Early thoughts on My Time at Portia for Switch

Hey guys! Edan here, just wanted to give you all a status update on our My Time At Portia review. A few weeks back we received review code for the game, and as someone who has plunged over 200 hours into Stardew Valley, I jumped at the chance to review what is one of my most anticipated Switch titles this year. Unfortunately, things haven’t exactly been straightforward.

Whilst this isn’t our final verdict on My Time At Portia, at this stage I can safely say that the game is shaping up to be a truly marquee title for the Switch. It’s loaded with content, paced extremely well, and it applies a unique spin to every new and existing idea that it brings to the table. Having said that, it’s impossible to recommend the game in its current state.

If you’ve been following any of the recently uploaded videos and Reddit threads regarding the Switch version of the game, you’ll have seen the topic of performance come up regularly, and rightly so. As of right now, the game suffers from extremely long load times, which severely hamper the experience. There are also constant pauses that last up to a second each and every time you interact with anything in the game, from chopping down a tree to opening a menu. The last big issue is pop-in, with crucial items often refusing to load into view until after you’ve run past them. All in all, these issues add up to an utterly compromised port. Given the high bar the game sets with it’s content and design execution, you can imagine just how bad these issues must be.

So where’s the review? Well, Team17 have assured us that there are two important patches coming to the game. One patch is arriving at launch (today), and targets the egregious loading times. The other is a slightly more beefy update arriving later that will include various fixes and improvements. After some careful consideration, we have decided to postpone our review until these updates arrive to see whether or not they improve the experience.

If this was any other game, I’d slap it with a flat hand verdict and move on, but I’ve seen the potential that’s here and I’d like to give Team17 the benefit of the doubt. Rest assured that if nothing changes, you’ll still see my review regardless. For now, I’m going to wait and see what happens, and I’d recommend that you do too.