. A little bit of Stardew, a little bit of Zelda, and a loving spoonful of indie charm (As well as Dark Souls, but jokingly). Garden Story is an action-adventure RPG about little fruits in a garden fending off rotten goop and trying to rebuild their grove after the departure of their guardians who protected them from The Rot. They also got frogs and sea creatures as friends.

It feels like a Zelda game when the protagonist Concord first get his Pick (primary weapon of choice) and you spend the day being shown where everything is and fight a few Rot. The game really railroads you on a certain path in the first few days, preventing you from wandering off into other areas for the sake of progression, but eventually you are given free reign and can open up additional areas. You can also get additional weapons from the store, and through various quests (including required story quests). Your day is spent taking up the mantle of guardian of the Spring Hamlet and helping around town, fighting Rot, gathering resources, and rebuilding parts of the town, and each request you finish will net you EXP for your town's three different aspects which can unlock bonuses such as increased village storage space and personal backpack space.

The story builds up as you level up your town and then you are asked to open up the town's resident dungeon and fight off the Rot inside while retrieving a quest item found within. Usually these dungeons have some resources that only it can offer, so revisiting is worth it. They also have pretty decent puzzles worthy of a Zelda top-down game. Afterwards, you will be sent on a quest to visit other towns to help them rebuild and defeat the Rot in their dungeons.

Now about The Rot: these globs of decayed fruit flesh have grown restless and have come to attack the peaceful inhabitants of the Grove. They come in several varieties that require different weapons and strategies to kill, such as the shelled Rot requiring you to use the Dowsing Rod to snatch their shell.

At the end of each day, you go back to your home base and rest up to check on stats, save the game, and use mind slots to equip memories that give you stat boosts and bonus skills. A really solid roleplaying aspect that is well-implemented and effective at helping you do whatever you need to do.

Overall this is a great game, and I recommend it to everyone!

This game is absolutely amazing. I loved playing Terraria during its heyday, but with each passing year, that golden sparkling feeling is starting to fade away, but this game gives us a whole new perspective on the action/crafting/survival genre with a bit of sandbox creativity.

What sets this game apart from the others is that the top-down perspective allows for more versatile movement than Terraria, as well as a nearly limitless means of initial exploration from the beginning.

Another major aspect of the game that makes it special is the presence of villages and the ability to create settlements. This totally changes the way your average gametime is spent, so you don't need to spend countless hours farming and setting up automatic systems. Your villagers will take care of all that for you! You can tell them to farm, craft, fish, hunt, and cut trees for you while you're gone exploring, and then your storage boxes will be filled to the brim with all the necessary goodies you will need to craft what you want, all without lifting a finger (after the first-time setup, at least).

"The town of Littlewood is so amazing! How did you afford to make all this possible?"

"Hehe... for our primary income, we sell WEED!"

Amazing game if you play with friends. Just make sure to share resources and weapons, or else one of your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ party members might just loot every chest in the dungeon, take the Muramasa and make off with the only Night's Edge in your world and never come back.

10/10 would play with friends again