Bloomtown: A Different Story PS5 Review: Bloomtown: A Different Story is like playing through a Stephen King story through turn-based combat. Bloomtown charms with its pixel SNES-style presentation but shines with excellent writing and a fantastic soundtrack. It could have stood as one of the year’s best titles if it wasn’t for a few hiccups in its combat and questing.
Bloomtown: A Different Story PS5 Review
Welcome To Gloomtown
Bloomtown’s story is right out of a book. Emily and her brother Chester are visiting their grandfather for the summer in Bloomtown, a small, peaceful town where everyone knows each other and gets along—at least that’s what it seems.
While sleeping, Emily is awakened in a chamber run by Lucifer, who asks her to sign a contract with him to stop three powerful demons from destroying Bloomtown and, in the process, release him from his prison.
Emily quickly realizes that Bloomtown is a hub for demonic activity, and it’s more terrifying than they thought initially. Mysteries begin to spring up around town; a missing girl, a murder, and various other crimes come to light. Emily and Chester investigate these crimes, hoping to help as many people as possible.
The siblings befriend the police chief’s daughter and a Corgi the party can somehow understand and communicate with. Together, they set off to defeat these three demons and rid the horror from Bloomtown.
Live The Life You Want
Though the story isn’t anything spectacular, its writing, on the other hand, is fantastic. I loved every character I encountered and felt for the families affected by the crimes. Bloomtown quickly became its character, and everyone began to play a role in the overall story.
During conversations, Emily can barter for better prices at stores if her charisma is high enough, or she can stand up to bullies with enough guts. Bloomtown has a night and day cycle, and you can take on various activities to improve your stats. Much like the Persona titles, you can take time to complete tasks or work to earn money.
Heading to the gym will improve your maximum Hit Points. At the same time, farming in your grandfather’s backyard allows you to grow various fruits and vegetables that you can use to trade around town for other items or keep as healing items. Feed wildlife like squirrels, which will improve your kindness.
You Can Skip Sections Of Quests By Completing Conversation Checks
Kindness, Knowledge, Guts, and Charisma all help you during conversations. Multiple options appear during the dialogue; sometimes, Emily can use these options to get the upper hand. If they are high enough in level, you can use these options during conversations to gain extra knowledge or even bypass steps like finding or talking to other people to get answers to your questions.
Questing can also be cumbersome. You’ll get many quests but won’t know which ones you should do first. I would sometimes have up to three main quest objectives with several side objectives linked to the main quest. It was hard to decide what to do first because doing one part of the quest may eliminate the need to do the other based on my questions.
Thankfully, the game helps you know the general vicinity you need to go to complete the quest, circling an area on the map when you have the quest selected.
Stop The Demons In The Netherworld
Emily can head into the netherworld. It is a demonic realm where all the game’s combat takes place. Because you’re playing as kids, a fantastical element is applied to the game. The toy weapons they carry around act like real weapons in the netherworld, and Hugo the Corgi transforms into a big, muscle-bound dog who can punch and shoot rocket launchers.
Each character is equipped with a melee weapon and a long-range weapon. They also have pacts with demons that they can use as magic attacks. Combat is turn-based and is simple but challenging. Enemies have various weaknesses that you can exploit based on elements like ice and fire, as well as melee and bullet weaknesses.
Some kills allow you to cast a spell like a fireball, while others, like combustion, will set enemies on fire and allow you to use another spell rather than pull off a combo attack.
Combat Features Some Gorgeous Animations
Enemies appear in the plus formation, which leads to some issues. If an enemy is in front of any other enemy, you can’t strike anyone behind them without using magic or long-range weapons. Your melee attacks can’t reach them until you defeat the enemy in front of them.
Though you can use your guns, they have an ammo count, and once that count is dry, you can’t use long-range attacks until the next battle. You aren’t able to reload your guns.
You also can’t escape from battle; if you’re in a brutal struggle, you must either win or lose the battle and head to your last save point. It’s a pain because the game only features auto-save, and you don’t know how far back you’ll go.
Battles can also take a long time to get through. Enemies constantly hit you with various status aliments that slow the combat down quickly. Many can also heal each other, adding to the length of combat. It’s not a significant issue, but it can become tiresome when you’re doing everything you can to defeat an enemy, and two others are healing eighty percent of its HP back every turn.
A Catchy Soundtrack And A Great Pixel Art Style Bring Bloomtown To Life
Visually, the pixel graphics are excellent and very detailed. The animation work is also top-notch, and you can always see what each character is doing. It is awe-inspiring to see Emily put down her backpack, open it up, and put or take out a specific item.
The soundtrack is top-notch, and the game doesn’t feature voice work. The game’s battle music has plenty of vocals. The battle theme changes every fight randomly, playing one of about five catchy battle themes. The Persona franchise inspired a lot of it.
Bloomtown: A Different Story had me laughing. I loved the setting and the characters that inhabit this small town. With a fantastic art style and a banger of a soundtrack, there is plenty to love. Though its combat is simple, the battles tend to drag on for a while, and being unable to escape from tough battles is a real drag. It’s not enough to stop Bloomtown: A Different Story from being a charmer from start to finish.
Bloomtown: A Different Story is now available on PS5 & PS4.
Review code kindly provided by PR