Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid Review (RoyalFool)
I've heard about Boku no Natsuyasumi so decided to give this a shot as an English player with some basic Japanese comprehension. I had no idea what to expect, but after a few hours strongly recommend it.
Stay with me here, but the closest game I can relate this to is probably Shenmue, as the game is broken up into days, and each day has a world clock that ticks away. NPCs all have their routine, so you'll see them go from A to B during the day and carry out their chores.
The first thing you'll want to do is change the passage of time from "Normal" to "Leisurely" (nonbiri), as the game will only pause the world clock when on the map screen, so if you want to take time translating conversations or trying to figure out what you are supposed to do by trial and error, the slower clock means you can still relax and play the game without feeling like you are at a disadvantage. I wanted a chill game, and with the time set to this, it's very chill.
The day starts with breakfast and ends with a 10 pm curfew (which you can skip, but you get in trouble), and what you do during this time is completely up to you. You have main story tasks, most of these are relaxed but some ask you to achieve criteria before a date, and smaller mini-tasks, such as solving puzzles left by a creepy ghost girl. Most of the tasks are charming and fun, and it also has a lot of slow-burning tasks like catching every type of fish, insect, mushroom etc, with milestone rewards along the way.
The main limiting factor (other than time) is your stamina bar, which is made up of stars, you start with just four which means you cannot climb very high, and cannot run very far. But once you've earned a few more from the quests, you'll be climbing all sorts and running along roof-tops looking for the hidden items and rewards scattered about all over the place like a little parkour ninja.
The game world is relatively big, I thought it would all just be set in the starting town but discovered otherwise when I wandered into a neighbouring town of equal size, plus it has plenty of cool landmarks off in the distance I've not reached in the first 8 hours, but it's one of those "if you see it you can visit it" games that rewards exploration.
Now for a couple of negatives
On Steamdeck it's a fairly stable 60fps even up to 1080p. But the PC port is bare bones, you have one graphic mode setting with three options that range from "looks like the Switch version" to "it still looks like the Switch version but the draw distance is a bit better". It also has a 30/60fps toggle, but for some reason even if you disable vsync the game will lock itself to this framerate, it's not possible to go higher than 60fps.
My other minor negative is that the main character huffs and puffs constantly due to all the running and climbing, it's just a bit much and should have been toned down.