Review: Bloomtown Definitely Copies the Persona Game Formula

There are some games that wear their inspirations very blatantly on their sleeves, and Bloomtown: A Different Story is one of them. It’s basically an indie take on the Persona formula. Only here, the cast is younger. Imagine a whole crew of Ken Amadas, though with a Corgi that can talk and transforms into a musclebound anthropomorphic form in dungeons instead of Koromaru. It’s generally a solid game! However, I will say that sometimes the combat execution in Bloomtown can keep it from feeling as appealing as an actual Persona game.

Siblings Emily and Chester find themselves shipped off to Bloomtown to stay with their grandfather as the summer begins. It’s clear something is going on in their family life with their parents. It’s an opportunity for fresh air and new adventures. However, shortly after arriving, Emily ends up pulled into the not-Velvet Room underworld to talk with Lucifer about helping to save the town from its demonic influences. This means calling upon demons to fight other demons to save the day. With another young girl recently missing, it’s an immediate opportunity for Emily to form a crew and go fighting in another dimension.

The story is mostly fine. There are quite a few moments when you’re expected to just “go” with whatever is happening and expect it. This means that some exposition occasionally ends up missing. Sometimes the script and dialogue feels stronger than others, which is an issue during some especially dramatic and traumatic moments. In general, I enjoyed the concept and idea, but would sometimes feel like specific story beats or segments weren’t handled as well or didn’t provide enough information.

As Bloomtown is a game inspired by Persona, gameplay is split between what happens during the day when exploring the town and surrounding areas and what goes on when you enter the otherworldly and dark dungeons to confront demons. Time passes as you explore and perform activities. Emily can work, shop, fish, build up stats that influence her options in conversations, meet with people, farm, and generally go about a typical daily life for a kid or teenager. It’s really soothing and well-paced. I never felt like I didn’t have enough time to accomplish things, or like I couldn’t find anything to do. It’s honestly really enjoyable! So much so, I’d have been happy to play a game that only focused on that element of things.

But there is also dealing with the darkness that corrupts individuals and ruins a community. This isn’t exactly bad, but I felt it wasn’t handled as well as the more social, daily life elements. Actually exploring the “dungeons” is pretty great. There will be mechanics that involve light puzzle-solving to progress. Also, like Persona, Bloomtown is the type of game where it might stop what you’re doing in the underside area for a bit to go accomplish real-world stuff. 

It really comes down to the actual battle system and demon acquisition features in Bloomtown not feeling strong enough compared to other parts of the game, which is bad when Persona is so strong at that. It’s a typical turn-based battle system. Positioning is an issue, in that you can’t attack enemies in the back row until ones in the front are knocked out. Which isn’t the worst. There’s even an attempt at some novel mechanics by having elemental abilities coordinate with each other for additional effects and damage. However, I felt like the fights tended to drag on a bit even after a patch designed to make enemies less likely to repeatedly dodge attacks. 

Plus, actually acquiring more demons in Bloomtown isn’t as simple as it is in the Persona or Shin Megami Tensei series. You don’t just automatically get a chance at recruiting a new one after a battle or have prompts to start a recruiting process. You need to instead target the opponent’s weakness repeatedly. If you’re lucky, then you might get a chance to recruit it! But then if you want to do actual arranging and handling of your demons so far, you need to be in the Purple Cage. 

It’s weird that the actual battling and recruiting system does feel so restrictive, because the rest of the game does include more than a few quality of life improvements over other RPGs. It’s easy to get around areas. Quests are easy to track. The map is pretty detailed, so I didn’t have much trouble when it comes to finding out how to get to certain places. The UIs is fantastic and has a great feel to it. The downside there being, demons can’t be managed outside of visits with Lucifer. I do wish I had more controls over saves, but since I played on Switch and could just put it into rest mode that didn’t bother me too much.

But the part of Bloomtown: A Different Story that I really think sells it is the level of detail in its design. It’s filled with absolutely gorgeous pixel art. This is especially easy to appreciate when just wandering around the safer daily-life world, but even in dungeons you’ll get moments to appreciate how everything looks. Even the smaller character sprites are quite detailed for their size, not to mention the intricacies of the monsters. It looks lovely.

I enjoyed my time with Bloomtown: A Different Story, and it’s always fun to see the influence a series like Persona can have on another game. The day-to-day time spent in the overworld is especially interesting, since you can really appreciate character interactions, artwork, and sidequests. I just wish I had as much fun going through the dungeons, but the execution of the battle system and manner in which we acquire new demons aren’t exactly ideal.

Bloomtown: A Different Story is available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.