User blog:Bojan262/Tropes in ''My Time at Portia''

This page is dedicated to improved Trope mining for this game's TVTropes page, while its stock source editor proves a headache to use.

Gameplay Tropes

 * Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Hoo boy. The game surely... simplifies the process of constructing what amounts to a fully functioning bus, as just one example, but it's understandable for gameplay purposes.


 * Not only can you chop down an entire forest and it'll grow back to full size within a week, the nearby rocks you've shattered for stone and marble will also grow back in the same places. It makes sense for the sake of always having easy access to wood and stone, but it still comes across as jarring when you think about it too much.


 * Anti-Frustration Features:


 * When ruin diving, your vertical digging range is slightly increased so you don't have to keep fiddling around to get that ore vein or that spot you want to take a chunk of stone out of.


 * Also when ruin diving, you have to option to instantly be teleported back to the entrance, since it's very easy to dig yourself into a confusing maze of your own making when you're going after artifacts.


 * Artistic License – Geology: The various abandoned ruins run afoul of this. Presumably they're supposed to be pre-apocalyptic buildings that have filled in with rubble, explaining the various relics you find as you dig through rock, sand and dirt. The problem comes with the veins and clusters of valurable ores and minerals in the same ruins, which include raw copper, tin, lead, iron and aluminium, among other things which makes it more like a mine or quarry. Said ruins are about 300 years old, which is far too young to have formed metal deposits naturally.


 * Automaton Horses: Almost subverted; you have the option of feeding mounts (including horses), and they have a loyalty meter that would have bucked the player if they were mistreated. However, this system wasn't fully implemented, meaning there is no actual reason to feed your mounts.


 * Betting Mini Game: One of several mini-games in The Round Table is a slot-machine.


 * Boring, but Practical:


 * The unassuming first Pickaxe you make out of literally sticks and stones remains useful when ruins diving and digging for ores. While it's hilariously overshadowed by the Mini-Drill (which is a SP hog) in terms of ore mining, the fact it consumes 2 to 1 SP per swing makes it a very good choice for artifact hunting later on.


 * Simple Guild Contracts always remain useful throughout the game, as sometimes it's better to produce a steady stream of trade goods, rather then doing a resource-intensive project that will take a week to complete!


 * Broken Bridge: Several areas of the game are blocked off; given the player's profession, it's often their job to quite literally repair the bridge.


 * Dating Sim: Another optional, but still prevalent, element, reflected by the relationship system, which is more detailed then many other similar games as there's many perks related to romancing someone, side quests you unlock by growing closer to them, and even a wide range of ways to increase their affections. Once you get to a certain level, you begin by slowly dating the character in question, and at another, finally marrying them.


 * Disc-One Nuke: Zig zagged with the Spiked Practice Sword. It gives a hefty 50% Critical Chance but it's very weak and even with its Critical Chance boost it will be outdone by Bronze or Iron Swords... However having equipment to further boost your Critical Chance up to whooping 85% Critical Chance will make this sword hit hard enough to put it in contest with a Nova Sword.


 * Everyone Is Bi: In contrast to games such as Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley, basically anyone who isn't a child or already married is available to romance (which is more then half of the entire cast), and all of them are romantically interested in both men and women.


 * Farm Life Sim: My Time at Portia takes heavy inspiration from Rune Factory, and to a lesser extent, Story of Seasons. It's more focused on Item Crafting as the player is a craftsman and trader, not a farmer (though crop harvesting and livestock raising exists).


 * Fishing for Sole: While fishing, you run the risk of catching lost jewelry, a tennis racket or an iron pipe.


 * Fishing Minigame: Fishing is the most profitable activity in the game.


 * Gendered Outfit: Some equippable tops mysteriously lose a few inches off the bottom when worn by a female avatar to flash some navel, or pants become shorts to Show Some Leg.


 * Global Currency Exception: "Gols" is the standard currency used for all transactions everywhere, except for a number of special items/shops that only accept special "tokens" that must be earned through minigames. The Research Lab and Church Store will also sell a number of items and only accept certain technology items in trade.


 * Heroes Prefer Swords: 90% of the weapons you can use are swords.


 * Horse of a Different Color: The player can capture and tame various other non-equestrian mounts, the only major difference being their gait.


