A retro styled turn-based RPG that tries hard to capture modern themes.
Bloomtown has some interesting ideas, collecting and drawing from a lot of RPGs before it. It has the story, the gameplay, and the visuals that land well these days. The game feels like everything I’ve played before, from Persona to life sim to Pokemon-like capturing. But having all that makes it more familiar to me than innovative.
The game is set in a town with a definite Eighties TV vibe, with mysteries taking place and kids being the heroes. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been a sort of trope for the last decade, especially since Stranger Things. It captures a lot of those same recurring beats; we’ve been here before. What may be a little off with the setting is that it’s not made by an American developer, so it’s 80’s America seen through the eyes of someone halfway around the world, through American pop culture and storytelling and not necessarily from the people who lived it. There’s a bit of a disconnect. It’s not supposed to be real life, it’s supposed to bea fantasy Americana kind of thing. But that disconnect made me unable to really engage with it.
The game is party based, and everyone in our party can link up with monsters who act as sort of like alternate persona. It’s a pretty cool way of setting skills and using them to target weaknesses. And, if we target a weakness and execute then we get an extra turn. There are neat ideas here, and they work, but they’re not really doing anything all that different from what’s already out there, that we can pick up or have likely already played.
It’s a darker story, with mature themes and realized characters, and people will connect to that. As a whole package it’s enjoyable, and it hits all of the buttons. This won’t turn anyone off. But I’ve already played the best version of this game before, and it doesn’t push me enough beyond the familiarity.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on the October 29, 2024 episode of The SideQuest. Images and video courtesy the publisher.
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