Grand Gardens, I’m not sure I could find them, despite them being grand.
This was a new walking simulator that I wanted to check out, because I enjoy games with environments you can just chill out and take everything in. Plus, who doesn’t like a nice garden to flatten with your shoes while trampling all the flowers, right?
There really wasn’t much of a garden…or any, to be honest.
There were portions that had fields of flowers, but I wouldn’t exactly call those grand gardens, but maybe that’s just my perspective.
Despite there being both a daytime and nighttime mode for playing, it’s not a game I would be interested in playing a second time.
Pros:
- Nice environments and shrines
Cons:
- Drops below 30 FPS
- Walk speed is super slow
- Faster walking is not much faster
- Pathways and objectives are confusing
Explanation to Negative Feedback
Drops below 30 FPS
I’m not the kind of person to complain when a game can’t be played in 60 FPS, since I don’t really see the difference and therefore it’s not a problem, but as I was playing and looking around, I felt like my eyes were straining at certain times and I wondered if I was getting less than 30 frames per second.
Maybe half an hour into the game, I decided to check the FPS monitor while playing the game and sure enough, it dropped to 15 FPS at some points, which is just…not good.
It reminded me when I was playing a hidden object game, which had a bonus portion to it, and that bonus portion did not hit 30 FPS when my mouse was moving, which caused me to get a headache just ten minutes in.
Worst game bonus chapter ever.
But yeah, if you can’t handle playing a game that drops frames like this, I’d pass on this one until it gets fixed.
Walk speed is super slow
I’m pretty sure a baby can crawl faster than we walk, and it’s even more crippling due to the frame drops that happen all throughout the game. I understand wanting to walk slow enough to be able to take in the detail of everything around you, but good lord.
I’m out of shape and can still walk a steady 30 FPS at least.
Faster walking is not much faster
Someone who’s interested in playing a walking simulator shouldn’t want to try to walk faster in one of these games. If that’s the case, then there’s something wrong, such as lack of content.
Can we not find something, is there too much repetition and not enough new scenery, are we walking too slow?
With Grand Gardens, it’s all of the above.
I had a helluva time trying to find all the crystals, which is because some of them are off the beaten path and kind of hard to find because of the knowledge that there are invisible walls to stop you from wandering too far off the main path.
While there are flowers and sculpted rocks and shrines and torii gates, the rest of the game’s environment is all the same and the path from start to finish is fairly short.
The worst part is, I wanted to try to walk faster in the first thirty seconds of playing.
Pathways and objectives are confusing
I’m just going to put the both of these in the same topic, because you’ve got a main path to follow, and that main path can split up so you can go different ways to see different things. That’s fine…except some of the path lead you to an invisible wall and it’s like…okay why was this even here?
So you have to baby-step your way back to the path you were on.
Also it’s a little weird that you can kind of walk through the bamboo barriers to a separate path–some people might think you can’t just looking at them.
As far as objectives go, your first one is to find the shrine, which is all the way at the end of the main path.
After you reach the shrine, your next objective is to find the different color gems. Some of these gems you’ll have come across on your journey to the shrine–they’re large clusters so they aren’t hard to miss.
Except there are some that take time to find due to them being off the main path that you have to actively look for.
If I wasn’t hugging the left then right side, I wouldn’t have found them and wouldn’t have completed the game–and trust me when I say I was about to bail, because it is not fun walking so slow all the way to the start of the game and all the way back to the shrine area in search of gems.
Several times, mind you, since I didn’t know how the f*ck I was missing them with invisible walls stopping me from roaming.
And then the last objective is allowing us to leave.
Leave where?
Exit the game and that’s it? Go back to the shrine from the first objective? Go back to the start?
Turns out we have to walk our happy little butts all the way back to the start in order for the game to finish, and now I’m just done with walking in general.
Explanation to Positive Feedback
Nice environments and shrines
I mean, I needed to add some kind of pro for this game, because it isn’t all bad, despite the cons list being the vast majority for this game. The shrines are pretty cool looking once you come across them–if you come across them, because if you get too bent out of shape not being able to find all the crystals, then you’ll probably miss one lonely shrine in the middle of nowhere.
This is all in the middle of nowhere, but…it’s an antisocial shrine.
As far as the environment goes…I do enjoy the fields of flowers because they are nice, and there’s a bit of glow to some of the plants, which was weird to me. I kept thinking I was supposed to do something with them, but no…they’re just for looks.
The rocks from cliffsides are sculpted to look like creatures, so that was cool to see.
Links Worth Checking Out
- Nothing here
Achievements
- Grand Gardens
Finish all your objectives and return to the start of the game - Start of a journey!
Start the game
