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Bloomtown: A Different Story (Xbox Series) Review

A summer to die for!

Vampires. Monsters. Demons. Haunted Houses. A black lodge in the mountains. A cursed lake. An underworld on the other side. What’s a small town without some strangeness to it these days, right?

You don’t have to have grown up in a small town or suburbs to understand the personal horror that comes from a stranger buying up the house across the street from you in the middle of the night. You don’t have to have grown up in the 1980’s to have a deep connection to gateway horror and kids adventure movies. IT, Salem’s Lot, The Goonies, The Monster Squad, Eerie Indiana, and Gravity Falls to name a few, have given us a growing entertainment niche that, when done right, provides plenty of eerie chills and exciting spills for a young cast.

Bloomtown: A Different Story takes its inspiration from these sources, and many more, to present a personal, close-to-home story about the darkness infecting a small town. With a heavy dose of both IT and Stranger Things in its DNA, Bloomtown throws you into the shoes of a very traditional 2D pixel-art turn-based RPG with a dose of Persona for some added spice.

In typical summer tradition, siblings Emily and Chester have been sent to the eponymous town of Bloomtown to spend the summer with their grandfather. There are family problems that need solving and mom needs some space due to “work” issues. Feeling abandoned, Emily and Chester decide to make the best of the situation as their grumpy Grandpa is of the old-school, get-a-job mould. They’re barely there for a day before they’re thrown into Bloomtown’s many mysteries and missing person’s cases, but when Emily finds herself transported to the Underworld for a quick meeting with Lucifer, things start to get decidedly deadly. Before long, Emily finds herself with a guardian demon and a job to wrangle another three rogue demons.

While the combat and questing are as traditional as traditional can be, Bloomtown throws some other ingredients into the mix that buff up the core mechanics but never outshines them. There’s some basic crafting and gardening to deal with if you want, light social mechanics to engage with, and real jobs to work for cash because Grandpa is a cheapskate. It’s all wrapped up with a day/night mechanic that turned out to be, thankfully, far less strict than I feared it would be.

Let’s get the Persona comparisons out of the way. Yes, there are social mechanics that take time out of your day to complete, and the main dungeons are broken up over multiple days. But where Persona is usually strict with these mechanics, Bloomtown takes a more relaxed approach to letting you get to know your party members.

And you do want to get to know them because – outside of their typically dark backstories that lifts Bloomtown’s narrative above the typical summer holiday cliches – each tier of storytelling opens up new gameplay perks for the character. From negating damage to using less points to cast a spell, getting to know your friends has tangible perks.

As with Persona, everything you do takes time. There’s a ticking clock at the top of the screen that counts down your activities, whether you’re crafting new lockpicks in your room, working out at the gym, or going on a visual history tour of Bloomtown, you’re going to have to be ready for your day to pass quickly. Unlike Persona though, you’re not limited to one activity that saps away your entire afternoon, and you can do everything in one day if you get started early enough.

So, while you can only work when shops open, the time management mechanic fits in with the rest of the games breezy, but creepy nature.

The combat is perfectly by the numbers. There are enemy types such as tanks and witches that soak up damage or heal other enemies, and there are elemental attacks that enemies are resistant or weak to. For the most part, the combat is also light and breezy for a turn-based game, but there’s enough depth to the system and certain enemy combinations will require some strategy to defeat. Using those elemental weaknesses and building up combos between attacks is the first key to victory, along with recognising which enemy needs to be taken off the board first.

Each party member has a guardian demon that gives them access to magic attacks, and every couple of levels you get to choose new skills for the demon to use. Demons can also be captured if you deal a heavy enough attack to stun them, which can then be fused together to create higher level variants with new attacks, that can then be equipped to add further magical attacks to your arsenal. As with all traditional turn-based RPG’s, you can power level your way to victory if you want.

Bloomtown’s story and its characters are the MVP here. There’s enough quirkiness and humour to keep a smile on your face, but the story isn’t afraid to take things down a very dark well. Whether it’s the abuse suffered by one of your party members, or children disappearing or being murdered, Bloomtown really is the quintessential summer retreat spot ripped right from 80’s and 90’s horror!

Visually, the game has some pretty pixel animation to go along with its cast, with colourful, slightly kid-friendly enemy designs. There are some nice touches, such as slapping a demon to instigate combat, but I feel that the overall look has become par for the course for pixel games these days. Less nice are the games performance issues. I tested Bloomtown on both an aged Xbox One X and current-gen Series X, and both machines suffered performance issues. On the One X, there was a fair amount of stutter, while on Series X, I had multiple crashes to the dashboard. It hasn’t stopped me from enjoying the game, but it’s an issue that needs to be looked at (at the time of publishing this review).

Bloomtown: A Different Story takes you into the dark underbelly of paranormally infused small town life. It has a good story, fun combat mechanics, and an interesting cast that makes it a joy to play. If you like traditional RPG’s with a healthy dose of Stranger Things on the side, Bloomtown is for you.

Bloomtown: A Different Story was reviewed on Xbox Series S|X using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch.

Bloomtown: A Different Story (Xbox Series) Review

Bloomtown: A Different Story (Xbox Series) Review
8 10 0 1
8/10
Total Score

The Good

  • Great story
  • Enjoyable turn-based combat
  • Fun characters
  • A nice mix between humour and darkness

The Bad

  • Stuttering and crashes
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