 * Inexplicable Treasure Chests: The ones in the ruins you can kind of explain, since salvaged technology in this setting's based around finding machines from the previous civilization coopting them into the community's needs. The ones in the overworld, a lot of which contain still-edible food, though, not so much.


 * Item Crafting: A very major feature; the character is the child of a very famous craftsman, they are expected to fill his shoes and make a living off this. Not only is it important, it's also very detailed, with many different layered systems. Hundreds of items can be crafted, from simple tanned leather, to highly complicated Steampunk buses (the latter often requiring a host of resource-intensive parts to be crafted first). The items are separated on different crafting stations, the most major being the Assembly Platform, in which major machinery and the other crafting tables are built. Further complicating things is the fact that every different crafting table runs on a different source of power (which must be constantly replaced by the player), ranging from simple wood fuel, all the way to rare power crystals that need to be recovered from ruinsnote . You also need to upgrade these crafting tables, which is an exercise in resource gathering in itself; the Assembly Platform can be upgraded at the construction office, but the others must be built from scratch or even upgraded by means of merging several existing equipmentsnote on an upgraded Assembly Platform! Crafted items can be sold, or (the more profitable option) made for Guild Contracts.


 * Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: In addition to the fact that vendors will only buy an item from you for a quarter of the price they would sell it for, all items have the same price no matter where it comes from. Additionally, there is a randomized "market value" that changes day to day, which affects the buy and sell price, in Gols, of all items in every store.


 * This is Averted in the Tree Farm and Mining Company, however, where the more of a specific item you want delivered per day, the more they will charge you per item.


 * Level-Up at Intimacy 5: You get special perks depending on your relationship with the many inhabitants of Portia, which range from stat boosts, to special functions they can perform (such as helping you farm).


 * Limited Wardrobe: Everyone has precisely one outfit they wear. This is especially noticeable if you invite a character to the Hot Springs during a date- the two of you soak in the hot tub in your normal clothing.


 * Love Interest: There's a wide selection of bachelors and bachelorettes to romance and woo, which can eventually culminate in marriage.


 * Skill Scores and Perks: Your character gains skill points as he/she levels up, which can be used to upgrade skills for an edge.


 * Sprint Meter: The Endurance Meter is utilised in sprinting and dodge-rolling.


 * NPC Scheduling: All characters have their own schedules, including different ones on weekends.


 * We Buy Anything: Averted. Most shops will only allow the player to sell them certain kinds of items, some stores won't buy anything at all, and each store only has so many Gols to trade per day. The flower store is unlikely to purchase your stock of weapons or furniture, for instance. The general store will purchase most things without complaint, but they have among the lowest daily purchasing limits, so you will need to shop around to unload all your Vendor Trash.

Storyline Tropes

 * Aerith and Bob: While a majority of the townsfolk have modern/normal/Western names, there are some weird ones, like Dawa.


 * After the End:


 * Anachronism Stew: Everywhere. People generally wear modern day-styled clothing (barring some examples, such as Django), but the guards and soldiers wield swords as their main weapons, firearms can no longer be mass produced, the vehicles they have are a combination of being Victorian tier and Steampunk, electricity is rare, and the technology to produce many things has been lost to time, many of which must be recovered from dangerous ruins, in the vein of Warhammer 40,000.


 * And Your Reward Is Clothes: Several missions give you pieces of outfits. Also the holiday mini-games give you tokens that can be exchanged for clothes.


 * And Your Reward Is Parenthood: You can have up to two children after getting married. You can choose to either have them biologically (if you're married to someone of the opposite gender) or adopt from the Church of the Light (even if you could have biological children). Biological children's appearances are based on a combination of your player character and your spouse, while adopted children have a randomly-generated appearance. While they don't grow up much, they DO eventually grow hair, and they have friendship values like all other NPC characters.


 * Badass Crew: The Freedom Corps Garrison in Portia amounts to three rangers, but they by themselves are actually very competent at dealing with local threats, and frequently assist the players in numerous quests.


 * Bears Are Bad News: Fully Averted with Abu, otherwise known as Papa Bear, who is a very friendly, if quiet, bathrobe-wearing brown bear. Not only is he friendly, he's very intelligent, upright walking, and sentient. He not only patrols the lands around Portia, he Happily Adopted Oaks when he was abandoned as a baby.


