Is Early Access Worth It? (Review: My Time at Portia)

Beta-Testing an Unfinished Grindfest for the Low, Low Price of $19.95

Recently I picked up My Time at Portia, a game hailed as a combination of Minecraft and Stardew Valley. In it, you play a man or woman being dropped off at Portia, an island that’s a mix of medieval, parochial, and post-apocalyptic. Your character’s father, who has been absent all your life, decides to make it up to you by inviting you to Portia, leaving you a dilapidated shack he called a “workshop”, and leaving town before you even arrive.
It’s a departure from Stardew Valley, which instead has your character quitting their job in Walmart Hell and moving to a farm that was bequeathed to you by your dead grandfather, who actually liked you, and building your farm from there however you see fit.
My Time at Portia also has “Ruin Diving”, which involve running into open, underground spaces and mining goods, but only after you’ve scrounged up enough money to be allowed access. Crafting materials often depend on dumb luck to find them, requiring the player at points to kick trees for four days to get a resource and fall behind on the game’s constantly moving calendar. It always seems like there’s never enough of what you need to make the required tools and machines to move forward. The Ruins aren't the rogue-like, random caverns of Minecraft or Stardew Valley, but instead largely featureless flat spaces where you have to dig down and pray you're lucky.

Obviously, this differs from Minecraft, where everything you need is buildable and craftable from the word go, and no one’s going to demand payment before you take your pickaxe to the stone.
Minecraft is a toychest and a toolbox where the game will be anything you want it to be. Stardew Valley is a chill, relaxing game where you form bonds with people, farm crops, make money, and constantly fall victim to “just one more day…” mentality. Minecraft and Stardew Valley have robust modding communities, MTaP doesn’t. My Time at Portia tries this, but doesn’t quite succeed, instead ending up grind-y as hell and putting too many walls between the player and the freedom to create and explore that is the calling card of a good crafting-based game.

Before you can have this...

Figure out, on your own, how to make all of this, what it's used for, with little to no help...

"But, It's Just Early Access! What Did You Expect?!?"

The difference is that My Time at Portia is Early Access, which it’s supporters will claim forgives many of its flaws. It’s still in beta, they’ll claim, just be patient, send feedback to the devs, and you can help to make the game even better!
The difference is that it’s not Early Access, it’s Beta Testing, only the players are paying the devs for an unfinished, sometimes skeletal game that might not make it out of beta, and they still charge a release day price. Early beta testing once was primarily for multiplayer games and MMOs to iron out last minute bugs and work on balance issues, and now it’s to get first crack at a game that’s maybe 40% finished and might not ever reach launch. I'm not paying full price for what it might be in 12 months. I'm paying for what's put in front of me.

If Only This Was New Behavior...

The Guild 3 is another offender, as they released a buggy, trashy, featureless mess and asked $30USD for the chance to be a hamstrung alpha tester, much less a beta tester. The mechanics were missing, buggy, or too glitchy but players are expected to burn play hours logging bugs, mistakes, glitches, and submit tickets for the devs to eventually close. Again, players were asked $30USD for this.
No Man’s Sky is the best known offender, infamously charging a AAA release price for a buggy, feature-lacking, crash-prone game that delivered on 1 promise for every 10 it made. Months after launch, it’s seen 3 content updates that add little, is still crash-prone, hard on a system, and still isn’t worth the $60 price tag, treating its players like beta testers still even over a year after release.
The Long Dark is an example of a more successful Early Access. After getting funded on Kickstarter, features and a story mode were promised, but a fully functional sandbox mode was made available to Early Adopters, with the buyers made fully aware beforehand, and only a steeper learning curve was the tradeoff. Also, early adopters wouldn't pay a launch-day price. Reviews were kind, focusing primarily on the strength of the sandbox mode, but eventually The Long Dark got the release story content to make use of the voice acting they’d added months before.

In Conclusion

Early Access is generally a gamble, and often if it’s released too early it’s a sign that funding has dried up, so they’ll try to recoup their investment, and a full release might never appear, or if it does, it won’t be the product initially promised. Reviews are generally a good way to tell, but often can be filled with cheerleaders who will overlook the failings.

My Time at Portia
Early Access on Steam
PC
Crafting/Farming RPG

Graphics: Really the only pretty thing about the game, honestly. If you want a beautiful, Miyazaki-like game? Play Okami HD.
Learning Curve: You're left on your own early on with little to guide you, other than a build guide that does little to explain anything, which increases frustration.
Gameplay: 3D, open world, controller compatible, but tedious and requires a lot of grinding, and not the fun kind of grinding where you keep telling yourself "just one more day..." Crafting is easy to pick up until it starts depending on luck, at which point it becomes boring.
Build: Unfinished, but deceptive. It looks done, but doesn't offer anything that Stardew Valley doesn't for $5 less. Quests are unfinished, non-existent, and the game becomes a grind-filled sandbox after a few hours. This would be okay if the player knew it became a grind-filled sandbox. Some characters voiced, some not. Sound cuts in and out sometimes. Prone to crashing regularly with some computers.
Music: Pretty, and repetitive after 10 minutes.
Story: The characters are so underdeveloped there's no one to like in this game. The story is that your dad is a dick who left you a shack and expects you to be a handyman for an entire town that already has a few handymen, and he already left town before you even arrive.
Final Notes:My Time at Portia is Early Access because it’s just that: too early. Beta Testing originally meant that there was a finished product that needed bug testing, but Early Access has made it possible to release an unstable, unfinished build for full release price. MTaP is currently unable to supply even basic quests, and has asked Early Access players to write quests for them, essentially charging the consumers for the dubious privilege of doing their work. MTaP supplies about 5-10 hours of content before it becomes a grindfest. Do not recommend buying. Get Stardew Valley instead for $5USD cheaper.
Score: 5/10