Cozy games are a style of simulation games that have taken off on their own in the last several years. One of the latest ones that just hit 1.0 is built on Japanese lore and contains many of the not totally unexpected Japanese RPG tropes. Tales Of Seikyu (ToS) from ACE Entertainment attempts to take the genre to a new level. While it does succeed by adding some interesting gameplay ideas, coupled with graphics that are reminiscent of the style of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, it ends up falling a little short in other areas.
What Does The Fox Say?
Like any other sim game, you start in a basic character creator to pick your avatar’s sex, hair, basic clothes, etc. After that, you jump right into the story where you and your fox sister, “Kon” arrive on a boat that an otter captains. You’ve just made landfall on the island of Seikyu. The main theme behind the storyline is finding out where the rest of the Fox Clan has gone and uncovering what happened to your parents and why you and your sister are alone. The story is very charming and family-friendly. You’ll be given a starter home and interact with all types of “people,” including a cat-like mayor, a goose-like lady shop owner, and of course, your standard fair well-endowed lady NPCs.
The story flow is not totally unpredictable, but it is interesting enough to make you want to find out what’s next. All the characters you meet and interact with can be romanced, mostly by taking an interest in them and gifting. As their affinity level increases, it opens up options like hugging, kissing, dating, proposing, and marriage. A similar system is employed with animals you meet that you can tame to become your pets. Your sister Kon has her own affinity system as well.
All The Usual Comforts
Tales Of Seikyu has all the comforts of your typical cozy simulator games, including gathering/crafting, fishing, farming, ranching, and decorating, as well as romancing. One nice thing about gathering is that the weapon you’re wielding for combat is used for gathering by slashing/smashing at trees, rocks, etc. It’s a nice change from having to swap out weapons for tools.
In the open world, there is combat. The combat system is of an action combat variety with limited moves. Early on, combat is a bit more challenging, but once you acquire a higher-level weapon, it seems to become easier. With limited key presses, combat becomes fairly tedious after awhile but it is a necessary means to the end.
In the same vein as games like Stardew Valley, you’ll receive mail from townsfolk and be sent invites to events. Events like the carp festival caused the main town to be decorated with carp-like flags. The events also contain mini-games, which were a nice aside.
You’ll begin with a basic farmhouse that you can decorate and expand, all while leveling your life skills. Also, leveling certain life skills can affect how some townsfolk act towards you as they become open to fishing and “working out” with you in the new fitness club. Cooking is similar to games like Guild Wars 2, where you gain knowledge of recipes by trial and error, whereby you mix the right ingredients into the pot.
A Different Twist Of The “Tail”
One of the most interesting features in Tales Of Seikyu is the “yokai transformations”. Yōkai are an extensive form of supernatural entities, spirits, and monsters in Japanese folklore. Unlocking these creature forms typically replaces your standard tools you’d expect to need, e.g., a hoe. The early boar form you acquire lets you attack the ground and becomes your “sow” action, thereby preparing a square of land for accepting seeds. There are several other forms to unlock, and each of these forms can be upgraded, at a cost, to open up new skills for those forms.
Another interesting feature is the inclusion of a dungeon called the “Fox Ruins”. This dungeon has multiple rooms, several of which need to be unlocked. While the overarching idea of a puzzle-based dungeon sounds appealing, determining how to unlock rooms feels a bit unscripted. Where you’d might expect and hope for something like a “sliding puzzle” or “turning the statues into alignment”, you get something like “mine all the stone” in the room to open the door.
Things That Get In The Way
In the open world, there are some fast travel points, but not nearly enough. Of course, at some point, you unlock the yokai form that allows you to fly around, so maybe that was the reasoning behind fewer teleport shrines.
Backpack management early on was frustrating, especially if you’re one to gather all the shinies, which represent resources. I had to do a lot of teleporting to my farmhouse to unload items into my storage chests, which fill up quickly, too. Doing this extra legwork also eats up your day cycle clock and drains your avatar’s total stamina. If your avatar becomes too “tired”, usually in the wee hours of the late night, they pass out. This is not to mention that crafting requires you to have the resources in your backpack, not in your storage chests.
Early on, some quests seem to induce a lot of waiting, as you can only find people during certain hours, and you can’t just enter their homes yet. There’s a request board you work on to pick up quests, but some of the early ones involved getting resources that I had not even heard of yet. Others were asking for farm resources that take “days” to grow. One mail quest had me join a workout with the town blacksmith by first meeting him at the town’s fountain. When I went to find him, he was at his trade stand. I could not get the correct quest response to trigger. I eventually gave up not realizing I had to wait until the “next” day.
Conclusion
Overall, Tales Of Seikyu is on a good start. The early access builds had been received rather well on Steam. The game is Steam Deck verified, which I can attest to, as I played a good percentage of this review on the Steam Deck. The only trouble I had was that some of the text in the “new” item or recipe description pop-ups was a little small to read. The controller controls for switching weapons or inventory items took some getting used to. They are on a pop-up circle-shaped scrolling toolbar that uses the right stick to scroll through them. At first, it wasn’t overly intuitive.
All things considered, Tales Of Seikyu is a good buy, especially at the 1.0 introductory price of 30% off sale currently going on at Steam.
