Garden Story

If you’ve been looking for a game with the charm and slow world-building of Stardew Valley or My Time in Portia without the strict always time mechanic or a heavy focus on crafting, this is the game you’ve been waiting for. The combat and inventory could be improved upon, but overall this game is pretty grape… I mean great!

Garden Story is a cute little adventure. When you get over the initial hurdle of the first boss, it becomes a more enjoyable time. Saving the world doesn't always have to be super over the top action. Garden Story shows you can do it by helping people and helping to rebuild a community in a more relaxed setting. While there are a few frustrations, if they're ones you can overlook, there is a charming game waiting for you.

The gameplay loop can be repetitive but is able to be consumed in such small morsels that one may enjoy picking up Garden Story every day just to get a small fix. There’s a lot of promise here in terms of a sequel but in the next go round, I think a bit of editing might be beneficial. As much of an embarrassment of riches Garden Story may seem, it can be a lot to take in for such a compact adventure.

As an inexpensive and relatively short title by a one-person team, it is hard for me to lend much weight to the game’s misses. Garden Story’s characters and world have a magnetism; it’s hard to stop spending time with them once you’ve begun, and once you’ve finished the game, it’s effortless to stop back in. If you are happy to delve into an experience where everything but the gameplay shines, then Garden Story is definitely worth checking out.

Garden Story is such a wholesome game and the more time you put into it, the more you will get out. Its adorable cast of characters and varied gameplay makes for a great ‘relaxation’ game, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Garden Story feels like the game you get when you’re aiming for a relaxing action-RPG. People need your help, and they’d like to assist you too if they can. There’s a colorful, arboreal world that needs restoring. It will take time to recover and set things right. But as long as you go at your own pace and make time for people, you can help people in this game.

Garden Story is the kind of chill adventure that’s great in short bursts but long play sessions may leave you bored. The combination of genres is unique, but I feel like each aspect could have been explored more for a deeper experience. I definitely enjoyed what I played and was charmed by the characters, environment and music, but at the end of it all I was left wanting more. But how much can you expect of one humble grape?

Despite the decades-old formula Garden Story pulls from, it still manages to feel novel. Can’t ask much more than that.

Garden Story is not the apple of my eye, nor is it rotten. I enjoyed my time helping Concord clear the rot, especially with the boss fights, but by the third town (out of four) I felt I had picked more apples than I could eat in a week. Dungeons were exciting, but the other mechanics left a sour taste as they were introduced too late to matter and became another mechanic I could easily ignore. Garden Story simply was not my jam.

Garden Story's on the short side, but it has plenty of options and content to really stretch your experience toward 100% completion. It's grape for all ages! [Issue #56 – November/December 2021, p. 21]

Garden Story is a beautiful game with a laid back attitude, but the slow paced gameplay won't be to everyone's taste.

Garden Story shows what RPGs and top-down adventures can be like. There's depth in its foliage and a charming world at its foundation. It just seems like the dev team tried getting too much from a plant that couldn't produce enough to meet demand, and the result was a watered-down version of the ideal. Still, new seasons bring new opportunities for growth, and I very much hope to see Garden Story sprout again in a new form.

As one of the surprise drops of the Nintendo Indie World showcase, we couldn't wait to get our hands on Garden Story, one of the most hyped "wholesome" games of the past few months. What we were expecting was perhaps not what we received — and it certainly has its flaws — but nevertheless, we couldn't help being won over by Garden Story's charm as well as its systems.

Garden Story has a lot of problems running on Switch, at least in its current form. They range from extremely lengthy load times to outright crashes, and I’m afraid to say that I ultimately wasn’t able to complete the game due to the latter. I’m sure it will be patched eventually, but it’s being sold right now. If those problems can be sorted out, I think this game will appeal to fans of things like Blossom Tales or Ittle Dew, but for now I can only recommend proceeding with the greatest of caution.

Garden Story is a very charming game to look at but, unfortunately, is not very fun to play. It often feels too slow for an action game and doesn't reward the player enough for their time. I did enjoy how it portrays its themes of communities coming together and the story of a rising hero, as well as its music and art style. If there is ever another chapter to this garden story, I will be interested in seeing how the gameplay improves.