Bloomtown: A Different Story is an astonishingly charming little RPG developed by Lazy Bear Games and Different Sense Games. Taking no small amount of clear inspiration from ATLUS’ Persona games, with some Stardew Valley and Earthbound influence thrown in there for good measure, Bloomtown nonetheless is a lot more than the sum of its parts, and comes together in a fun and highly engaging package that RPG fans are sure to love.

Taking place in the early 1960s, you play as Emily, a girl who, along with her younger brother Chester, is moving from Chicago to the small town of Bloomtown to stay with their grandpa Cooper for the summer. Overnight, she is approached by the demon Lucifer with a proposition: gain the ability to harness the powers of demons and travel to the ethereal Underside of Bloomtown in return for vanquishing the three demons who locked him up and are plaguing the townsfolk.

It’s a fun little adventure, where Emily forms a team of Chester, a local girl named Ramona, and a talking dog named Hugo to investigate demonic mysteries around town. Emily can increase her bonds with her companions and others around town by completing sidequests and hanging out with them in a fashion very much like Persona’s Social Links and Confidants, which I appreciated as a fun way of fleshing them and the town out a bit more.

I have mentioned a Persona influence on Bloomtown: A Different Story a few times earlier, and if you are familiar with those popular ATLUS RPGs, then you will feel right at home here. Similarly to those games (at least Persona 3 onwards), your party of 4 has their own guardian demon, with which they can cast elemental spells to harm foes and heal allies. Additionally, you can attack foes directly with melee weapons and powerful firearms with limited ammunition. To increase your combat options, you can subdue demons in battle by downing them via elemental weaknesses and completing a skill check to bring them to your side, just like in Persona 5. Unlike those games, your entire party can equip a secondary demon which can be levelled up and fused with other demons, allowing your whole party to fairly easily change up their spell list to respond to enemies with different weaknesses.

I particularly loved the highly detailed demon designs. In a particularly creative move, enemies don’t just get knocked over when you down them, but can morph into completely different looks, such as a demon that looked like a frightening owlbear straight out of Baldur’s Gate 3 shedding its feathers and becoming a tiny little man while downed. While not all demon animation twists are as funny as that, it’s a clever bit of creativity to reward attacking enemy weak points and seeing the other sides of the Underside’s inhabitants.

The combat starts a little finicky, as the initial guardian demons only have access to underwhelming status effect spells and debuffs. Things definitely pick up later as you gain access to more consistent methods of subduing demons and can make use of the elemental combo system, which rewards combining elemental attacks on enemies inflicted with statuses associated with different elements. Despite overall looking distractingly similar to Persona 5’s combat user interface, the combat UI is also very helpful at flagging when an enemy will be weak to your spell to minimise having to dig out the analyser to check enemy resistances.

When she is not taking down demons and solving mysteries in the Underside of Bloomtown, Emily is trying to spend a normal summer vacation with her friends and family. It’s overall a much more chill experience than Persona fans may be accustomed to; there isn’t much time pressure to do anything, and you rarely feel like you’re experiencing an opportunity cost by choosing to spend your morning reading a book to level your social stats, go to the gym or hang out with Chester to stop him from joining a gang of local street thugs. Time progresses slowly but in real-time, similar to Stardew Valley. That said, being able to fast-travel virtually anywhere you have previously visited kept the pacing up as more regions opened up.

I don’t think the lack of pressure in Bloomtown is a bad thing, mind; while the fact that I can spend as many days as I like trying to rescue the kidnapped girl in the library was a little weird as far as stakes are concerned, it allowed me to experience the majority of the game’s side content without having to use a guide to figure out how to even fit it in the limited time the game allotted me. Although Bloomtown certainly has its intense moments, the fact that Emily is only 12 years old rather than a teenager keeps the game from going too adult with the themes it explores and fits with the slow-paced sense of childhood summer holiday nostalgia that the game taps into, rather than the frantic life of a high schooler.

In the end, even these minor bothersome elements were not enough to stop Bloomtown from winning me over. The game is awash with appeal, with adorable little animation flourishes, such as the way Emily gingerly places her backpack on the ground when she sits down at the crafting table, or its charming supporting cast that you can befriend in between dungeon crawls. The game doesn’t overstay its welcome, either, taking around 15-20 hours depending on how much side content you engage with, and capping off its narrative in a heartfelt manner.