Abzu vs My Time at Portia
Abzu
Abzu is unlike any game you may have played before. As opposed to many games that focus just a tad bit too much on fighting and killing one another, Abzu is a beautiful exploration and interactive-styled adventure-like game that allows you to simply explore the wonderous and vibrant underwater world. Play as the Diver and immerse yourself in a world filled with abundant sea life and mystery while doing impressive underwater acrobatics or even simply swimming around with the fishes... fishes or any underwater wildlife that actually can react to your presence rather than just ignoring you.The feeling of relaxing quietness that Abzu can evoke is so uncanny. Despite the graphics, which doesn't look at all like the real-life version (this is not a criticism by the way, we're just pointing out a fact), the game is just so well-designed that you actually feel like you're diving underwater while playing the game. We'd highly recommend this game if you're looking for a game to play to destress or just to experience something completely new.
My Time at Portia
My Time at Portia is a charming fantasy-themed adventure RPG that is set on a gorgeous, revitalized world after a post-apocalyptic event wiped out the previous technologically-advanced civilization. In this game, you play as an up-and-coming Builder, a respected role in society, whose sole purpose is to help solve the town's problems by engineering a solution.With a gameplay which may fondly remind you of games like Harvest Moon, My Time at Portia may be grindy in an RPG sort of way (think repeated dungeon runs or resource-harvesting), but the game has a nice relaxing pace, where its quests (both main and side quests) are slowly revealed as you progress. Being a Builder, you can also complete a commission request daily to collect some cash. The game also features an elaborate gifting/relationship-building system, fun ruin-diving areas, tons of interesting characters to meet, and challenging dungeons. You can even romance and eventually marry an NPC (not all though) you like!
The best part of the game is definitely its in-depth crafting system. There are tons of machines you can build to help you generate a wide variety of materials to build other stuff. You can also unlock new machine technologies via the Research Center.
My Time at Portia feels a lot like an adorable MMORPG minus the MMO part. It has the grind, the dungeon runs... but of course, this game places a lot more emphasis on its resource-collecting, as well as crafting and building aspects. Sounds like a game you'd like to play? Well, despite still being in early access, the first chapter of the game is already ready and bugs-free, so if you do buy the game, know that you can at least get a good 40 hours or so out of it.