 * The Beforetimes: There are multiple named eras in the 330 years prior to the current day, but the most notable is the "Age of Corruption," where mankind was supremely technologically advanced, had working space travel, perfectly sentient robots, and so on. They call it 'corruption' because it's most commonly believed that man's hubris and reliance on technology was the key deciding factor in how and why everything went into shit and drove most of humanity underground just to survive the subsequent wars.


 * Big Bad: spoiler:The Rogue Knight, who shows up late-game.


 * Black Box: All the various pieces of equipment you use for building work like this (furnaces, skeevers, grinders, table saws, etc)- raw material goes in one end, turn it on, finished materials come out the other. In a more in-game sense, Petra admits that there are many aspects of the technology from the old world that nobody understands anymore.


 * Bragging Rights Reward: The Master Fishing Pole, which is attained by donating one of every type of Emperor fish to the museum. You've already caught all the hardest to catch fish in the game by that point.


 * But Now I Must Go: Aadit after the quest "The Final Battle", after which other NPCs propose two different (conflicting) theories that both have evidence to support them. The first is simply that, in line with well known character traits, they felt unsafe in town and left. The second theory being that they were The Rogue Knight the entire time and faking being a scared pacifist. If you married them before this, they leave you a letter that simply says they still love you but they must leave because of undisclosed reasons, and have left you a parting gift. Their relationship on the social screen changes to BFFs (though they never appear in the game again), ending your romance and possibly opening the way for a new one.


 * Camp Gay: Antoine, the secretary for the Commerce Guild, fits this trope to a T. He cares very much about his appearance, sashays instead of walking, and has an unambiguous crush on Dr. Xu. The overall trope, however, is a bit Played With seeing how Everyone Is Bi.


 * Cats Are Mean: When you give a gift to someone, most townsfolk will score a small relationship boost even to items they don't care about. The cat Pinky, however, will turn her nose up and think less of you if you present anything that she doesn't specifically like. Contrast Scraps the dog, who responds with enthusiastic joy to almost anything you give him.


 * Crapsaccharine World: The game is bright and sunny, the art style cute and the characters in the game are happy friendly people. The backstory, however, is that humans destroyed civilization, blackening out the sky for 200+ years where almost all life on the planet died. Humanity has only just got back on its feet, and rival nations are digging up old technologies in the effort to arm their militaries. Meanwhile, outside of this small safe haven, numerous dangerous robots roam the world.


 * Commonplace Rare: Valves, strangely enough. They're a required element of certain important storyline commissions in the mid-game, but can only be found in the ruins rather then crafted. Which comes across as strange when you can craft pulleys, working electrical lights and various power tools, but a simple valve is somehow too difficult to make.


 * Carbon Steel can also fall into this, in part because it is the first standard crafting material that requires a crafted component (charcoal) to make, and in part because you will go through the stuff like a fat kid through cake.


 * Drop the Hammer: Several hammers are available as weapons, being slower than the swords but hitting very hard with . They also have a nice dash attack where you spin around with the hammer.


 * Dying Declaration of Love: Should you marry Ginger and remain with her for several years after the completion of the main story, she will ultimately succumb to her illness. Her last words to the player during their final outing together at the beach are her professing her love, the scene soon ending after with a jump to the next day, where you start off not in your bed, but at the town cemetery standing at Ginger's grave with her family.


 * The Empire: The Duvos Empire is mentioned throughout the game and is painted as a power-hungry dictatorship/autocracy bent on world domination.


 * Family Friendly Firearm: Initially, Red Hawk was named Red Devils and beared the look of a futurestic firearm. As of Alpha 9, it was renamed to its current name and donned the look of a water gun.


 * From Stray to Pet: There are two friendly animals roaming around Portia, both of which can become the player's pet if treated well enough. The dog gets a series of side-quests before it'll even show up in the game.


 * Green Aesop: Given the backstory of the game, it's expected that a lot of people are wary of technology; there is a whole church that's devoted to destroying all technology and is against any development of the city.


 * Happily Adopted: All married couples have the option of adopting children, even if they're otherwise capable of having them biologically, and it is portrayed very positively.


 * Holding Out for a Hero: Gloriously subverted. If any creature dares to attack a NPC, it will rarely be allowed to walk free.


