My Time at Portia vs Ylands
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.
Ylands
Ylands is a sandbox adventure game that has a gameplay that's a lot like a massively expanded version of Minecraft with a lot more resources for you to gather, items to craft, and amazing things to build. Instead of being "just a game", Ylands is more like a platform, much like Roblox is, where players are given the tools to create whatever worlds or games they like, be it a fun go-kart racing game that's inspired from Lega Racers or even a watery world where epic pirate-themed naval battles can take place. The worlds are completely interactive as well and every action you do will modify, no matter how slightly, the game environment of that segment of the world you happen to be in. In fact, if you change a terrain and populate it with an entirely different diversity of flora and fauna, you can basically change the climate system there.Unlike Minecraft though, Ylands has opted for a more polygonal appearance which gave it the extra leverage it needed to overcome the painful dismissal and degratory label of being simply a "Minecraft clone" - which admittedly, Ylands is most definitely not. The game has so much going for it and players truly have all the freedom within the game's pretty wide parameters to literally create anything they like. Of course, the game also supports sharing, so you can let other players in Yland enjoy that (for example) crazy maze-running game you've just made!
Ylands is most certainly impressive to say the least. However, due to its indie origins, not many players know about the game, let alone buy it on Steam. So, if you really like Minecraft-like sandbox games, you simply must give this game a try, and if you've had a great time there, be sure to recommend it to your friends or even buy it for them as their Christmas/ birthday gift!
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