Bloomtown: A Different Story Review

Bloomtown: A Different Story is a game that, I have to admit, I’ve been curious about since I saw the trailer for it at Gamescom 2024. So, I was glad to be given the opportunity to review it. Taking inspiration from past JRPGs, you can see how the Shin Megami Tensei/Persona series has had an impact on it.

In Bloomtown, you play as Emily, a young girl sent with her little brother, Chester, to stay with their grandfather over the summer after their mother kicked their father out. The actual town reminds me a lot of Stranger Things, and the grandfather isn’t thrilled to be watching his grandkids for three months.

Throughout, you’re given a selection of quests by Grandpa. These include going to the store, gardening, and being enlisted into helping at the store. Exploring around, you’ll discover new places, and meet new people. But, most importantly, kids are disappearing. The first kid to disappear is Sarah, a girl whom you’re enlisted to help find when her friends all begin to look for her. After solving a simple riddle to get into the tree house, Emily’ll find a sword, and a whistle which will take her to the Underside.

The Underside is a dark place where monsters live and hide, and when Emily gets there, she’ll fight two different monsters. Oh, before I forget, did I mention that Emily also agreed to a contract with Lucifer? Yes, that Lucifer. He came to her when she was asleep, and offered her a contract, and naturally, I agreed to it. With the help of that contract, I was able to summon a demon so I could use magic against these other ones, which is pretty handy.

Emily’s able to escape, and it looks like she’s been missing for long enough that Chester started worrying about her. When she falls out of the Treehouse in her escape, she crashes into Ramona, the kid of the local police chief, Frank, who quickly befriends Emily as the two investigate the demons with the help of their local library. While searching, they even find a talking dog, Hugo, and Chester also joins them on the quest, as he doesn’t want to be left behind.

Of course, the trail eventually leads them to the library, and it’s here that we really get to explore the Underside. Plus, we only have a week to save Sarah before the monsters do something. Travelling around, you’ll be able to explore the Underside library, and while there is a way out by using the payphone, you won’t be allowed to leave until you progress.

I have to admit, the more I played, the more I was aware of the jarring similarities to the Persona series, especially in combat. Considering the kids have their own demons they can summon, they also have their own abilities, and you can analyse your opponents with the L2 button. These allow you to see their weaknesses, and you can also shoot them. However, if you get an enemy down, it won’t be down for long, so you don’t get a chance to do much. There’s also an option to catch other demons, however, this is never really… explained? I was still left confused three hours in about how I should catch another demon. The fact that I couldn’t figure this out, even after downing a demon, even when using their weaknesses against them, didn’t exactly help me much.

If you’ve played Persona 5, or any of the Persona games, you’ll notice that these elements are incredibly similar. You can increase your relationship with your friends by hanging out, which is symbolised by a card, and to meet up with Lucifer, you also need to go to his place, which is known as the Purple Cage (so, the Velvet Room). Here, you can also Fuse demons, and Lucifer even gifts you one, which again, reminded me too much of the series it’s inspired by.

I’m going to be honest, while these seem like harmless homages, it actually felt like they lacked originality. I enjoyed the status elements that the magic inflicted, but I just couldn’t stop feeling like too much influence was taken from the series, that it never quite became its own thing. I was a bit let down upon realising why Sarah was kidnapped. The kids don’t react to what they discover, and I have to admit, their general response is, “You’ve gone nuts!” which isn’t exactly the deepest, insightful conversation I expected.

There’s a lot of dialogue, and I’m not entirely sure of how natural it is. I can’t say the characters have a distinct voice, and dialogue is quite easily skipped, as you could just be tapping the X button quickly as I was reading for so long. Plus, there were a few instances where the dialogue either felt stilted, or there were grammatical mistakes that could have been avoided. The characters do have compelling storylines in their side quests, though, which did actually sidetrack me. These felt like relatable issues, but considering the max level was at five, it was easy to get through them if you didn’t have to fight any demons.

I also did get a little confused by the time period this was set in. Everything leads to it being a 1960s-inspired America, but there’s some very modern slang in there, like the word “doggo” which dragged me out of it. While I liked that you could work to earn money and learn new elements like cooking, the amount of dialogue thrown in dragged me out of the immersion, as I learned about the history of dough, and I had to fast-forward through jobs and workouts.

To get money, you had to either work, sell items you found, or travel around the Underside to get more. Upon looking around, you can also go to the Lottery, where you can earn money by buying a different level of ticket. These could be cheap, fair, or expensive, but I found I was mostly winning on the cheap tickets, so I didn’t really bother too much with this. I could work by going to the store, and I could even do that multiple times a day, which meant buying new weapons from the weird guy in the forest wasn’t too difficult.

While there are different parts of the map to explore, you could also get access to sidequests that you wouldn’t be able to do yet. Upon doing some quests with the friends, especially Hugo, I was able to get to his last quest far too early, and it doesn’t seem like it’s particularly spaced out. There was also a bit of a bug with my game, where for some reason, I couldn’t get back to the Underside, despite answering the phone. So the fact that I would have to restart my game from the beginning really, didn’t exactly thrill me with joy, especially as I’d done so much already. Admittedly, this does seem to be an issue only I had, but it meant that I lost a lot of time trying to fix this.

However, this wasn’t the only issue I found, as upon going to the record store, and accepting the 50% off deal, I bought what I could in the store, but was still not allowed to leave. There’s no way to really say no to the discount, and so I ended up avoiding the music store, and the side-quest that was there, and the vinyls I could collect, and just… left. I could also fish for items and find other records, and I admit, the music? It was good! However, again, it felt very much like listening to a Persona soundtrack, which isn’t a bad thing, but considering how much Bloomtown was inspired by the series, it felt like it was trying to match up to the previous series.

Exploring the rural areas wasn’t bad, and by all accounts, I did enjoy travelling the town! This was helped by the fact that I could fast-travel, but there were moments when I would do a quest, say they would meet me at five, and then the time would go back to 11. It meant that it didn’t feel quite so immersive, and the fact that I would have to go out and garden each morning to ensure my plants didn’t wither and die, wasn’t a feature I particularly enjoyed.

It also meant that I was able to max out my smarts and proficiency early in the game, which shouldn’t really be that easy to do. While I enjoyed the investigation portions of the game, where I would have to talk to other villagers, this was more of the highlight. I still wasn’t thrilled by the combat, which again, reminded me too much of Persona.

Overall, I did really like the pixel art, and I loved the idea of travelling around the town and being able to go to the Underside to solve mysteries. Honestly, exploring Bloomtown: A Different Story was fun, but I didn’t find much enjoyment out of the combat, especially, as I still couldn’t figure out how to subdue a demon, even if I did everything I was supposed to. So, while I do think that this could be a fun game for some, I can imagine going back to it and giving it another go on a rainy day, but personally? I feel like I had high expectations, and it didn’t quite live up to them.