A lot of Japan’s largest video games have been open world-ized, however I would not have anticipated the subsequent to be—*checks notes*—summer season trip adventures. Sony’s Boku no Natsuyasumi (“My Summer season Vacation”) sequence was a life sim trailblazer within the early 2000s, and now there’s Natsu-Mon: an pleasing journey giving a seldom-known subgenre new life. As a longtime devotee of the Sony video games, I welcome the change relatively than demand purity. It nonetheless is not getting previous strolling by means of a digital sunflower area, even when I’ve carried out it sufficient occasions to be a seed farmer.
What’s it? A captivating open-world journey set in a distant Japanese city throughout summer season 1999Release date August 6, 2024Expect to pay $39.99/£39.99Developer Toybox/Millennium KitchenPublisher Spike ChunsoftReviewed on Threadripper 3960X, RTX 3060 Ti, 64GB RAM; Steam DeckMultiplayer NoSteam Deck Not VerifiedLink: Steam
Natsu-Mon is the newest religious follow-up from Natsuyasumi creator Kaz Ayabe, who’s been returning to spearhead new model for different publishers—you could recall 2022’s Shin chan: Me and the Professor on Summer season Trip—however in contrast to the Sony video games, they lastly get English localizations. Natsu-Mon was initially launched on Nintendo Swap final 12 months, and apart from now being in a language we will perceive, additionally has an adequately powered-up PC port.
Given its heritage, Natsu-Mon sticks near the construction Boku no Natsuyasumi hit on 24 years in the past: play as just a little boy in Japan in a bygone decade, and spend all 31 days of August (a quick however typical summer season break for Japanese schoolkids) within the distant countryside. The large distinction is that whereas earlier video games featured static painted backgrounds and wonderful tank controls, Natsu-Mon shifts to a completely 3D open map. House base is the tiny city of Yomogi, surrounded by a neighboring city, mountain, and all method of hills and grassland. Stated little boy Satoru is the son of managers of a touring circus troupe, and inevitably helps placed on common exhibits for the city.
By day two, Satoru’s mother and father have a proverbial fireplace to place out, so his caretakers are the circus performers and, not directly, the remainder of the city. Like all good RPG, a daily solid of characters is milling round city always of day: the neighbor children with their “detective company,” the café proprietor and twin brother who runs the lighthouse, the nosy journalist, the lads in black. Many simply reliably grasp round, however some give little magic moments, like while you go see who’s hanging out for drinks at evening, or when the café and toy retailer house owners observe enjoying folks songs below a tree. Nonetheless, repetition is of course excessive as you make a day by day routine of speaking to a personality simply to suss out one other plot level. Characters aren’t completely the main focus in Natsu-Mon, however they provide essential depth to enrich the remainder of the time exploring the surroundings.
Out of breath within the wild
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On Swap individuals wasted no time evaluating Natsu-Mon to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel. Nevertheless it’s not a full-on clone, it simply borrows a number of good concepts: an upgradable stamina (“stickers”) meter for staying lively longer; a cape to glide throughout longer distances; and Satoru’s potential to seize and climb practically any vertical floor.
The place Natsu-Mon provides a welcome tweak to the open world routine is the absence of participant punishment. Satoru has no well being meter and thus no technique to be damage. You will be slowed down by operating out of stamina or falling from a tall sufficient peak, however you may by no means lose. So go forward: run in entrance of a transferring practice and watch it come to a direct cease. (Within the sport, children! Solely within the sport!) All that limits you is the stamina meter and an encroaching dinnertime.
However gee, that stamina meter is a robust vice. I am safe in being the form of open world participant who often tries to get superpowered as early as doable, however I’ve performed the Natsuyasumi video games for a very long time and love them for his or her artwork and story course—they’re about consciously soaking in life’s tiny pleasure. So when the action-gamer a part of my mind takes over in Natsu-Mon and I simply need to get extra stamina stickers to climb the Yomogi lighthouse, it seems like I am avoiding the extra nice bits I may very well be slowing all the way down to take pleasure in. There are facet actions like fishing and fossil accumulating, and a daily provide of quests (“adventures”) that retains you busy uncovering extra story and studying about characters. To make certain it is a relative slowing down: Natsu-Mon has the look of a comfortable life sim, however I used to be all the time operating round even when it wasn’t aimless, making the expertise really feel extra like a cross between Zelda and A Quick Hike.
The expanded 3D freedom comes at a slight price to the surroundings. I discussed that the Natsuyasumi video games had been identified for painted backgrounds with cartoony-looking characters set in opposition to the gorgeous life like scenes, however right here the entire world is on the cartoony facet. Whereas the characters are properly stylized with flat colours, elements of the map have mushy-looking terrain that sadly does not cohere a lot better from afar.
Nevertheless it’s not all iffy: I recognize lower-poly artwork and located some genuinely good fields, hillsides and vistas that appropriately really feel like one thing out of a storybook. And with Natsu-Mon’s 20-year pedigree and nostalgic underpinnings, you would possibly as effectively faux it is a PlayStation 2 sport—in one of the simplest ways, after all.
A breezy time
As a cartoony sport coming from Swap with an set up measurement below 3GB, Natsu-Mon should run easily on something with graphics {hardware} from the previous a number of years. For reference, the Swap model struggles sustaining 30 FPS, however on PC the sport effortlessly hits a secure 60. That features the Steam Deck, which by advantage of additionally being Swap-like merely leaves the Nintendo model within the mud. That may get a passing grade, however diving deeper, the graphics settings are serviceable at finest: FPS is proscribed to 2 toggles (30 or 60) and one generic “picture high quality” setting that appears to solely have an effect on the rendering decision.
You do get a full vary of display decision choices, but no true ultrawide assist. Kind of a bummer, however all issues thought-about, it is positive for a chill all-ages journey that is not attempting to astound you to start with.
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The principle purpose Natsu-Mon is on PC a 12 months later is Broadcast Over Sundown, a brand new simultaneously-released DLC pack that provides the distant Sundown Island for Satoru to discover. It is a textbook DLC map: just a little over a 3rd of the primary one in measurement, with new creatures to gather and a few new characters and mysteries that include it. Once more, I take pleasure in operating round this sport’s world, and getting a brand new space wrapped in a dusting of story works for me, however Sundown Island does not look that a lot totally different from the remainder of the sport, and it feels bolted-on relatively than a extra distinctive journey. Contemplating that ending the primary story provides you a New Sport+ mode maintaining every thing you achieved, it is best to avoid wasting Broadcast Over Sundown for later.
That mentioned, the DLC does present extra of what makes Natsu-Mon pleasing: the little thrills of exploring someplace new with nary a care. The open-worlding of the Natsuyasumi formulation is thrilling in spite of everything these years, although it has to go away some issues behind: we do not get the peerlessly composed idyllic scenes of its predecessors, and it does not really feel fairly as particular as them once I spend more often than not dashing across the map. However Natsu-Mon’s strengths are in its modest measurement, good setpieces and loads of quirky characters. Who is aware of, perhaps this may very well be a harbinger of smaller open world video games which are extra like a trip than a job. Within the meantime, I’ve a lighthouse to climb.