 * There's really something inspiring about a bunch of attacking mech walkers appearing in the middle of town, and all the ordinary Portians running up to fight back.


 * Hospital Hottie: Phyllis, the local nurse, is a rather attractive blonde woman who wears a uniform that comes with a Cleavage Window and some rather impressive bounce.


 * Ill Girl: Ginger, the mayor's daughter, who suffers from an unstated illness and is seldom able to leave home during the day as a result.


 * Infinity +1 Sword: Defeat the final boss of the game and you'll gain their sword, which has high stats and very impressive critical hit combo.


 * Lost Technology: Many items like engines, refrigeration units, and computers can no longer be built or repaired. If one breaks, the only chance of replacing it is by finding a new one that still works in an abandoned ruin.


 * Minion with an F in Evil: Tuss and Huss, two really dumb would-be robbers. They're so annoying they don't quite qualify for Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.


 * Not Allowed to Grow Up: None of the characters appear to age, most notably your own children (if you decide to have them).


 * One-Man Industrial Revolution:


 * The player is pretty much singlehandedly responsible for industrializing the little town of Portia.


 * It's suggested that the inventor J.Peach, who brought the world out of the Age of Darkness and into the current era of lush greenery, was this as well.


 * Permanent Elected Official: Gale is the mayor of Portia, and that's that. There's no mention of elections or anything of the sort, though he does say "you all selected me as mayor" in the aftermath of Tody burning down the harbor warehouse, and in fact at one point he mentions he'd like his son Gust to take over the job after he "retires" to form a "political dynasty."


 * Pet the Dog: Higgins will wish your character a happy Solstice on the holiday, commenting on how you expected something else, and remarking that they'll be rivals the next day, signifying a brief truce for the holidays. If the player marries Ginger and she passes away, he will also express his condolences sincerely, relating to your loss.


 * Renovating the Player Headquarters: The core mechanics of the game allow the player to renovate and expand on a house with several upgrades.


 * Romance Sidequest: You can date and marry almost anyone in town who happens to be of age and single, regardless of gender. The only characters fitting this criteria who are off-limits are Dawa (who is implied to have a steady girlfriend in Dana, though their relationship is mostly in the background) and Merlin (who goes on one date with the player, only to determine that relationships aren't for her.)


 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Mayor Gale is one of the most unwaveringly nice people in the town of Portia and only ever seems to have the well being of its citizens in mind. He works very hard both as a coordinator to develop and improve the town, as well as a mediator to keep the people and their conflicting interests satisfied.


 * Religion Is Wrong: Not explicitly, but it's noteworthy that despite how much the church and research center are supposedly at odds, and modern gamer-think being that in such a situation you'll have to choose a side at some point, choosing to only support the church isn't a viable gameplay option. To explain, when you find discs with recordings of pre-collapse information, the church wants to destroy them to keep the information from bringing ruin to this civilization and will reward you with plant-growing supplies for giving them the discs. Turning over the same kinds of discs to the research center is the only way to unlock better refining and construction machinery that you need to progress in the game.


 * Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Higgins, the builder who competes with the player for contracts, is set up as this.


 * Steampunk: The technology of the dark age heavily used this motif, with everything powered by steam, which included giant steam-powered mechs, robotic servants, and massive industrial factories. The remnants of this linger in ancient ruins that dot the landscape, which are the only source of steam-powered engines, and insane robots still patrol the broken halls. The current civilisations use this to a lesser extent, to power their transportation vehicles, forges, and airships, with the caveat that they can't reproduce this technology, and have to make do with scavenging.


 * Toilet Humor: If you fail an attempt to cook, Wasted Food will be created, which stuns the diner and Potty Failure ensues. Exaggerated when a main arc Poisoned Water is active, where almost every NPC will suffer Potty Emergency now and then.


 * Unintentionally Unwinnable: There's only one Broom in the entire game and it's needed for a quest. If you sell it or give it away as a gift, you'll be locked out of a substantial amount of content.


 * White Sheep: Nora joined the Church of Light and moved to Portia to distance herself from her family, who are industrialists and are significant players in the weapons industry.


 * World of Badass: Downplayed and Justified.

YMMV
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Awesome
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Funny
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Nightmare Fuel
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Trivia
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Fridge Brillance
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Fridge Horror
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Headscratchers
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